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The Only Thing That Stops A Bad Guy With A Gun?

Alyssa

Virginia Schools Take Sherlock Holmes Off Sixth-Grade Reading List

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Aug 16, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Apparently, the Albemarle County School Board in Virginia has taken A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, off its sixth-grade reading list (though older students can get access to it) on the grounds that the book is insufficiently respectful to Mormons, and if it’s the first thing children read about the faith, they’ll be left with an unfairly bad impression.

While lost of accusations of racism, sexism, or anti-religious bias that lead to book-banning are specious or un-subtle, this is a sensationalistic novel. There’s no question that Arthur Conan Doyle’s depiction of Mormonism in A Study in Scarlet, written in 1886, 42 years after Joseph Smith’s death but four years before the 1890 manifesto that disavowed plural marriage in the church, is sensationalist. The plot revolves heavily around a forced plural marriage and Mormon military units like the Danite bands. But A Study in Scarlet isn’t entirely unsympathetic to Mormon characters. The Latter-day Saints save John and Lucy Ferrier from death by dehydration. And Sherlock Holmes dogs the murderer of the two Mormon victims without regard to their religion. Non-Mormons and Mormons alike use mysterious symbols, campaigns of terror, and write things in blood on walls—touches like this are in keeping with the tastes of the age rather than any unique anti-Mormon bias. Readers are unlikely to mistake a novel where we meet one of the heroes beating a corpse with a riding crop for a definitive history of the faith, in the same way no one, even young readers, will mistake The Eagle of the Ninth as a definitive history of pagan religion.

And more importantly, even if the details are sensationalistic, it is true that plural marriage and defense of the faith by force are part of early Mormon history. There’s a difference between a right to have the fact that you believe treated with respect, and the right to have the history your faith presented only the terms that make you comfortable, no matter the actual facts. Children also have a right to learn critical thinking in school, and works that offend no one are unlikely to help them develop those skills. If the parent who complained about A Study in Scarlet had asked that it be taught as part of an interdisciplinary curriculum that points out where Conan Doyle exaggerated for dramatic effect while acknowledging the realities of early Mormon history, I might have been sympathetic. But given that the school’s responded by removing the book from the curriculum rather than placing it in context, I think it’s time to get the Baker Street Irregulars to buy a bunch of Sherlock Holmes books for Albemarle County schoolkids, just as the Vonnegut Museum did with Slaughterhouse Five after the book was banned in Missouri.

NEWS FLASH

Judge Allows Recall Election Against SB 1070 Author To Proceed | An Arizona judge denied a legal challenge against the recall election of state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), who authored Arizona’s extreme immigration measure, SB 1070. Pearce’s argued that many of the 10,365 certified signatures did not meet the requirements. Only 7,756 were required. He also said he will appeal the ruling to the Arizona Supreme Court, but if the appeal fails, Arizona will have its first recall election of a state lawmaker on Nov. 8.

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Aug 15, 2011 at 8:00 pm

NEWS FLASH

The Right’s War on Workers: NLRB Edition | Dahlia Lithwick has a must-read piece explaining why congressional Republicans’ efforts to discredit the National Labor Relations Board is a direct assault on the due process of law:

The complaint filed by the NLRB contends that Boeing moved some of its operations from union-friendly Washington to “right to work” South Carolina. (In right-to-work states, workers cannot be required as a condition of employment to pay dues or fees to a union, even though the union provides services to all the workers in the form of negotiating and administering a collective-bargaining agreement.) The claim here was that operations were moved to retaliate for strikes by Washington state workers. It’s a tough claim to prove, but it’s not an outlandish one by any means. As the NLRB points out here, there is ample precedent for the argument that threatening to move facilities because of strikes is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. And certainly the NLRB might reasonably have taken a Boeing executive at his word when he told the Seattle Times (on video!) that this was precisely what motivated the relocation. [...]

[House Oversight Chair Darrell] Issa has made no secret of the fact that he would merrily close down the NLRB if it doesn’t run its independent agency his way. He’s hardly alone. In February, congressional Republicans tried to pass an amendment to defund the NLRB. (They ended up merely slashing the budget.) Then in May, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., put forward legislation to defund the Boeing complaint. That makes about as much sense as putting forward a bill to defund Citizens United.

Read the whole thing here.

Michele Bachmann Doesn’t Even Understand How The Tea Party’s Fake Constitution Works

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 15, 2011 at 5:00 pm

Bachmann thinks this guy doesn't understand the Constitution

The core of the Tea Party’s twisted understanding of the Constitution is tentherism, the belief that the federal government is powerless to do pretty much anything. Thus, tenthers argue, the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because nothing in the Constitution permits Congress to regulate the health care market in a certain way. Yet even the most radical tenthers — people like Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who’ve argued that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional — concede that states are allowed broad latitude in regulating health care.

Tentherism is, of course, an entirely fabricated doctrine with no basis whatsoever in the Constitution, but poor Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) can’t even keep this fake Tea Party Constitution straight. During last week’s GOP presidential debate, Bachmann claimed that it was also unconstitutional when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney enacted reforms similar to the Affordable Care Act at the state level:

QUESTION: Congresswoman Bachmann, you are a big believer in the Tenth Amendment and the idea of granting power to the states, so let me ask you: does that make any difference, whether mandatory health insurance is being imposed by a state or by the federal government?

