America is a nation steeped in the rule of law that generally refers to the “
authority and influence of law in society;”
especially as a constraint on bad behavior, including behavior of
government officials. Americans would expect that elected
representatives responsible for creating laws would be well-versed in
the ultimate law of the land, the United States Constitution, but as the
past four years have revealed, repugicans are not only unaware of the
Constitution’s provisions for law, they are likely to distort and ignore
them when it suits their purpose. Advocates for the law and law
enforcement officials however, are well-aware of the law as part of
their professional standards, and they consistently adhere to legal
statutes to ensure justice protects the people according to the
Constitution.
On Friday, amidst the manhunt for one of the suspected Boston
marathon bombers, Senator Lindsey Graham displayed total disregard for
the Constitution and suggested the Obama Administration hold the alleged
bomber as an “
enemy combatant for intelligence gathering purposes” and implied that law enforcement should avoid reading the “
Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to remain silent.”
One expected, and witnessed, that type of comment from ignorant wingnuts who immediately decided the suspect was an Middle Eastern
radical fresh off the boat from Afghanistan, but Graham is a United
States Senator, a trained lawyer, a colonel in the Air Force reserve,
and a member of the legal arm of the U.S. Air Force’s Judge Advocate
General’s Corps; Graham also swore to support and uphold the U.S.
Constitution.
Although the Constitution does not cite it explicitly, presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the
5th,
6th, and
14th
amendments, and the Miranda warning requirement is an established
Constitutional precedent. What Graham suggested before knowing any facts
ignored that the alleged bomber is a United States citizen and was
apprehended on United States soil, but Graham proffered the same advice
in 2011 when he
said,
“an American citizen on our soil who collaborates with the enemy has
committed an act of war and will be held under the law of war, not
domestic criminal law.” At the time Graham suggested ignoring the
Constitution, there was no proof the suspect collaborated with “the
enemy” to support depriving him of his basic Constitutional rights as a
U.S. citizen. However, there were intimations that the young suspect was
a Muslim and for repugicans, that was enough to deprive him of his
constitutional rights, and suggest scuttling debate on comprehensive
immigration reform. It was more bad news from repugicans who blocked a
gun safety measure that may prevent a repeat of the events in Boston
this week.
On Wednesday, Senate repugicans and four blue dogs shot down a bill
to expand background checks for prospective firearm purchases on orders
from National Rifle Association leader Wayne La Pierre. The repugicans
served the NRA dutifully for decades, and their unwillingness to protect
Americans now, and in the past, certainly made it easier for the
alleged bombers to engage in gunfights with law enforcement and detonate
improvised explosive devices at the Boston marathon. With repugican
support, the NRA successfully created an environment that made access to
firearms easier for the alleged bombers, and
tracing the gunpowder used in “pressure cooker” bombs and homemade hand grenades impossible.
With repugican assistance, the NRA lobbied, and defeated inclusion
of a substance called a taggant in black and smokeless gunpowder used to
identify the manufacturer and chain of custody that was not available
to law enforcement after 3 people were killed and more than 170 were
wounded. Identification taggants are microscopically color-coded
particles that,
if added
to gun powders during their manufacture, would facilitate tracing those
products after a bombing back to the manufacturer and through mandatory
(but non-existent) distribution records through wholesaler and dealer
to the original purchaser according to a 1999 NRA
report. Not only did the NRA block inclusion of taggants, but recently they
opposed a proposal of Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg requiring “
sales of explosive powder be subject to a background check,”
especially large amounts necessary to create pressure cooker bombs. The
suspects used gunpowder in homemade grenades against law enforcement
officers during the gun battle that took the life of one suspect and
wounded a police officer that repugicans have assailed for the past two
years with their persistent public sector cutbacks and assault on union
labor.
If repugicans had their way, the government-funded and unionized law
enforcement professionals, FBI, and ATF officers would have been
shorthanded due to the repugican cabal’s two year anti-government budget cuts. The
alleged bombing suspects were identified, tracked down, and eventually
stopped because of the professionalism and dedication of
government-funded police officers, FBI, and ATF agents and not because
armed civilians stood their ground according to ALEC and NRA wisdom. In
fact, if nothing else, the events of the past week demonstrated how
dangerous repugicans are to the nation, and how desperately needed more
government funding is to maintain the safety and well-being of the
people. For example, the repugican assault on the U.S. Postal Service
and unionized workforce, if successful, would prevent the careful
screening that caught ricin-laced letters to President Obama, repugican
Senator Roger Wicker, and another government official.
This has been a horrible week for America on several counts, but
maybe it exposed the danger inherent in allowing repugicans to run the
government. Their vote to kill background checks assures the next
disturbed American citizen who wants to bomb citizens and engage in
running gun battles with law enforcement officers will have little
problem securing firearms and untraceable gunpowder for improvised
explosive devices, and their assumption that Muslims orchestrated the
marathon bombing all but assures immigration reform is finished before
it started. But what is most troubling is Graham’s willingness to
abandon the Constitution’s legal protections within days of defending
gun-zealots Constitutional rights that informs the Constitution is a
document of convenience for repugicans who are the real existential
threat to America, and with dangerous budget cuts thinning law
enforcement and Justice department ranks, there is nothing to protect
innocent Americans from the nation’s real enemies; the repugican cabal.
Ancient
tales of vampires later split into two modern mythic characters:
vampires and zombies. Movies characterize vampires and zombies as quite
different, yet tales from history tell of vampires with characteristics
of both: basically undead formerly-human monsters who want to eat
humans. An article at the Verge compares the nonfiction book Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus and the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War to show how the real disease rabies led to the vampire myth. 
A 26-year-old man in Oregon found out the hard way that you're
not supposed to text during jury duty:
