It's Reggie Time!

In honor of the Fourth of July Weekend, I yield my blog today to Reg Henry. He is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Disapatch. He has an interesting take on 2nd Amendment (right to bear arms) and fireworks for Independence Day. He is a humorous guy that I have featured on my blog before. Enjoy!

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Why Fireworks are a Constitutional Right

By Reg Henry

With patriotism at high ebb around the Fourth of July, and the Second Amendment with perfect timing having been confirmed as an individual right to own guns, I believe it is the hour when we the people must assert our ancient right to keep and bear fireworks.

It makes no sense to me that Americans can have all sorts of guns, which they can use to shoot unsuspecting deer and suspecting burglars, yet many of them cannot let off an honest Roman candle or eardrum-assaulting firecracker as a sign of their American exuberance.

As if connected to their history by a long burning fuse, the American people have always loved to blow things up (just ask anyone in Iraq). The history of this continent can be considered as a series of detonations.

What is the first tune a child hears? Yes, "The Star-Spangled Banner," with the words that thrill the American soul: "The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air."

Some may quibble that this refers to artillery but that misses the point. Clearly, Francis Scott Key was much impressed with the pyrotechnic aspects of the spectacle and would have surely asked his British captors to play the 1812 Overture as an accompaniment if only Tchaikovsky had been born. As it was, some historians believe he called for a folding chair and a few beers.

Yet what have we come to in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Thanks to a web of restrictive state and municipal laws, some of us can only salute our freedom with a sparkler in our hand. Did Patrick Henry (no relation) say: "Give me liberty or give me a sparkler"? He did not, which is why I believe now is the time to shoot a rocket up the rear quarters of the frowning establishment who would protect us from our own considerable folly.

Oh, yes, firecrackers are dangerous all right. Any idiot can blow his fingers off -- and many idiots do. But many idiots also shoot themselves or others, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, because they are idiots. Thanks to the Supreme Court, their idiocy is of a superior nature now because it is rooted in the exercising of an individual constitutional right. If only fireworks lovers could reach the constitutional skies with their bottle rockets!

Those who would keep and bear fireworks are being discriminated against. It is dreadfully unfair that young people should have to put a whiff of eau de gunpowder behind their ears to make themselves attractive in the hopes of marrying into the famous Zambelli fireworks family just so they can have the thrill of singeing their eyebrows.

It is absurd that laws in some places restrict fireworks sales for in-state residents but not visitors. People in Pennsylvania, for example, should not have to pretend to be from Ohio -- donning Cleveland Browns jerseys and assuming the familiar hang-dog look -- just to buy something combustible.

But this being America, a remedy is at hand. We can sue. Hurrah for us! Other benighted peoples do not have access to so many attorneys.

Better still, the Supreme Court stands ready to find a new individual right with some nifty reasoning that explains away any pesky words to the contrary, such as "well-regulated" and "militia," as it did in the historic Second Amendment case from Washington, D.C., last month.

Those particular words don't mean a darn thing now, because Justice Antonin Scalia said so in his majority opinion -- and never mind what the people of the District of Columbia wanted. (Kiddies, can you say: "Activist judge"?)

Why, James Madison, the amendment's author, would have been better off deleting them in the first place. He should have written something about fireworks while the ink was still on his quill.

Not to worry. If Justice Scalia and his fun-loving colleagues on the bench can discard as irrelevant some words in an amendment, they can certainly find new meanings in words already at hand elsewhere in the Bill of Rights.

I refer your attention to the Ninth Amendment, henceforth to be known as the Firecracker Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Given the rolling thunderclaps of firecrackers since colonial times, this right of the people to blow up themselves and various mailboxes cannot be denied.

A firework in a tube is not so functionally different than what the founders called a musket. If the court recognizes this, I believe we can add another verse to our national anthem: "Boom, boom, out goes the light (of common sense)."

Privilege: Bush v. Clinton

From time to time, I submit here something from the mind of Reg Henry. Mr. Henry is a columnist from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

He usually has something interesting to say - a new spin on things. I don't agree with him all the time, but I respect is voice enough to listen. He is usually not too political, but he made an exception this time. Like a lot of us, I have Bush fatigue. It sounds like Mr. Henry does as well.

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REG HENRY: The president is one privileged executive

Given the popularity of lawyers - who rank with weasels, used-car salesmen and journalists in the public's esteem - the great furor over the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys is the season's political surprise.
An impartial observer might conclude that it lacked the necessary ingredient to seriously threaten the president - that ingredient being sex.

Why, if only a blue dress were somehow involved, perhaps the president could be impeached, because in America making incompetent war and lying about it is not an impeachable offense, but making indiscreet love (sort of) and lying about it is.

But instead of dirty laundry, which the American people understand better, everyone is left to ponder the proper etiquette for firing political appointees for political purposes - specifically, why it is right to do so at some times but not others.

Still, the controversy does have legs, giving Democrats in Congress something to do in the periods when they are not making their sadly doomed efforts to stop the aforementioned war in Iraq.

To be sure, the fuss over the federal prosecutors has provided some jolly moments for those Americans with a sense of humor.

For example, there was President Bush, who has always jumped to the strings of his partisan puppeteers, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, calling on Democrats to "drop the partisanship."

In another note of levity, various conservatives have been defending the president because Bill Clinton did the same thing (sort of) - the same fellow who in their view is the devil. "Bush can do it because the devil did it" is a humiliating argument, however you cut it.

(I am not crazy about Clinton myself, but I don't think he is actually the Horned One - Horny One, maybe. If the number 666 applies to him at all, it is merely the innocent sum of the number of cheeseburgers he eats in a year. I note with concern that Al Gore, his former vice president whom I continue to admire, has apparently eaten his share. He now looks every inch the candidate, as a foreign newspaper wittily remarked.)

