An American on Planet Earth

Thursday, 19 March 2009 09:08 Last Updated on Thursday, 19 March 2009 09:18 Lisa Jain Thompson

Fairfax, VA, USA. I am not a Republican or a Democrat, a Liberal or a Conservative, a Believer or a Non-Believer, nor am I White, Brown, Black, Red, Yellow, Pink or Green. I am an American, a bipedal primate living on the Northern Continent in the Western Hemisphere of a small blue planet we have named Earth [N1]: all other classifications pale before this fact.

I am the product of the 230 year old American Revolution and the six to seven million years of primate evolution that separate Homo Sapiens from our closest living relatives the chimpanzees. [N2] An American, one among many equals, born with the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. [N3]

I believe that all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. [N4]

{sidebar id=288}If anyone would restrict the rights of my sisters and brothers, so too do they restrict me. As my fellow women and men are free, so I am. It runs in my bloodline. [N5]

Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.

- James MadisonI am a product of both eastering and westering impulses and I am here to stay. [N6] I do not take kindly to people telling me how to run my life or those who may judge me based on their personal, self-defining moralities and I have not ever suffered fools lightly. [N7]

I have learned restraint, however, and I seldom attack any more without significant provocation, [N8] preferring, most times, to use this column as an educational tool, including many times when I choose humor and parody as the means of making my point. Today I appear to be in discussion mode.

My country, and the world, is teetering on the edge of economic collapse. The dogs of war are straining at their leash as uncertain leaders look to use nationalism and jingoism to distract their citizens.

The Congress of the United States is little better, deflecting questions about the finance laws they themselves wrote and pass with verbal assaults against the various economic engines that are failing. Congress having written the laws now persecutes companies that followed the laws congress wrote. There is more than enough sin for everyone without the political grandstanding and populist sound bytes for the nightly news.

Republicans pretend they didn’t support the new economic laws, although they were actively complicit in their refusal to actively address the problems of the last administration. Now they oppose everything, hoping to gain some political advantage: the country and the economy can wait until after the mid-term elections.

Democrats pretend they did not know the mortgage law they themselves wrote would produce risky and ultimately bad paper. They denounce Wall Street for giving contracted bonuses to their Employees while failing to remember that it was the Democrats who insisted that the economic bill include a phrase prohibiting the breaking of contracts by companies receiving stimulus money so that no union contracts would be voided.

Wall Street fails to admit to being driven by outright avarice and greed, giving no indication that they care one whit for the country that protects them or the people who trust their money to them. Profit is all.

A pox on all of them.

Senators and congressmen shove themselves in front of television cameras making loud noises assaulting capitalism and business, large and small. Their latest kite scheme is to impose a 100% tax, after the fact, on any bonuses awarded executives of companies receiving stimulus money. Apparently none of them have actually read the U. S. Constitution, the one they wrap themselves in at every opportunity.

A Bill of Attainder is a legislative act of a legislature (e.g., the Senate and the House) that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial. The proposed House and Senate legislation that retroactively imposes 100% taxes on contracted bonuses awarded Wall Street executives would be an example of such a Bill of Attainder.

Although such an act may play well back home with angry voters, there is has one rather serious inherent flaw: the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 provides that

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.

Oops.

Perhaps I am reading this wrong. What does James Madison say?

Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. ... The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community.

James Madison, Federalist Number 44, 1788.

But hey, Madison is an old news. He is white and dead and historically short. What does he know?

Got anything current?

How about U. S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965):

The Bill of Attainder Clause was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative exercise of the judicial function or more simply - trial by legislature.

Are you sure of that?

These clauses of the Constitution are not of the broad, general nature of the Due Process Clause, but refer to rather precise legal terms which had a meaning under English law at the time the Constitution was adopted. A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment.

William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166, U. S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 440 (1965).

If the law is that clear, why is the House and Senate suddenly clamoring for, righteously demanding passage of a Bill of Attainder?

The same reason they all refuse, every last one of them, to admit any culpability in our current economic situations: both houses need to divert attention from themselves and place the blame on others. Re-election is everything as is their belief that if they keep talking loud enough and fast enough and long enough, the American People will never notice who the real culprits are.

Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, passed the laws that set up an economic situation that encouraged banks and brokerages to not only pass bad paper but be rewarded for it.

Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, sat and watched as the economy grew unbounded by rational restraints and sound principles.

Congress, every last one of them, eventually grows fat and rich while ignoring the fact that there is a fire burning uncontrollably in the heart of Rome.

And, in the end, after all they have said and done, they would rather we not notice that they are the ones still holding the matches.

Notes[N1] For the majority of human existence, we called our planet simple The World, as if ours was the only one in the universe, and identified ourselves most often as The People, excluding the possibility of all others.

[N2] Pan paniscus (Bonobo chimpanzee) and Pan troglodytes (the common chimpanzee). I would argue that they should be more properly classified as Homo pan pansicus and Homo pan troglodytes (and will be once we overcome our own sapiens-centric self-importance .

[N3] United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

[N4] Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776.

[N5] At this point, an admixture of multiple ethnicities, skin colors, and genetic mingling.

[N6] At least until I can book passage to the Moon or Mars or some Lagrange Point space station is take permanent resident applications.

[N7] You can ask my teachers, my supervisors, my religious instructors, etc. Probably even the nun who taught me in Kindergarten.

[N8] Minor provocations, such as flat earthers or those who believe the earth was created in the recent past, I merely express disdain and perhaps ridicule at their failure to understand either the scientific method or the physical reality of the universe they live in.

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