Grey Matters

I’ve got news for web site and software developers out there: “Login” is not a verb. Here are some other compound words that are not verbs:

• pickup
• sitdown
• walkout
• backup
• standin
• setup
• bailout
• moveover
• throwup
• checkout
• kickoff
• et cetera

To be sure, many compound words, including some of those above, have perfectly legitimate uses as nouns or adjectives, but you can’t just tack a preposition onto a verb and treat the result as a verb.

Correct: “I’m going to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home.“

Not correct: “I’m going to pickup a gallon of milk on the way home.“

Correct: “Would you stand in for Joan?“

Not correct: “Would you standin for Joan?”

Some people will tell you that “login” is an intransitive verb (a verb that has no object). I believe that “login” is not a verb, intransitive or otherwise, because it fails the conjugation test. Conjugation was probably touched upon, albeit briefly, during your first twelve years of education. If you studied any foreign languages (for me, that would be something other than English) then you probably learned to conjugate in another language as well.

Conjugation is safe to do at home and I encourage you all to try a little experimental conjugation whenever the urge to use “login” as a verb strikes. Let’s start with a real intransitive verb: “die” — die, dying, died.

• “John will die.”
• “John is dying.”
• “John died.”

Sounds right, yes? Now let’s try it with “login” — login, loginning, loginned.

• “John will login.”
• “John is loginning.”
• “John loginned.”

If “login” were a real verb, it would not sound silly to say: “John is loginning.” You don’t need to be an English major to know that John is logging in, not loginning. The verb is “log” and “in” is just a preposition.

Which is not to say that “login” (though I prefer the hyphenated version) doesn’t have valid uses: “Frank forgot his login (log-in) password.” “Login” makes a fine adjective, but it is not a verb.

So all you web developers out there, please don’t tell me that I must “login” to your site. I’ll log in, thank you. And change all those “Login” buttons on forms to “Log In” buttons, OK?

Oh, and please don’t make me go through all this again explaining that “logout” is not a verb.

“Researchers” upon whose “findings” firearms policy is often based, have been lying to us for decades. I came across an interesting blog entry. The author calls it A Brief History of Firearms Policy Fraud. A short quote:

“… I described this pattern as “fraud” before the jump because the magnitude of these errors would be too great and their direction too consistent for honest error, even if we did not in several prominent cases have direct evidence that the fraud must have been intended.

“A further and very disturbing pattern is that conventional academic peer review has largely failed to point out errors that were later readily apparent to uncredentialed amateurs.”

There have been many, many studies on guns and crime. Most of them “cherry-pick” the data to get the results they set out to find. They intentionally ignore factors that would tend to skew results away from the desired outcome. They set out to make a point and — surprise! — they get it.

To this day, the best research on guns and crime, controlled for some 5000 variables, accounting for every county in the USA over a period of 11 years (not ‘cherry-picked’ data) is “More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws” by John R. Lott Jr. It proves a definite link between gun control and crime and that it is a cause-and-effect relationship. That is, where the most gun control exists, crime is highest. In areas with the fewest restrictions on gun possession and carrying, crime is lowest. Now you might be tempted to say: “Sure, when crime goes up, gun control is imposed. Of course there’s a correlation!” But that’s not the way it works. 

Time and again, where gun rights are restricted, increases in violent crime follow. Policy-makers then respond with more restrictions. Despite common sense and evidence to the contrary, they fervently believe that guns cause crime and that if they could just rid us of guns, those gang members and drug dealers, rapists and robbers would find honest work and go straight. As if.

The reason these frauds are able to get away with it is that so many people want it to be so. After all, if guns cause crime, then we can do something about crime. But if crime in fact results from a complex mish-mash of socio-economic and cultural factors, it become much harder to deal with. So, policy makers want, very much, to believe that guns cause crime.

Firearms policy (‘gun control’) is one of those curious areas where the people who know the least about guns seem to wield the most influence. Many anti-gun crusaders proudly state that they have never even held a gun, much less fired one and they certainly wouldn’t own one. 

Then there are the hypocrites that own guns themselves, even have concealed carry permits, but think that you and I shouldn’t have guns. It’s a class thing; the lower classes can’t be trusted with guns. They’ll just use them to rob and kill upper-class citizens, respectable folk like themselves.

In my years as a gun rights activist, one thing I’ve noticed is that the anti-rights folks are quicker to resort to violence than are we gun nuts. The arm-chair psychologist in me says these folks are projecting their own poor impulse control into the rest of the population.

