I was reading an article that Real Clear Politics had linked to from the New York Times. The article, which can be found here, was written by Maureen Dowd and asserts that the Supreme Court, “is run by hacks dressed up in black robes.” Her argument stems from three Supreme Court cases made since 2000; I will discuss just two. The first is the ObamaCare case heard last week by the High Court and attacks Associate Justice Scalia for acting more like a legislator than a judge. I guess it is ok for the President to say the Supreme Court has no authority to strike down Federal law but not ok for a Justice to attempt to understand what Congress was trying to do.  She makes light of the fact that many of the Conservative Justices likened the ACA with requiring Americans to buy broccoli. But as she doesn’t mention, the Liberal Justices likened the ACA with requiring all Americans to buy cars with a certain device for controlling emissions. The former example is more like the individual mandate because if Congress can require you to buy health insurance, what else can they make you do in the name of healthcare?

The second case, the one that bothered me the most in her attempts to showcase her ignorance, was Bush v. Gore (2000). This case was what cleared the way for then Governor George Bush to become the President of the United States. She argues, “the Republican majority put aside its professed disdain of judicial activism and helped to purloin the election for W.”  But apparently Ms. Dowd has never read the Supreme Court’s decision in that case. First of all, the Supreme Court called their decision a per curium decision, which indicates that it is nonbinding on jurisprudence or stare decisis. Secondly, the opinion states that if the recount had gone on it would have violated the Voting Rights Act as well as Article II, section 1, clause 4 of the United States Constitution. The Voting Rights Act assures all Americans of the right to vote and declares that every American of voting age is guaranteed of one person one vote. As is pointed out in the opinion, the various districts in Florida had separate procedures for how to go about recounting; particularly this was true of what constituted a vote. As a result, certain votes would have been counted in one district but not counted in another. This gross violation of the Voting Rights Act could only be remedied through an act of the Florida State Legisture, which leads to the second problem. Had Florida been permitted to do its recount under a new created procedure, it would have taken it past the date Congress has appointed as the date when the Electoral College meets to cast their ballots. Article II, Section 1, clause 4 gives Congress the authority to appoint a date when the Electoral College shall cast their ballots, Congress has selected the First Monday after the Second Wednesday of December. That is the reason why they were not permitted to continue their recount, the Court never mentioned who would become President.

In every instance Ms. Dowd not only ignores what the Supreme Court said and did but demonstrates she probably never actually read the transcript or the opinion.

No one should be totally surprised by tonight’s primaries in Mississippi and Alabama. Rick Santorum has turned up the heat in the last few months to make himself a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. However, Santorum is suffering from the same difficulties that Mitt Romney since the very beginning.

Santorum’s victories in tonight’s primaries are blunted by the fact that he only one Mississippi by a few percentage points over Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. In Alabama he did slightly better but it is still far from a convincing victory. What makes things worse for Santorum is not that he can’t win by an overwhelming majority, it is that the front-runner Mitt Romney is finishing so close to him. In the primaries that Santorum has won both tonight and on Super Tuesday, he has failed to win a winner take all contest, which means that he has shared his victories with Newt and Mitt. By doing so, he has not seen his delegate count rise in any significant way to beat out Mitt Romney for the lead. Instead, Romney will finish tonight with close to or over 500 delegates.  If Rick Santorum hopes to catch Romney he needs to find a way to defeat him in contests where Romney won’t share in the spoils.

However, the truth is Rick Santorum will continue with results like tonight’s until Newt Gingrich exits stage right from the campaign trail. Gingrich’s second place finishes in tonight’s contest have done far more to blunt Santorum’s victories than the fact that Romney finished relatively close to him. Santorum will continue to struggle to put any kind of dent in Romney’s lead as long as Newt Gingrich is able to steal away his votes. And while tonight was supposed to be Newt’s, the losses only go to show that Newt has become a spoiler and not a viable candidate for the Republican nomination.

