Friday, April 30, 2010

Oops

It appears that even Arizona legislators can make mistakes. The two immediate amendments to their recent immigration encactments do seem to mitigate somewhat the harshest of the original provisions, but true to form--their form being the refusal to recognize the correctness of any position taken by the original law's detractors--the legislators claim the law is strengthened. Fact is, the several lawsuits challenging the law as originally passed were clear winners and the Arizona lawmakers wanted to avoid having the entire legislation stricken, which is surely would have been as written.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Wouldn't you know it

This bunch (five of them) on the Supreme Court are more activist than any previous Court. Look out for Jewish stars and Muslim crescents and who knows what going up on every hillside, in every park, in the US. I'm not a huge worrier about the First Amendment "establishment/free-exercise" clause, but I do honor the centuries of precedent which stands against the notion that a clearly religious symbol may stand upon clearly governmental property. This isn't simply the "in God we trust" slogan, or the "under God" phrase--they're troublesome enough on our coinage and our pledge but they're at least neutral as to what/whose God is being referred to--but a cross?