This is why they are constantly predicting “blood in the streets” and saying that “every traffic altercation will turn into a shooting, if people are allowed to be armed.” When concealed carry legislation is proposed, they can be counted on to predict gunfights on every street corner, and they are regularly proved wrong (and are doubtless disappointed) when concealed carry is implemented and there is no resulting crime wave.

Strangely, the fact that they are time and again proved wrong does not make them reexamine their beliefs. Instead, they commission a study to prove that guns cause crime and, to no one’s surprise, the data chosen support their hypothesis. How ’bout that!

The presidential election just past was all about the economy, nothing else. The Iraq war, the Afghan war, terrorism — these were all but forgotten by most voters once the economy nosedived. But despite the economy (or because of it) John McCain could nonetheless have won. Unfortunately, he was too busy being John McCain.

John McCain, you see, is a “maverick” (which means he’s not like other Republicans, i.e., he’s like a Democrat). Others think of him as a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only. John McCain is essentially a Democrat, in thought and action, and that prevented him from understanding what happened to the economy.

Democrats (the real ones, including Obama) managed to blame the financial sector meltdown on Bush, the Republicans, the free market and deregulation — none of which are guilty. 

By virtue of his Democrat world-view, McCain was unable to connect the dots between actions of the Federal Government (FedGov) and the housing market collapse. Lest we forget, it was the failure of huge numbers of sub-prime mortgage loans that initiated the world-wide financial crisis. And the sub-prime mortgage snafu was caused by FedGov — when it was run by Democrats. This was not a mess of the Republicans’ making. The fuse was lit during the Clinton years and this disaster-in-the-making was inherited by the Bush Administration. 

A real Republican would have pointed out that policies instituted by a Democrat-controlled congress and by the Clinton administration were the real culprits. A real Republican, who understood that it was interference with the free market that caused the collapse, would have placed blame for the world-wide financial meltdown right where it belonged. Sure, McCain tried to distance himself from Bush, but what was needed was to distance Bush from this Democrat-created financial meltdown. 

But McCain jumped right on the Wall-Street-is-evil bandwagon right along with the Democrats. All he had to do was place blame for the ruined economy where it belonged. He failed to do so because he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it because he’s a maverick — a RINO — just another Democrat. Democrats will never understand that tampering with the free market always leads to trouble. 

This election was all about the economy. McCain could have won in a landslide if he hadn’t been a maverick.

On the morning after the election of Barack Obama, NBC TV coverage of the election noted: “Barack Obama won despite his race, not because of it.” I beg to differ.

A Washington Post-ABC News national poll puts black support of Obama at 95%. In 2008, blacks made up 13% of voters, up from 2004’s 11%. Barack Obama won the popular vote 52 to 46 percent, a difference of just 6%. The support of black voters made all the difference. 

Now suppose the black vote had been split 50-50 between McCain and Obama — or 60 for Obama and 40 for McCain. Forty percent of the black vote — forty percent of the 13 percent — is 5.2% of the popular vote. So, if 40% of blacks had voted for McCain, Barack would have had 5.2% less of the popular vote and McCain, 5.2% more. Instead of a 52/46 Obama/McCain split, it would have been a 46.8/51.2 split. 

If just 25% of blacks had voted for McCain, the split would have been 48.75% for Obama and 49.25% of the popular vote for McCain. Of course, that’s just the popular vote. I don’t have the resources to analyze, on a state by state basis, what the effect might have been on the electoral vote, but you can bet that the black vote made the difference between winning and losing some states. 

Of course, if Obama had been white (which I believe he is) a majority of black voters still would have voted for him just because he’s a Democrat. [I’ve never really understood why blacks eschew the party of Lincoln in favor of the party of, well, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd and the like.] 

Also (and this is strictly opinion) if Obama had been white, I don’t think he’d ever have won the nomination. Imagine, a first-term senator with no executive experience, no noteworthy legislative successes. Who would even consider such a person as presidential material?

When, in 2004, he addressed the Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois legislator, do you think he’d have had that opportunity if he’d been white? Really? I think he got that invitation because he was an up-and-coming black politician to watch. Without that national attention, he may not have even won his U.S. Senate seat. He had just two years of experience in the U.S. Senate before announcing his presidential candidacy. It’s hard to imagine anyone backing such an inexperienced candidate if he were white. 

Given a percentage of voters who voted for Obama because they believed it was “time for a black president,” you’ll never convince me that Obama was elected “despite his race, not because of it.”

