Different River

”You can never step in the same river twice.” –Heraclitus

Congratulations to bloggers FrankJ at IMAO and SarahK at Mountaineer Musings, who are getting married! (Yes, too each other… No, I don’t know if they met through blogging, but it looks that way from Frank’s post.)

UPDATE:

They did meet through blogging … but not the way you might think. (Well, not the way I would have thought anyway, having met my wife through an e-mail discussion list back in the dark ages of the internet long before there was such as thing as a blog, or even a web site.)

It’s a great story. You can see the whole thing — the parts they want ot make public, anyway — detailed here. This being a blog, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom and then read the posts from the bottom up. Here’s the first post.

Why is it that the same federal judiciary that finds constitutional rights to abortion and contraception in the “penumbras, formed by emanations” of the search and seizure clause of the fourth amendment, could not find the necessity in a statue requiring a de novo finding of fact for a temporary restraining order to keep someone alive long enough for their de novo finding to have any meaning?

The state of Maine is considering a 7% tax on legal guns and ammunition to pay for courthouse security. The reason?

[G]un control advocates like Bill Harwood of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence saw a clear connection between gun owners and courthouse security. He said that gun owners contribute to the need for more court security, so they should help pay to keep firearms out of the courthouses.

Let me see if I understand this: People who buy guns legally (and thus can be taxed) “contribute to the need for more court security” to keep out criminals, who buy their guns illegally (and thus cannot be taxed). The connection seems to be that legal gunowners have guns, and criminals also have guns, so let’s tax the legal gunowners to pay for the costs caused by criminals.

Does this make sense to any of you? If so, how about we tax ski caps, since criminals use them in holdups. In fact, bank robbers probably buy their ski caps legally, and own them legally, so the connection is even stronger!

Of course, this was also justified on the basis of the courthouse shooting in Atlanta earlier this month. But in that case, the shooter got the gun by overpowering a sheriff’s deputy who was guarding him. So, perhaps it would be a better idea to tax sheriff’s deputies, since they “contribute to the need for more court security” far more than legal gun owners who rarely have business in court.

One guy caught the guys who stole his credit card numbers and actually had them arrested. Great job!

UPDATE: They were released already, with a court date next month on misdemeanor charges.

A question: Why is it that in the case of Terri Schiavo, the federal courts can’t overrule the Florida courts, but in the case of Elián González, they could — and did — overrule the Florida courts?

Furthermore, why it is that when the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government could not seize Elián González, they could do it anyway, but when that same 1th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government could not protect Terri Schiavo, they can’t?

It is reported that after first refusing, Michael Schiavo allowed Terri to receive communion on Easter, and on March 18:

The Rev. Thaddeus Malanowski said he gave Schiavo wine but could not give her a fleck of communion bread because her tongue was dry.
… Schiavo last received both sacraments on March 18, just before her feeding tube was removed.

Apparently, on March 18, since she was hydrated, her tounge was not dry, and she was able to receive the bread.

And apparently, she swallowed it. So why it is that she “can’t survive” without “artificial life support”?

Because, with these two exceptions, the judge has prohibited her from taking food and water by natural means, i.e., by mouth.

In other words, she can’t survive without the feeding tube because the judge has ordered no feeding without the tube, and the judge has also ordered the removal of the feeding tube because he’s decided she wouldn’t want to live with a feeding tube.

Frankly, I can’t see why the judge could not have made all these same orders for someone who was not brain-damaged. In other words, it could be you. Someone ties you to a bed, sedates you so you can’t talk, puts in a feeding tube, and then goes to Judge Greer and gets an order to pull it. I know this isn’t what happened to Terri — she actually had a brain-damaging incident first — but from a strictly legal standpoint, was that step required?

If you know otherwise, please explain in the comments.