The Next Constitutional Crisis Has Arrived ... Did You Notice?

The Nation has faced constitutional crises before.  It faces another now.  The President of the United States has taken a course under which the Executive will predominate over the Legislative and Judicial. 

The last serious constitutional crisis occurred when FDR threatened to "pack the Court," as a means of changing the outcome of the Supreme Court's decisions on the socialist recovery programs pushed by FDR and enacted by Congress.  There, the Court may well have decided deliberately to give ground rather than allow FDR to destroy the Court.  In any event, once FDR's plan was made known, the Court suddenly found a new philosophy of judicial decision-making that gave it the way to approve previously unconstitutional legislative approaches.

In the current crisis, Obama has donned a crown, and feigns -- perhaps believes himself to be -- a king.  He ignores the Constitution.  He has done this by appointing persons required by law to be approved by Congress using his recess appointment power.  But three federal courts have all held that the recess appointment power is narrow, and only allows such appointments in very limited circumstances, none of which obtain in the case of Obama's illegal appointments.  On top of that, having been adjudged unlawful appointments, the National Labor Relations Board has continued to conduct its business as though it had a quorum to do business and authority. 

King Obama then decides, without statutory authority to do so, that the employer mandate will not be enforced for a year following its effective date, essentially rendering that provision nugatory.  His Majesty then announced that he would VETO legislation authorizing him to suspend the employer mandate if Congress passed it.  Thus, the King asserts an Executive power to suspend the effect of laws -- doing so unlawfully as a renegade -- and directly rejects the curative enactment that Congress offers.

Now, Prince Eric of DOJ (the Attorney General of the United States), undoubtedly in service of King Barry's will, has decided that he will enforce a law struck down by the United States Supreme Court, a section of the Voting Rights Act.  At the end of the recent Court Term, the Supreme Court issued a decision in a case and, as part of its ruling, struck down part of the Voting Rights Act requiring States to obtain pre-clearance from the Department of Justice or a court for changes to laws affecting the exercise of the elective franchise.  AFTER the decision, Prince Eric the Holder has announced that he will force Texas to comply with the judicially invalidated law.

Our Nation's path is marked with moments that were freighted with tension, danger to national unity, and searing disharmony.  How the States, the People, and the federal government manage those moments frames our futures.  Just as Dred Scott framed the Civil War.  Just as the Civil War and Lincoln's assassination framed the Reconstruction.  Just as the Court packing plan framed our national dalliance with socialism.

So how will we frame our future in response to King Obama and Prince Eric's threatening hegemony?

An Octaroon's Take on the Zimmerman Verdict and Aftermath

My great grandfather's birth certificate is conspicuously marked with the letter "N."

If you follow the math, my great grandfather being black means, without more, that I am one-eighth black.  In the days of race classification laws and miscegenation statutes, I would be categorized as an octaroon.  I like that.  Jim Henderson, octaroon.

Now if you have met me, you may be surprised at that categorization.  At some points in my life, I have been the whitest white guy I knew.  As I have grown, and as the various coconuts have dropped from the family tree, I was already comfortable with my Native American ancestry (Cherokee, and, perhaps, some Ojibwa).  So discovering my bloodlines lead back to Africa just was not bound to bother me too much.

Now, in the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, whose mother is Hispanic and whose father was Caucasian, we are forced to come front and center with America's most famous doubloon, Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama.  (Zimmerman can only qualify as America's most infamous doubloon because of his divided Caucasian and Hispanic heritage.)  As we know from reading Obama's autobiography (technically it is a biography since it was written by his friend), he is a doubloon, like Zimmerman, but his ancestry divides between Caucasian and African.

At the front end of the Zimmerman affair, we had our noses rubbed in the mess that is Doubloon Obama, when he allowed as how, if he had a son, he would resemble Trayvon Martin, the young man killed by Zimmerman following the affray started by Martin.  No.  Actually, Obama, he would have resembled his own mom and dad, not the self-aggrandizing and pompous buffoon living inside your clothing.  A family had just lost its son.  Another family was facing the real possibility of the personal destruction of their son via a race baiting media and a publicity craving prosecution.  All that Obama could think to say was that a son springing from his loins would resemble a dead child.  It's always about the Obamas, don't you see.

Now we've had our noses rubbed in the Obama mess post-verdict.  Could the President of the United States take the time to call for calm, to speak of the abiding respect with which Americans view the jury trial system as a means of finding the closest proximation of truth in any fact dispute?  No.  He was too busy playing the race card with a gathering of sorority sistahs.

Did the jury get the decision right?

Well, they had weeks of evidence, hours of argument by attorneys, mounds of instruction from a judge.  The attorneys did not claim that the instructions given were wrong.  The prosecuting attorney has not said a word, not one peep, about the outcome being prejudiced due to judicial error or the exclusion of evidence (a claim that could not be countenanced by reality, since the court gave the prosecution most everything it wanted, and was seen by numerous observers to be bending over backward to assist the prosecution in making its case).

I guess we will never know what happened in those fateful moments, except through the fractured lenses of various individuals.  Zimmerman did not testify but there was a recorded police interview.  Rachelle Jeantel did not record her conversations with Trayvon, but she did recall them during testimony.  There is no doubt that Zimmerman's gun, in Zimmerman's hand, ended Martin's life.  The only doubt that ever existed is whether Zimmerman was justified in shooting Martin.

We can know, though, that Obama's legacy in the racial healing department will not be as it was anticipated five years ago it would be.  True, we elected the first president with African blood in his veins.  One might say, at least since his autobiography was written for him, that we elected the first president that identified with the black race.  (We should be careful not to go overboard in calling Obama a black president since he is, by the same measure, a white President.  He is, in fact, America's first doubloon President.)  And though white America's voted for Obama in numbers that show expiation for all race guilt arising out of the Nation's history of slavery, Jim Crow, and racialization, we seem further apart and striated by race than during the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Democratic Walruses, Republican Carpenters, and Sheeple Oysters

As I watch Disney's 1951 classic, Alice in Wonderland, I cannot avoid the clear parallel between the Walrus and the Carpenter, and our two party system.  We sit in our oyster beds, living our lives, getting along as best we can. 

Along comes the oafish pair, the Walrus and the Carpenter.  We are, in turn, teased into the parade following them along, straight into the Carpenter's makeshift seafood house.  The only question is are we eaten alive by the Walrus, or by the Carpenter?

The Walrus and the Carpenter, Modestly Updated:


The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Voters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Voter looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Voter winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the voter-bed.

But four young Voters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Voters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Voters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Voters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Voters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Voters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Voters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.