Just a brief note here. We’ve got domestic spying. We’ve got secret warrantless wiretaps, no court oversight. We’ve got the NSA puffed out like blowfish ready to explode their venemous spikes if we so much as try to find out the truth. We’ve got complicity from AT&T and other major carriers; companies that care so little for their customers they sell them out without so much as notice or explanation.

But it gets worse: we’ve got invisible laws. The argument from the government when suits are brought to try to force oversight of these secret programs? “We can’t tell you why, but trust us, it’s completely legal.” That in itself is either a lie, a crime, or both. There is a very good reason for transparency in government, for transparency in law. The reason? While “ignorance is not a defense” if the laws are visible, invisible laws are not .. well, lawful. If a police officer gave you a ticket for speeding, but didn’t indicate your speed, it would be in your interest to contest the ticket. If he got up on the stand in court and said “I can’t disclose the speed this person was ticketed for,” the ticket would be dropped. It is simply not compatible with a free and open society to have this sort of situation.

If you really have a justification for these spying programs, you need to get off your asses, into a FISA or other closed-hearing court, and outline your reasons there. Any judge that simply accepts the argument “we have reason, but we can’t say,” is not doing their job. Not by a long shot.

That is all.

Yesterday Alabama became the nineteenth state to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage at the state level. Meanwhile the proposed federal amendment has fizzled by a vote in the Senate.

All of this talk about the “defense of [straight-]marriage” is completely ludicrous. Let’s ponder the meaning of _defend_. Defend is to protect and relieve from attack. Do these statutes and amendments in any way “protect” or “relieve” straight-marriage? They do not. Do they protect the family? Children? Nothing of the sort.

What do they do? Almost nothing. Every state that has constitutionally banned same-sex marriage already had a statute that did the same thing. The claim is that “activist” judges could overturn the statutes through “activist” interpretation of the law. Is that no longer an option that these have become constitutional? Hardly. Judges are still responsible for interpreting the constitutional laws of states. When two or more parts of a constitution come into conflict with one another, the judge or judges then must examine the conflict, and make a ruling about which part of the law is more essential, is more entwined and necessary in the fabric of the law. Further to the point, a judge can still rule that accomodations have to be made for some other form of civil union, distinct but equal to marriage. Of course, federal law can also trump as well.

So, then, what do they do? They are nothing but a showboat. This is a dispicable parade of bigotry in which the people of a state can proudly march to their respective voting booths, and boldly proclaim, “I hate homosexuals.” That is all that is being done. Rather hypocritical when you consider the bulk of the impetus of these amendments comes from Christians. So much for “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” So much for faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

These that call themselves Christians are anything but. Charged with the task of cleaning up their messied room, they do nothing more than spit in their parents face and shove their toys hastily in a closet. They pat themselves on their backs saying “we are righteous, we have stood up to the ills of our messy room,” meanwhile they have soiled their pants and their Bibles. Welcome to Murka, indeed.