Masson's Blog
Article I, Section 3 of the Indiana Constitution:
No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience.
I couldn’t find much of anything in the debates on this one. Once again, however, this provision emphasizes the concern of the delegates to ensure that the government didn’t get in the business of telling people how to worship.
I had the opportunity to go to the Nels Ackerson campaign’s kick off event at Purdue’s Pfendler Hall. Mr. Ackerson chose the site because Prof. Pfendler was apparently his mentor in years past. It was a nice site for a campaign event — with the idea weather, pretty much anyplace would have been good — except that the buses and occasional loud truck that rolled by tended to drown out the speakers.
Ackerson has the endorsements of a couple of Indiana’s biggest Democratic guns – Birch Bayh and Lee Hamilton.
I didn’t take notes and memories are fallible, but I some of the campaign themes that struck me are:
Update The campaign speech received some cursory print coverage. The Journal and Courier has a brief article here, and WLFI has the story here. Not a whole lot in the articles, mainly just mention of Mr. Ackerson’s intent to avoid partisanship.
Article I, Section 2 of the Indiana Constitution reads as follows:
Section 2. All people shall be secured in the natural right to worship ALMIGHTY GOD, according to the dictates of their own consciences.
Scanning the debates, I found some quibbling about whether “secured in” was the appropriate phrase as opposed to something like “possess.” The debate had to do with whether this was just an affirmation of the “notorious principle” that was intended to tie the legislature’s hands in interfering with the freedom of worship or whether the legislature would be required to take some sort of affirmative action to secure the peoples’ right to worship as they might choose.
But, the general principle is pretty clear: people should be left alone to worship as they see fit.
I’m no scholar of the Bible, and, I’ll confess I know the verse from Hosea 8:7 mostly from the movie Young Guns, where it comes up a number of times, notably at the end when Emilio Estevez shoots Jack Palance between the eyes and says, “Reap it, Murphy, you son of a bitch.”
The original Biblical version, depending on your translation, says something like:
For they sow the wind And they reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; It yields no grain. Should it yield, strangers would swallow it up.
Sowing the wind, in this case, refers to the making of a vain show of worship; a spectacle that might fool the gullible, but which will ultimately yield no fruit.
Speaking of vain shows of worship, enter Dan Burton (h/t Blue Indiana).
Saying America is “moving in a very, very wrong direction,” Indiana Rep. Dan Burton says he will introduce legislation mandating that “In God We Trust” be retained in a prominent place on U.S. currency and coinage.
“Recently, there were thousands of coins minted without ‘In God We Trust’ on them, and now they’re talking about putting ‘In God We Trust’ in an obscure place on coins so that people can’t read it, right on the edge of the coin,” the Republican complains.
Practically preaching from the pulpit, the congressman warns that “once you start turning your back on the good Lord, I think you are going to reap the whirlwind, and this is something this nation cannot afford to do right now.”
As Thomas at Blue Indiana points out, Burton is fiddling while Rome burns if he’s spending his limited time between rounds of golf obsessing about the design of our coinage. Just who is sowing the wind here? Rumor has it there is real work to be done, and now is not the time for meaningless spectacles of piety. Unfortunately, even if it’s Dan who is doing the wind sowing, it’s the common citizenry who will get the brunt of the whirlwind.
Swiftboat mastermind, Bob Perry, loses another round in his effort to robocall Hoosiers with his campaign propaganda. Perry funded something called the “Economic Freedom Fund.” The Economic Freedom Fund hired FreeEats.com to robocall Hoosiers with pre-recorded messages attacking Mike Sodrel’s challenger (at the time), Baron Hill in Indiana’s 9th Congressional District.
This was a violation of IC 24-5-14. Indiana’s attorney general — a Republican, incidentally — filed suit in a state court to stop the violation by various “John Does” and, eventually, FreeEats specifically. FreeEats went running to the federal courts trying to get a ruling that Indiana’s state law was preempted by federal law, was a violation of the Commerce Clause, and was a violation of the First Amendment. The state asked the District Court to abstain from exercising jurisdiction under the Younger abstention doctrine — basically a doctrine telling federal courts to abstain from reviewing matters already under way in the state courts unless justice simply can’t or won’t be done in the state courts. The District Court declined to abstain because, due to various procedural factors, the state court would not render a decision prior to the (at the time) imminent 2006 elections. After exercising jurisdiction, the District Court declined to enter a preliminary injunction, finding that FreeEats was not likely to prevail on the merits — statutory and case law both suggested that states were allowed to act on robocalls if their actions were more restrictive than federal law.
Both parties appealed – FreeEats arguing that the preliminary injunction should have been issued and Indiana arguing that the federal court should have abstained. Today, the Seventh Circuit sided with the State, reasoning that the District Court should have abstained. Essentially, the compelling circumstances cited by FreeEats for exercise of federal jurisdiction were self-inflicted. First, the state court had been procedurally delayed by actions of FreeEats itself. Second, elections are regular, the anti-robocalling legislation had been on Indiana’s books since 1988, and FreeEats had suffered adverse rulings in North Dakota under a similar law 5 months prior to initiation of its federal action in this case. (The North Dakota case had been commenced in 2004.) Because the District Court shouldn’t have exercised jurisdiction, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the ruling of the District Court with respect to the preliminary injunction.