BACHMANN: No, I don’t believe it does. I think the government is without authority to compel its citizens to purchase a product or service against their will, because effectively when the federal government does that, what they are doing is saying to the individual, they are going to set the price of what the product is. If the government can force citizens or if a state can force their citizens to purchase health insurance, there is nothing that the state cannot do.

Watch it:

Bachmann’s understanding of the Constitution places her directly at odds with the president of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote our founding document. In 1792 — after the Bill of Rights had already become part of the Constitution — President George Washington signed the Second Militia Act, which requires freedmen of a certain age to “provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein.” Many of the Members of Congress who voted for the Act were also members of the Philadelphia Convention.

And this is hardly the first time that Bachmann struggled to make sense of the Constitution. Bachmann suggested Census forms are unconstitutional. She supports stripping federal judges of their power to hear marriage equality cases in order to prevent the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law from being extended to gay people. She even invited two radical tenthers who believe that everything from Social Security to the federal highway system to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution are unconstitutional to lecture her fellow lawmakers on what the Constitution requires. (Yes, you read that right. One of Bachmann’s constitutional role models believes that part of the Constitution is unconstitutional.)

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that, when Bachmann speaks about the Constitution, she’s just making it up as she goes along. Bachmann’s views cannot be squared with the text of the Constitution, they are at odds with the founding generation’s understanding of the document, and they can’t even be squared with the fake constitution espoused by her fellow Tea Partiers.

Economy

Perry Proposes Economically Impossible State Takeover Of Social Security

By Pat Garofalo and Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Aug 15, 2011 at 3:00 pm

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has made it quite clear that he believes Social Security is an unconstitutional “Ponzi scheme.” In his book Fed Up!, Perry writes that Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” Today, at the Iowa State Fair, Perry responded to a question from Politico’s Ben Smith by saying that he thinks one of the ways to deal with his vehement objections to Social Security is to simply send the program to the states and let them figure out what to do with it:

I’m for having a conversation with the country about how we find some solutions to have programs that are going to be sustainable. And I think having the states doing it is one of the ways. I’m not saying it’s the only way.

Watch it:

Perry has said before that he wants to give states the option of allowing workers to opt out of Social Security. “So the states will let people opt out of Social Security?” asked CNN’s Eliot Spitzer. “They should,” Perry replied. But as ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser has pointed out, making Social Security a state program is simply economically impossible:

A workable plan to allow states to opt out of Social Security would require draconian provisions, such as a mandate that everyone must retire in the same state that they worked and paid taxes in. Otherwise, workers who are too young to receive Social Security benefits would move to an opt-out state to avoid paying Social Security taxes — and then promptly move to a state with Social Security benefits the moment they became eligible. Eventually, the entire system would collapse under the weight of too many Social Security beneficiaries who had not paid into the system.

Of course, having Social Security collapse in spectacular fashion may be just the outcome that Perry has in mind.

NEWS FLASH

Corrections Corporation Of America Investor Presentation Shows Glee At Prospect Of Inmate Populations Growing After Recession | The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) — the largest private prison operator in America — has posted a presentation it gave to investors earlier this year on its website. The investor presentation includes a slide bragging that CCA operates in an industry resistant to recessions and even brags of the “potential of accelerated growth in inmate populations following the recession.” Another slide titled “Kicking The Can Down The Road” graphs out the growth of prison populations following recessions:

By Zaid Jilani on Aug 15, 2011 at 1:45 pm

Yglesias

The Ten Weirdest Ideas In Rick Perry’s ‘Fed Up’

By Matthew Yglesias posted from ThinkProgress Yglesias on Aug 15, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Rick Perry’s November 2010 book Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington is not a typical “campaign book” from a political candidate. For starters, its forward is written by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, nominally one of Perry’s rivals for the nomination. For another thing, it’s overall tone much more closely resembles that of a B-list conservative radio host looking to stir up controversy and sell books than of a cautious politician trying out poll-tested lines. Consequently, while the book is by no means a good one, its certainly a lot more interesting than most comparable works. I read it over the weekend, and thus am proud to produce the following list of the Top Ten Weirdest Ideas in Rick Perry’s Fed Up:

— 10. Social Security Is Evil: According to Perry Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” (page 48)

— 9. Private Enterprise Blossomed Under Conscription and Wartime Price Controls: Not only does he argue that the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression, but he asserts “recovery did not come until World War II, when FDR was finally persuaded to unleash private enterprise.” (page 48)

— 8. Medicare Is Too Expensive But Must Never Be Cut: Both establishing Medicare in 1965 and expanding it to include prescription drugs in 2003 are examples of “an irresponsible culture of spending in Washington” (page 63), but establishing “‘councils of experts’ and panels of various sorts” to assess the cost effectiveness of different Medicare-eligible treatments is a “frightening” “scheme” that “undermines freedom” and can be fairly labeled “death panels” (page 81).