The Short Version

Barack Obama will avoid appointing Supreme Court justices who believe in the letter of the Constitution. He prefers justices who will give it a more expansive interpretation, giving government more powers. Obama believes that rights have to be in the Constitution for you to have that right. (He couldn’t be more wrong.)

The Long Version

Part of an NBC TV news interview with Barack Obama aired on the nightly news On October 30th. Once again, Obama demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the Constitution. The right to “privacy” was brought up. (In Democrat-talk, “privacy” means the right to an abortion.) While admitting that the right to privacy is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, he believes that it’s still in there

The interviewer, Brian Williams, knowing that Obama supports abortion rights, asked Obama how he would go about ensuring that any Justices he appointed to the Supreme Court would not turn out to be “surprises” as was Justice Brennan to Preseident Eisenhower and Justice Souter was to President George H.W. Bush (the first President Bush). In effect, Brian Williams asked: Without using a “litmus test,” how to you ensure that any justices you appoint will uphold abortion rights?

Obama answered thusly: “Right. Well, look. I think that you, what you can ask a judge is about their judicial philosophy. Um, and as somebody who taught constitutional law for ten years and who actually knows a lot of potential candidates for Supreme Court on the right as well as on the left, ’cause I’ve taught with them or interacted with them in some way, uh, I can tell you that, uh, how a justice approaches their job, uh, how they describe the task of interpreting the Constitution, I think can tell you a lot. Uh, and so my criteria, for example, would be, if a justice tells me that they only believe in the strict letter of the Constitution, uh, that means that they probably don’t mean, uh, believe in a right to privacy that may not be perfectly enumerated in the Constitution but, you know, that I think is there. I mean, the right to marry who you please isn’t in the Constitution. But I think all of us assume that if a state, uh, decided to pass a law saying: ‘Brian, you can’t marry the woman you love,’ that you’d think that was unconstitutional. Well, where does that come from?”

“I think it comes from a right to privacy, uh, that may not be listed in the Constitution but is implied by the structure of the Constitution, so I can have that conversation with a judge. Now, uh, [stammers], a conservative who was listening to me right then says, ‘See,’ you know, he wants to allow the court to legislate. Now, 99% of cases, the Constitution is actually gonna be clear. Ninety-nine percent of the cases, a statute or congressional intent is gonna be clear.“

“But there’s gonna be one percent, less than one percent of real, hard cases — Second Amendment last term is a great example — where the language of the Second Amendment is not perfectly clear. I believe that the Second Amendment is actually an individual right, I think that’s the better interpretation. You can make the other argument. Uh, and so, I can have those kinds of discussions with a justice without getting to the particulars of, uh, is Roe versus Wade, as currently outlined, exactly what you believe or do you agree that the D.C. gun law, uh, should have been overturned, and I think that Senator McCain, if he ends up being the nominee could have those same conversations as well.“

Oh, wow. There is so much about the Constitution that Barack Obama — constitutional scholar though he may be — does not understand. The first is that rights do not come from the Constitution.

In The Beginning

In the beginning, before the Constitution, the states and the people had all the rights. The Constitution — created by the states — did just two things:

1. It created the federal government (what I shall refer to as FedGov) and
2. It set forth the rules for running FedGov.

That’s it. The Constitution is just a set of rules for running FedGov. Articles 1 through 3 set forth the rules for the legislative, executive and judicial branches, respectively. Now, the states, in making these rules, delegated certain of their powers to FedGov. States could no longer coin money, for example, or impose import/export duties on goods imported from or exported to other states. Other powers were retained by the states — NOT delegated to FedGov. Any state powers not specifically delegated to FedGov were kept by the states.

The particular powers delegated to FedGov (to the legislative branch) are listed in Article 1, Section 8 and are limited. Depending on how you count, it may be 18-20 powers enumerated in just 430 words. FedGov’s powers are limited; they are listed right in the Constitution. So where do “rights” and particularly “Constitutional rights” come from?

“Constitutional rights” should really be called “constitutionally protected rights.” The Constitution did not confer these rights, but it does explicitly protect some rights — rights deemed so very important that some of the nation’s founders wanted them explicitly enumerated just so there’d be no misunderstanding. This is where the Bill Of Rights (BOR) comes in.