What is worse is that Santorum’s victories in Mississippi and Alabama may mean nothing after results from the Hawaii and America Samoa caucuses come in. It has been in the South Pacific where Mitt Romney has done his best in recent contests with victories in America’s territories over the weekend. And while neither Hawaii nor America Samoa have large delegate counts, mixed with his share of the spoils from tonight’s mainland primaries, Romney could walk away with more delegates than Santorum after Tuesday’s contests.

This nomination may very well end in a brokered convention for the Republican party. But one thing is clear, until Santorum can win in a winner take all contest or Newt Gingrich ends his campaign, Mitt Romney will continue rack up the delegates he needs to reach the magical number or at least finish far enough in the lead to put a brokered convention in the bag.

As we are all very aware, the Presidential primary season is in full swing with less than a month before Super Tuesday and not very long before the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. For a while now I have been a major advocate for Mitt Romney as President of the United States and as I did back in 2008, I plan to make an effort to post about the Presidential election.

Why exactly should Republicans get behind Mitt Romney for the Presidency of the United States? Consider these four reasons for a minute…

Executive:

Mitt Romney is the only member of the Republican party currently running for the nomination as the Republican Presidential nominee with executive experience. Newt, Rick and Ron are all career legislators and as we have experienced over the last 3 years, legislators make for very poor Presidents. In fact, it is generally a good policy never to support someone who has never been a governor or served in some other executive level position in government. Mitt Romney’s record as the governor of Massachusetts may not be the most ideal but he is still more qualified to serve as President of the United States than the other three.

Electability:

Mitt Romney is electable. As the moderate candidate he is able to reach across party lines and won’t alienate the all too important independent crowd. It is important that the Republicans choose someone who can actually win. Ron Paul is probably the least likely to be elected simply because he is a polarizing character. Newt represents the establishment and has way too many skeletons in his closet to be a viable candidate against President Obama. That reminds me, people complain how much Romney and Obama appear to be the same person, but as long as Romney doesn’t govern like Obama it could b a good thing. Romney has to be able to make those who voted for Obama vote for him, as would any Republican candidate. They have to present an alternative view than what Obama will attempt to show during the General Election season.

Economics:

The General Election in November is most undoubtedly be about economics. Of the Republican candidates the one person who I trust when it comes to business and the economy is Mitt. If this election were about social issues or foreign affairs, then I would say let’s choose someone else. But unless something changes between now and the General Election, voters are going to the ballot box with the economy on their mind. Will Mitt Romney single-handedly change the economy? No, but as a business leader he knows what it will take to help rebound our economy.

Politics:

The one thing I hate when talking about Presidential politics is politics. The President of the United States should not be a political figure in the sense of having an agenda. Since day one President Obama has made his administration about his agenda. The President’s job is to enforce the bills passed by Congress and signed into law. His job is not to create legislation, that job function is for Congress. Therefore, the President’s own personal feelings are less important because he should be an impartial enforcer. Sure, the President has to sign bills into law and he should do so based on the constitutionality of the laws first and the appropriateness of the laws second. He should never hold it over the heads of Congressmen to pass a law he wants passed in order to get anything else done. If anything, the President should listen most of all to the will of the people. It is unfortunate that our view of the Presidency is that they are the representative of the people, because the President was always meant to be separated from the people. The only way the President can effectively do his job is if he is divorced from the passions of the people.

Below you will find a collection of quotes that I love:

“The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.”- John Adams

“One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.” State of Exception Giorgio Agamben

“A government of laws, and not of men.”- John Adams

“In politics the middle way is none at all. “- John Adams

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it is obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”-Publius Federalist Papers #51

“Beware of white knight’s people, they don’t slay dragons they train them to serve their own dark purposes.”-Smallville

“Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us”-Salvian

What is it that makes people believe that our food is dangerous for us? We live in an age when humans, in the First World, are living longer than we have ever lived before. Our societies are cleaner now than they have ever been. Yet there is an attack by those who promote a “healthier” lifestyle claiming that our way of life is dangerous. At the root of that dangerous dance? Food.