— 7. All Bank Regulation Is Unconstitutional: Criticizing the Security and Exchange Commission’s rulemaking process under the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, Perry asserts that “if the Constitution were shown the appropriate respect, Washington regulation writers wouldn’t have to worry about underrepresented views, because they wouldn’t have control over them in the first place” (page 94).

— 6. Consumer Financial Protection Is Unconstitutional: Further reiterates his view that all federal financial regulation is illegitimate, listing the SEC on page 44 as part of a “federal alphabet soup” in which “undemocratic unelected Washington bureaucrats” are “now (dubiously) empowered to dictate their own preferences to the American people.”

— 5. Almost Everything Is Unconstitutional: Regrets the existence of jurisprudence construing the Commerce Clause to permit “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, [and] establishing national labor laws.” Perry makes a partial exception for laws barring racial discrimination which he says fulfill “the intent behind the passage of the Reconstruction Era amendments.” (page 51)

— 4. Federal Education Policy Is Unconstitutional: Cites the willingness of Republicans to vote for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a “perfect example” of “losing sight of the fact that perfectly laudable policy choices at the local level are not appropriate (much less constitutional) at the federal level.” (page 87)

— 3. Al Gore Is Part Of A Conspiracy To Deny The Existence Of Global Cooling: Jokes that the Social Security Trust Fund “must be somewhere in Al Gore’s lockbox, right next to his notes from inventing the Internet and that global cooling data he doesn’t want anyone to see” (page 60). Argues that moderates oppose curbing greenhouse gas emissions because “they know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend” (page 92).

— 2. Not Only Is Everything Unconstitutional, Activist Judges Are A Problem: Having called the majority of the duly enacted modern welfare state and federal regulatory apparatus unconstitutional, Perry pivots to the complaint that “the [Supreme] court too often chooses to take it upon itself to govern and to develop policy” (page 114).

— 1. The Civil War Was Caused By Slaveowners Trampling On Northern States’ Rights: Rather than simply citing chattel slavery as an exemption to his “states’ rights are good” principle, Perry argues that slaveholder activism in the 1850s was an example of big government federal overreach. “In many ways it was was the northern states whose sovereignty was violated in the run-up to the Civil War,” he argues, citing the Fugitive Slave Act and completely ignoring the human rights of the enslaved African-Americans of the south. He says “we can never know what would have happened in the absence of federal involvement,” ignoring again the fact that federalism would have bought peace at the price of continued slavery.

These stances are well to the right of where Republican candidates have traditionally positioned themselves. Indeed, even Michele Bachmann has not, to my knowledge, deemed Social Security unconstitutional. The propriety of a federal role in regulating the banking industry has been the subject of bipartisan agreement since the Madison administration. All in all, the book should give political reporters plenty of questions to ask Governor Perry as he introduces himself to a non-Texas constituency.

Five Crazy Things Rick Perry Thinks About The Constitution

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 15, 2011 at 9:50 am

Before Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) threw his hat into the presidential ring this weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was the uncontested leader in the race to be the top-tier GOP presidential contender with the deepest contempt for the Constitution. Perry’s entry into this race, however, leaves Bachmann eating his dust. Simply put, Gov. Rick Perry is one of the most radical constitutional thinkers to ascend to the national stage in nearly a century. A short list of Perry’s beliefs about the Constitution includes:

  • Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional: Perry believes that the Constitution forbids a “federally operated program of pensions” and “a federally operated program of health care,” a position that would not only eliminate Social Security and Medicare, but would also eliminate other health care programs such as Medicaid for the poor and SCHIP for children.
  • Federal environmental laws are unconstitutional “nonsense”: In an interview with Glenn Beck, Perry claimed that the idea that the federal government can require action to “clean our air is really nonsense.”
  • Bankrupting the federal government: In a recently published book, Perry writes that “[t]he American people mistakenly empowered the federal government during a fit of populist rage in the early twentieth century by giving it an unlimited source of income (the Sixteenth Amendment).” It’s no surprise that a contender for the GOP presidential nomination is anti-tax, but Perry’s blanket opposition to federal income taxes — which are authorized by the Sixteenth Amendment — would make it virtually impossible to fund Social Security, Medicare, or the U.S. military.
  • Democracy is a mistake: In the same book, Perry also opposes the Seventeenth Amendment, which requires senators to be chosen by an election and not by political insiders.
  • Texas may secede: Perhaps most infamously of all, Perry once suggested that if the federal government doesn’t do what he wants, Texas may have to secede from the union entirely.

After the House GOP voted almost unanimously to phase out Medicare, it should be obvious to all Americans that Republicans want to turn the nation into a far meaner and more draconian nation. Nevertheless, Perry’s emergency as a top-tier GOP presidential candidate opens a whole new chapter in the GOP’s war on children, seniors and working Americans. Perry would not simply ask Congress to repeal nearly all of the progress of the last 100 years, he insists that the Constitution will not allow programs like Medicare and Social Security even if the American people repeatedly and consistently vote for lawmakers that support these essential programs.

Justiceline: August 15, 2011

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 15, 2011 at 7:29 am

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice.

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