Archive for 2010
A rest and work break
As you may have noticed, I have taken a break from the weekly column. I am catching up on life and working on a new book about my thirty some years in emergency medicine – a collection of stories about life. But, the column will return, hopefully by February.
Reclaiming the Constitution – Part V
In 1804, the United States Supreme Court claimed absolute control over the Constitution, declaring only it could decide the Constitution’s meaning and neither the president nor Congress could overrule it. More than 100 years later, through sheer intimidation, President Franklin Roosevelt got the Supreme Court to use this control to give Congress powers not in […]
Unlimited power – Part IV
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.” – W. C. Fields Though I hope this quote refers to the following Supreme Court rulings, some might suggest it better refers to my assessment of the rulings. After giving Congress the power to do whatever it determined was for the “general Welfare of […]
Unlimited power – Part III
Since ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the Supreme Court has found a constitutional answer to every case brought before it. Doesn’t it seem unlikely that a document prepared in the 1700s could address all issues for more than two hundred years? We currently have nine justices, none elected by the people, all […]
The beginning of the end – Part II
Three Supreme Court rulings changed our lives, making our Constitution near irrelevant. One gave the Supreme Court unlimited, unchecked power; the other two gave Congress unlimited power. The first ruling created the concept of judicial review, which is the claimed power by the Supreme Court to have the final voice in all issues concerning the […]
The path to socialism – Part I
“We do not have socialism. We have regulated capitalism.” – ISJ reader comment Is that true? Is it all or none? Or is the path to socialism a process so slow that each individual step is logical, masking the eventual outcome and encouraging inattention and indifference until it’s too late? More important, if we are […]
Socialism by force
“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher Former Prime Minister, Great Britain Failing to learn, our government continues unabated towards socialism, convinced it knows best, the Constitution obviously outdated, the people’s wishes obviously wrong. In the 1960s, two radical socialist professors from Columbia University, Richard Andrew […]
Going home
For several months, I have been spending some time working in an emergency department in a suburb of Omaha, Nebraska; a few weeks ago taking a day off and driving 210 miles to the small town where I was born a little over 60 years ago, Holdrege, Nebraska. It was 52 years ago that we […]
Spoiled, dependent, entitled, indentured, enslaved
Are spoiled children born that way? According to British writer Roald Dahl, “Some children are spoiled and it is not their fault, it is their parents.” Spoiled children have parents who give them everything they want instead of teaching them to earn what they want, instead of teaching them responsibility and independence. Quite simply, parents […]
“Things”
In the movie “Parenthood,” the family’s grandmother offered advice to her son who was distraught; he quit his job and his wife was pregnant. Of life she said, “You know, it was just so interesting to me that the roller coaster could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so excited and so thrilled […]
Is the Arizona law a burden?
Those opposed to Arizona’s illegal alien law praised Judge Susan Bolton’s ruling against it as a victory for immigration rights. Really? What did the Arizona law have to do with immigration rights? Wasn’t it about illegal aliens? In fact, according to the USA Today, many illegal aliens were so worried about the law that they […]
Lead, follow or get out of the way
General George S. Patton said, “Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.” Mr. President, are you listening? We are nearing the end of the president’s second year in office and, as he promised, things have changed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the question is not if things have changed, but have they […]
Rape-rape?
Whoopi Goldberg said of producer Roman Polanski and his rape conviction of the 13-year-old girl he drugged and sodomized, “It wasn’t rape-rape. It was something else but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.” Have our values so deteriorated that we no longer recognize rape? Polanski is a free man, living in Europe where the cultures […]
Where are you from?
The other day a friend and I were talking about immigration. He immigrated to the United States, is an American citizen but never refers to himself as a something-American, a hyphenated-American; he is just an American. My great-grandfather emigrated from Prussia in 1852. And like my friend, I don’t consider myself a Prussian-American; I am […]
Subject or citizen?
“Oh posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it.” – John Adams, second U.S. president American statesman Dean Alfange, born in Istanbul in 1899, reflected the values of an American citizen when he wrote, “I do not choose […]
Sanctuary cities and Arizona
Among the limited powers of the federal government are matters of immigration and border security. However, the government seems unable to carry out these constitutional responsibilities, seemingly incapable of doing what the Constitution mandates. The federal government has ignored illegal aliens for decades, President’s Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower the only presidents who seriously tried to […]
Constitutional coup
” . . . the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny.” – Edward Gibbon, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” Are we witnessing a non-violent coup of the United States Constitution, methodically carried out by the United States Supreme Court? Has the Court placed itself above […]
McChrystal, Obama, their values
General McChrystal was publically disrespectful to a superior officer, the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Graciously, the president allowed him to resign rather than fire him. But, recall the history of General McChrystal’s command in Afghanistan. The president selected him for this command and defined the mission. To the […]
‘Misbehavior before the enemy’
The president applauds the latest United Nations sanctions against Iran, saying they are the “toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government.” Did he not hear Ahmadinejad describe them as “a used handkerchief that should be thrown in the waste bin?” Did he not hear him call the sanctions “pesky flies?” Is the president the […]
Football and government
The federal government could learn a lot from professional football – teams competing with each other, each team doing all it can to win, referees ensuring they follow the rules, together part of a league whose owners have the final say on the rules and how the league works. Our league is the United States […]