Now, remember that the people already had freedom of religion, a free press and freedom of speech. They had these before the Constitution and the Constitution did not grant FedGov the power to interfere with those rights. So people retained these rights even after the Constitution was adopted. The optimists among the founders felt these rights were safe because FedGov’s powers are limited to those expressly granted in the Constitution, right? That was enough for some founders but others, more skeptical of the new federal government being created, foresaw a time when FedGov might try to overstep its Constitutionally imposed limits.

As a condition for ratifying the new Constitution, these founders — distrustful of a central government — wanted certain rights of the people explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Hence, the BOR was created. The BOR consists of the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

And so, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Note that the rights enumerated in the first amendment are assumed to exist already and the Congress is prohibited from making any law abridging these pre-existing rights. So, for example, freedom of religion is not a right granted by the Constitution, but it is expressly protected by the Constitution. Note too that the First Amendment is just another rule: “Congress shall make no law…”

So what about the right to privacy? Again, before the Constitution, people all had a right to privacy. FedGov may interfere with our right to privacy only insofar as it is empowered to do so by Article 1, Section 8.

While it’s true that some rights are specifically enumerated in the Constitution (in the BOR), you also have rights that are not listed in the Constitution. These include the right to marry whom you will, to sing in the shower, to bungee jump and to see animal shapes in the clouds while standing on your head. You have rights — lots of them — and FedGov may interfere with those rights only to the extent that they are empowered by the Constitution to do so. How do I know this? The Constitution tells me so.

You see, while some founders worried and insisted that specific rights actually be included in the Constitution, others worried that, if you list some rights, then FedGov may eventually decide that the listed rights are your only rights. So, if we were to have a BOR, listing some rights explicitly, the BOR had to include the Ninth Amendment which says: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Got it? Just because some rights are listed, that doesn’t take away all the rights that are not listed.

While the Ninth Amendment pertains to rights of the people, the Tenth Amendment does the same for the states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” So, any state power that was not delegated by the states to FedGov, and which power is not prohibited by the Constitution, well, those powers still belong to the states and to the people.

The only way you don’t have a right to do something is if FedGov has been specifically empowered by the Constitution to limit that right. 

Now that we have laid this out, let’s review Obama’s theory about a “right to privacy” and what he should have said. Obama thinks that a right to privacy is implied by the structure of the Constitution. But we know better. Anyone who “gets it” would have said: “A right to privacy existed before the Constitution and FedGov may not interfere with it except as empowered by the Constitution to do so.”

Clearly, Obama thinks that rights come from the Constitution, that’s why he feels compelled to find a right to privacy implied by its structure. Does he similarly believe that we enjoy freedom of speech only because the First Amendment says so? Clearly Obama does not understand the Constitution at all.

People like Obama, who think that rights come from the Constitution like, that model — that you only have the rights listed in the Constitution. Why? Because the fewer rights you have, the more power FedGov has. And people like Obama like big, powerful government so they can solve all of society’s problems. It just wouldn’t do to have citizens all doing their own things, exercising rights willy-nilly. It makes them too hard to manage. We’re more manageable when our options are limited.

He says he will avoid appointing justices who believe in “the strict letter of the Constitution.” He says that this is because such justices won’t see in the Constitution all the rights he believe are in there. But the Constitution, as we know, does not confer rights. The Constitution is rules for government. And what Obama really wants to avoid is justices who do not see in the Constitution all the powers that FedGov has assumed without having been delegated those powers by the states — powers reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment but which have been usurped by FedGov over the years.

The Supreme Court has been instrumental in FedGov’s relentless power grab, finding each new power that FedGov usurps to be constitutional. It does this by means of increasingly expansive interpretations of the Constitution. The last thing Obama wants is a “strict constructionist” who believe that the Constitution granted limited powers to FedGov.

While he says he wants justices who will see lots of rights in the Constitution, what he really wants is justices who will see lots of delegated powers in the Constitution — which is pretty much the opposite of citizens’ or states’ rights.

Note too that Obama claims that it is conservatives who want want “to allow the court to legislate.” Baloney! It is the liberal justices who somehow manage to find each new power grabbed by FedGov to be granted by the Constitution, thus not merely legislating from the bench, but amending the Constitution from the bench. No need to amend the Constitution when you can just re-interpret it to mean what you want. By finding in the Constitution all the powers that FedGov has seized from the states, the Supreme Court has been a willing accomplice in FedGov’s ceaseless expansion of power.

Barack Obama likes the “living” Constitution rather than the “original intent” version. The latter limits FedGov’s powers too much for Obama’s grandiose socialist plans.