Letter To the Editor

I'm posting a complete copy of a letter I just sent in the last five minutes to the Des Moines Register. Since they habitually edit reader letters, and there is a very small chance that my comments will be posted anyway, I will post the letter here. Comment at will, I appreciate the feedback.



I have on more than one occasion sent a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register related to the “right to keep and bear arms”. On one of those occasions I received a personal reply from Mr. Richard Doak in which he argued his wacky (albeit the standard liberal position) case that the Second Amendment was strictly limited to the militia and was not an individual right. So when Heller vs. DC was released this week, I made a special effort to see what the Register had to say about this decision.
Now if only a nobody like Justice Antonin Scalia were the only person in the history to argue that the Second Amendment was an individual right, then Mr. Doak and his ilk might have an argument. But when noted liberals like Laurance Tribe who called the Second Amendment "a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes." [Tribe, American Constitutional Law, Vol. 1, pp. 901-902 (2000)] . And Alan Dershowitz stated “"Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.”. On the other hand the position that Mr. Doak takes is that championed by that noted Constitutional lawyer Rosie O'Donnell, who argued on her show on numerous occasions including one with Tom Selleck that the Second Amendment is not an individual right.
So lets see, on one side we have Justice Antonin Scalia, four other member of the Supreme Court, Alan Dershowitz, Laurance Tribe and millions of American gun owners, on the other we have Mr. Richard Doak, Rosie O'Donnell and thousands of Constitutionally illiterate liberals, unable to read the clear meaning of the language of the Second Amendment. I quote from Justice Scalia's opinion, “

Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people”

in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble

(“We the people”), §2 of Article I (providing that “the peo-

ple” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth

Amendment (providing that those powers not given the

Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the

people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people”

acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or

reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the

Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer

to anything other than an individual right.6
”

So what is clear to millions of us, is unclear to a few, who would argue that the right to free speech is an individual right, then turn around in the next breath and argue that the Amendment following is not. Clearly the Register and Mr. Doak don't like the ruling in Heller vs DC. The question you need to ask yourself is, do I hate guns so much, that I would ignore the clear meaning of the Constitution to limit the Right to Keep and Bear Arms? Mr. Doak and the Register answer the question in the affirmative.
One more thing, Mr. Doak's explanation that the State of Iowa does not have an equivalent to the Second Amendment is well, laughable. Sir, with all due respect, there are certain “self evident truths” which the writers of the Constitution both at the Federal level and here in Iowa assumed were so clear to the people that it was unnecessary to elaborate. I highly doubt that the founders could imagine a day when newspapers and other public institutions would attempt to describe the “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” as anything other than an individual right. They were wrong of course, because we have not only sunk to the depths of attempting to pervert that right, we now have a culture which would attempt to equate the meaning of the word marriage with the deviant acts of the sexually confused. I've got to believe that if the writers of the Iowa Constitution thought that someday Iowans would be told that the “right to keep and bear arms” was anything other than an individual right they would have included something like the Second Amendment in the Iowa Constitution, and furthermore I think if they had even considered the possibility that the citizens of Iowa would be forced by a judge to accept as “a right” the ability of sodomites to get “married” they would have written into the Constitution wording making that idea impossible. Come to think of it, I think a majority of the citizens of Iowa would vote for such a Constitutional Amendment today.

Come on Down to the Farm

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A Much Better Post with Pictures

This is an attempt to repost an earlier post with the pictures included this time. I'm home sick with a terrible sinus cold, and called the internet provider to complain about my slow service, suddenly it's much better. I don't know what happened, but now every thing works.

So on Father's Day evening, a quick summary in pictures of the last few weeks.

We got a new puppy for the kids. Yellow lab and mountain cur. Name is Buck.





Here is a shot of the lovely Mrs. farmer and Buck.





As you may have heard, we have been blessed with a great deal of water lately.
Here is a view of the local grocery store last Sunday evening. The water got up to the second shelf. Bags of softener salt apparently make inferior quality sandbags.


And yesterday I drove down to SW Iowa to my former stomping grounds and brought home my motorcycle. It's a 1981 Yamaha SECA 750. Needs some TlC. A new tail light, turn signal, throttle cable and a front tire.


I think this may actually work.

More later.