The State’s enforcement action in the state court remains pending and, according to the Seventh Circuit opinion, a hearing was to be conducted on September 7, 2007.
The New England Patriots are in hot water for video taping opponents defensive signals. (H/t Stampede Blue). This is just part and parcel of the Patriots in the Belichick era. (Remember Willie McGinest taking a dive and faking an injury for one play so that the Patriots could regroup and get new defensive players on the field as the Colts were driving for a winning touchdown?) Belichick sees the rules as an obstacle to be gotten around in an effort to put another game in the Win column rather than as tools to ensure meaningful competition. Seems like he’s not a competitor – just a small man who is afraid of losing. The ESPN article also says that the Patriots had “irregularities in its communication set up,” possibly for the purpose of intercepting competitors radio communications.
Update – Stampede Blue is taking suggestions on Belichick’s possible excuses to the League. For my part, being a fan of the old cartoon “The Tick,” I’m hoping he goes all Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight on them:
I-I-I just, uh, I just uh, wanted to use the uh, heh, ah-AND SO HE SAYS, EVIL’S OKAY IN MY BOOK, WHAT ABOUT YOURS? AND I GO YEAH BABY YEAH! YEAH! I… I… uh, just wanted to, uh, wash my hands.
or possibly:
You’ll never prove a thing copper, I’m just a part time electrician. I… I… I… BAD IS GOOD, BABY! DOWN WITH GOVERNMENT!
I don’t know that I’ll have the fortitude to continue this project to the end, or even give it a fair start, but it has occurred to me to take a look at the Indiana Constitution one section at a time. We are citizens of this state, and we ought to have some knowledge of how our state is constituted.
Section 1. WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the people; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well-being. For the advancement of these ends, the people have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government.
There is discussion on this provision in the debates of the Indiana Constitutional Convention. There was an interesting remark from a Mr. Pettit of Tippecanoe County who apparently objected in that he did not believe men were equal. “There can be no social equality between the laboring man and the man of letters,” he apparently said. There was also some delay in the Convention in adopting this provision while the matter of slaves and admission of blacks into the state was decided upon. Some delegates felt like such a provision could not be introduced into the Constitution if the same document also excluded blacks from living in or owning property in the state.
Ultimately, of course, the provision was adopted. One delegate argued that, under the laws of man, of course, men were not equal; but under the laws of nature, which this document was to reflect, men had equal rights. He was not greatly concerned with whether the section was adopted — the laws of nature would remain the same regardless of what this document may say, but he preferred adoption out of respect for Thomas Jefferson and the Founders who they were copying and because he believed it right to attempt to reflect the laws of nature. And, in the democratic spirit of the day, the distinction between “men of letters” and laborers likely received a chilly reception.
Indiana Pacer, Shawne Williams, is being held on marijuana charges. I can’t get too worked up about a pro basketball player having marijuana, but this is just another brick in the Pacers’ Wall O’ Crap. I wasn’t much of a pro basketball fan until the early/mid 90s when Reggie and the boys started making an annual run in the playoffs. I remember summers in law school going to Kilroys Sports Bar in Bloomington and putting down pints of Killians while watching the Pacers in the playoffs. But I digress.
The team went flat during the Isiah Thomas years and then surged again under Larry Legend. Rick Carlisle had a pretty solid run until Artest and The Brawl. Since then, the team has spiraled into oblivion; looking like a mediocre bunch of thugs. I just hope the Pacers can get their act together before the Colts fade too far.
Nels Ackerson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Steve Buyer to represent Indiana’s Fourth Congressional District will be officially kicking off his campaign at Purdue University on Thursday, September 13 at 1:30 p.m. The event will take place in front of Pfendler Hall in West Lafayette.
The Indiana Barrister asks an appropriate question for today, September 11, 2007; six years after al-Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center towers:
We all know what today is and what it means so I won’t spend a lot of time talking about it. What I will ask is what is your assessment of the war on terror?
My opinion is that it’s ridiculous to purport to have a War on an emotion (terror) or on a tactic (terrorism). It’s like having a war on hate or a war on flanking maneuvers. This isn’t just hairsplitting. The metaphors we use influence the decisions we make. I think it was Marconi who had so much trouble figuring out a good way to use radio because he thought of it as a wireless telegraph. It’s a good thing we abandoned the “Information Superhighway” metaphor. We should have given up on the “War on Terror(ism/ists)” metaphor long ago. If your war isn’t against a concrete object, you won’t win. I think the Jews recognized this when they put the “no graven images” requirement into the commandments — with no physical manifestation, their God could never be destroyed. Similarly, terror is an abstraction and can never be destroyed — hence, such a war can’t be “won.”
A War on al-Qaeda could be won. A War on the nation-states from whence the terrorists came (Saudi Arabia & Egypt, primarily) could be won. A War on those who finance al-Qaeda could be won. But, to purport to have a “war” on terror or terrorism is as foolish as having a “war” on poverty.
That’s my assessment.