With subpoenas to White House aides threatening, what is more interesting than the exact throw-weight of the scandal is the core principle that Bush defends - executive privilege.

Unfortunately, most Americans don't understand this important concept at all. The Bush administration, which has promoted an expansive notion of executive privilege, defines it this way: We are the executive and we are privileged and you are not. Elections have consequences, except when Democrats win them.

Well, it's hard to argue with that. With great patience and magnanimity, Bush has told the unprivileged that he will allow relevant committee members on a bipartisan basis to interview key members of his staff. He will also provide all relevant documents and e-mails related to the firings. What he resists is the notion that his staff be subpoenaed and have to testify under oath as if they were mere servants of the American people.

I have to admit that Bush is completely right about this. It would be far better if restive members of Congress came to the White House for a nice chat, perhaps a cup of coffee and a cookie and be sent on their way with a hearty laugh and all the relevant facts presented to them.

One problem with sworn testimony is that they love the Bible in the White House, as you know, and the idea that perspiring aides might have to put their hands on it and take an oath risks making the Bible indecently soiled with grubby handprints.

Worse yet than the issue of cleanliness, those swearing on the Bible must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is ridiculous. How in the world can any government function if it doesn't have the freedom to lie?

And why start telling the truth now at this late stage? Pity poor Dick Cheney, who has made an art form of the untruth. Indeed, his main medical problem is not his heart or blood clots in his leg but the various Pinocchio-dectomies that his doctors must perform on his nose on a regular basis. He is supposed to tell the truth, too?

It is positively un-American to think that this most patriotic of American administrations would now get in the business of truth-telling. Besides, it has already been established in the law that a president can only be forced to testify under oath in a civil case involving hanky-panky, a theory that surely extends to his aides.

Possible obstruction of justice is not hanky-panky. Not in George Bush's America.

Warming Up to the Science

As life would have it, I have been exposed to a lot of global warming talk lately. News stories, conversations and recently, Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" has made its way into my presence. I really didn't think too much of the global warming stuff before. It wasn't that I denied the problem, I just was too busy to think about it much. Life or God or Al Gore decided lately that I wasn't too busy to think about it afterall.

With this backdrop, I discovered Reg Henry's column this week. If you are reader of this blog, you may remember me printing one of his articles in the past ("Interesting Take on Do-gooders"). He has an interesting way of making a point.

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Why global warming should be flatly denied

by Reg Henry of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette

Do you know what bugs me? The fact that the liberal media always refuse to print the opposite side of controversies due to political bias. Consider the state of our planet.

Many scientists have come out with a completely one-sided report that pretends everybody is in agreement with their theory which is based not on science but political motives. The way they tell it, you would think that no controversy exists at all.

That is garbage. Brave, knowledgeable voices are raised in dissent but scientific snobs and know-it-alls in the media ignore them. With their superior noses raised in the air, they deny what common sense tells us all every day -- that the world is flat.

Have they ever looked up at the moon? It's a great flat dish in the sky. A cow couldn't jump over it if it were a globe -- its width would mean it would straddle the moon and get its udder snagged. The smallest child knows this.

Don't tell me that Christopher Columbus proved that the world is round. He just proved that the Italians are wonderful people. It wasn't because it was flat that he didn't fall off the Earth -- America was still on the flat part, that's all.

Don't tell me about satellites. The government censors the pictures of the real underside of the Earth, which is all dirt, rocks and roots and looks like the site for a coming Wal-Mart, which, of course, it may be.

Only Thomas Friedman of The New York Times dared to speak the truth in his famous book "The World Is Flat." Thank you, Tommy. Even if your America-hating bosses at the Times despise you for your courage, we flat-earthers applaud you!

But get this: A bunch of kooks in white jackets recently released another report that said our flat Earth is the subject of "global warming," which, of course, is nonsense because our Earth is not a globe. It may be a little warmer overall on our flat planet but climate change goes in cycles because the weather was invented by the Almighty to give people something to talk about.

The report was issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is supposed to impress us. Now, if this panel were headquartered in a spot called Bob's Barber Shop and bore its name -- Bob's Hair and Global Emissions Cut -- it might impress us a whole lot more because such gathering places are populated by real people who know a thing or two about life and perhaps even studied chemistry in high school.

Instead, we have to defer to "experts." I don't know about you but I hate "experts." I hate them because they know so much and have so much darn expertise.

I find that "experts" are better avoided. If a doctor should tell me that I am overweight and should go on a diet and quit drinking, well, I merely tell him to write me a prescription for a cheeseburger and a cold one because what does he know with all his years spent in medical school? It's my body and I know better than any doctor, just as I know better about my planet than any climatologist.

Fortunately, the report came out in the middle of our current cold spell, which gave every cartoonist a cartoon about global warming in the deep freeze. How we all laughed! Of course, if the report had come out earlier last month, when it was so warm the buds were coming out, it wouldn't have seemed so hilarious.

Fortunately, our nation's talk show hosts have raised their voices on behalf of the people's right not to believe in "experts."

Who would any sensible ordinary person believe? A talk show host or a couple of thousand climate change scientists from 113 countries? A talk show host or the best scientific minds in the world? Hmmm. It's a hard one!

Why, a talk show host, of course! Just the other day, Rush Limbaugh observed that "there's very little science associated with all this ... it's all politics."

It's a shame more of us in the print media haven't told our readers that these scientists are all socialists who want us to eat granola for breakfast and melt down our guns and cars to make giant thermometers. We don't have to look at climate data; we just have to know that pointy heads are saying something that fans our prejudices and gets our knees a-jerking.

Hurrah for us! Pass the sunscreen and, if on the coast, the inflatable life vest and let us contemplate this goodly flat frame, the Earth.