A Debate

It sprinkled a little bit, the manure pit was empty and I've already put in 12 hours, so I have time to post something. I also completed replacing the head gasket and water pump on a car for a cousin of mine. He's a college student, short of funds, and the local shop wanted about $1500 dollars to fix it, I put about $410 dollars in parts, gaskets and had the head planed and a valve job done on it. They drove it away yesterday, hopefully it lasts him a while. So one of the projects that has been consuming my time is gone down the road. PTL

Today the Jan Mickelson Show on 1040 WHO Radio out of Des Moines IA, held a debate between Dr. Hector Avalos (an atheist) a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and Dr. Richard Weikart author of "From Darwin to Hitler : Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism".

You can download the podcast here, http://www.mickelson.libsyn.com/


I was amused with Avalos's argument, which amounts to little more than claiming that Hitler never actually mentioned Darwin, so therefore there is no connection between the two.

If you have read here before you should remember that Avalos was one of the principles responsible for denying Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez tenure at ISU. Both Gonzalez and Weikart appear in Expelled which I reviewed earlier.

BTW, If you have not seen Expelled yet, go do it now. It is worth your time and money.

Punished with a Baby

I have been very busy lately, very busy, and I am also having computer issues. So I have not been posting or even reading much which would give me topics to bring up here.

In a week or two I have some farming pictures, and I have several things of interest running through my head, but for the time being I simply don't have the time to post anything.

I did read this post over at Animate Matters the other day and asked Wes for permission to post it here. I've made in clear that I don't like John McMark-o-cain at all, but this does not mean I have latched onto the Magic Negro. This dude is evil personified. Wes did an excellent job of describing the depths of depravity that Barak Hussein represents. So thanks to Wes for letting me post his thoughts here, Well said Wes.






Brokeback Osama made this comment during a town hall meeting in Johnstown, PA on March 29, 2008. He was discussing the dangers of AIDS:

"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education – which should include abstinence education and teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

“But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

That final line is one of the most vomitous statements I’ve heard gush from a politician’s mouth. It tells you everything you need to know about Osama’s moral center, which is a black hole (no pun intended).

The last I checked, be-bopping into the car’s backseat with your boyfriend so he can demonstrate the suspension’s springiness isn’t a “mistake.” “Hooking up” after the all-night kegger, while your parents think you’re sleeping over at Molly’s house isn’t an “oops” moment. The sexual act is just that—an act. And a conscious one, to boot. It requires forethought and effort. I’m so tired of the deconstruction of language. Deliberate acts are mistakes, and mistakes are intentional acts. Uh-huh. Babies don’t mysteriously fall out of the sky and land in teenage girls’ stomachs; there is no stork flapping overhead, waiting to bomb teen twits with screaming infants: I don’t care what mommy told you when you were five. Personal responsibility lies in the same grave as the T-rex and the dodo, it seems. A mistake is tripping over my own feet, as I make my way to the bathroom in the dark, in the middle of the night. Or mashing my thumb with a hammer as I drive a stake into Hillary’s cold, shriveled heart. Those are legitimate and unintentional errors. Getting it on after the prom because it’s the “in” thing to do extends somewhat beyond the category of “Yikes! Didn’t mean to do that!”

As for Osama’s perverse definition of punishment, babies are punishments in the same sense that strawberries are dire consequences for the vines from which they sprang. Is the logical outcome of your actions a punishment? Calling his statement asinine is unfair to asinine idiots everywhere. God isn’t sitting up in Heaven on a cloud, saying: “I smite thee, oh Betsy Jones, with a howling infant of your own.” That’s not how it works. Rather, God created a biological mechanism by which children are brought into this world. It’s called “procreation.” Look it up. I understand that the sex act isn’t just about producing children, but it’s inextricably intertwined with the pleasure aspects. If you don’t understand this simple, demonstrable fact, I have three words for you: keep it zipped. And pray that someday, someone will come along and help you with your rectal-cranium-insertion problem.

What Osama really means is this: “If my daughters reach puberty and do something stupid and irresponsible, I don’t think they should suffer the consequences of their actions—even if this means an innocent child loses his life. Instead, I think they should live in an artificial world that exists nowhere outside our house, where actions have no reactions, and causes have no effects.”

How’s that for family values?