The way we preserve our food is in large part the reason for such a longer living. We no longer eat food that rots in a matter of days. People today can go to the grocery store once every two weeks rather than going daily as they did less than a century ago. Those preservatives have made it so our food lasts longer. Yet people are fitting the preservation of our food in hopes of returning to a period when food would last for less than a week. They’ll make the argument that the preservatives in our food are causing dangerous diseases. But is that true? Are diseases like cancer more common today than any other period in history? We may never know because we have a superior medical system than they had even 40 years go. We can tell that someone has cancer earlier than if that individual lived a half a century ago. Our food has nothing to do with the increase in diagnosis of diseases. Our food has helped create a healthier, longer lifestyle in humans than we have ever experienced in history.

Are certain preservatives dangerous? Yes, if they are consumed in large quantities over a long period of time. But then again, every thing we eat or drink can cause us harm whether it has preservatives or not. The real trick to a healthier lifestyle is watching what we eat, not eating those things that have always caused harm to humanity. We are a fatter nation not because of the way our food is produced, but by the fact that most Americans have a job that requires little or not physical activity over the course of the work week. When we get home from work we just sit in front of the TV. We cannot, and should not, believe in the hype by those who only want natural foods or who profess belief in the Vegetarian or Vegan lifestyles. If you want to see the benefit of natural foods, go to Africa and see all the diseases that are caused by natural foods. If you want to see the benefits of a meatless diet, see the studies that show people who only eat plants are receiving less of what they need nutrition wise than they belief.

That isn’t to say that natural foods are bad for us, but we must remember that eating foods that are only produce through “natural” methods can still be dangerous.  Natural foods can be good if we enforce strict regulations against the way natural foods are produced. If you buy a steak that is produced naturally, it will inevitably spoil faster than the preservative based steak. It could also mean that the cow that was raised in a all natural way was exposed to worst natural-based diseases that can be passed on to humans.

It also isn’t to say that all Vegetarians or Vegans are unhealthy. Those that go out of their way to make sure that they take supplements can in fact have a very healthy lifestyle- but our species was never meant to simply survive on plants.

Finally, some food for thought. Why is it that those who support a “healthier” lifestyle, those that believe that animals shouldn’t be genetically modified to make them healthier to eat, are supports for genetically modifying humans?

The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation
Chuck: The Complete Fifth Season [Blu-ray]

This series finale of Chuck was last Friday, January 27th, and I couldn’t help but come to the realization just how much Chuck has in common with Homer’s epic poem Odyssey. Written nearly 5,000 years ago, Odyssey was the first comedic work. Odyssey encompasses all the elements of what the Greeks considered a comedy: a fallen hero who rises up to obtain the beautiful woman. Chuck also contains all the elements of a traditional Greek comedy: Chuck is a fallen hero who, despite his foibles, rises up to obtain the beautiful woman.

The similarities don’t stop there as both Chuck and Odysseus (the hero of Odyssey) both are forced to undergo numerous trials and tribulations before they are able to reclaim what is rightfully theirs. Like Odysseus, Chuck encounters various obstacles in the way of women (Lou, Jill and Hannah) as well as a number of would be suitors for Sarah like Bryce and Shaw. The Odyssey comes to an end for Chuck when he and Sarah defeat Shaw at the end of Season 3.

However, they are thwarted from living their lives together as a result of their chosen careers (spies.) One might even assume that Odysseus and Penelope are thwarted by their attempts at normalcy by the fact that Odysseus is the King.

While it is a loose connection between the two, I think the creators of the show (Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak) were on the right path when they wrote this show. Homer’s Odyssey is an important piece of literature that is timeless and deserves the homage that writers pay when they base their stories on Homer’s.