Category Archives: Politics

Knots in My Stomach

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Thanks Rusty for finding the Electoral-Vote.com website, something I’d forgotten about from the 2004 election. The data is in a bit of a confusing layout… Disregard the 2004 map and the first little table. He then has a comprehensive list of polls state-by-state.

My eyes are on Clinton:Obama. And I seriously have knots in my stomach here. Clinton is winning by at least 10% in most places. Arizona is 44% to 14%. In his home state of Illinois, Obama’s winning 37% to 33%.

The good news! Iowa, a key state, is slightly favoring Obama. But really, it’s a crapshoot: Obama, Edwards, and Clinton are neck-and-neck. Romney and Huckabee lead the Republican primary. At this point in time, though, my main concern is on the Democratic primary.

Here in New Hampshire, Obama’s trailing, 26% to 38%. This is not good. We’re #2 after Ohio.

Oklahoma’s weird. Obama’s got 13%, with Clinton and Edwards tied at 29%. (Don’t get me wrong: Edwards is good, but I don’t think he has a chance right now.)

The Republican one is interesting to take a gander at, too. In some places, Huckabee’s an also-ran. In Arizona, he got 3% of the votes. Once. In Iowa, he inches past Romney to take first place at 28%. Surprisingly (to me, at least), he’s doing the exact same thing in New Hampshire. With a quick skim (admittedly, much less than I’ve afforded the Democratic primary), it looks like Giuliani is king of the Republican race.

But a few thoughts:

  • I think the odds of Edwards winning the primary are slim. But he carries a substantial margin in some places. If he were to drop out and endorse Obama, the impact would be considerable. I worry that most of his fans would support Hillary, though.
  • I think we need to review the statistics after the Iowa caucus (January 3) and the New Hampshire primary (January 8). Everyone’s watching these, and the results will have a big impact. A strong lead by Obama may pull out some undecideds. Or, a strong lead by Clinton may freak out some people who will vote for Obama just to vote against her. (While I’d back her if she were our nominee, she is not my preferred Democrat, if you can tell.)
  • My super-early-money is on Clinton vs. Giuliani. And this concerns me greatly, because people voting on first impressions will probably favor Rudy without really doing a lot of research. (It also concerns me because I don’t particularly like either of them.)
  • The Republicans are getting weird results: Giuliani wins some places, Romney wins some places, McCain’s got a few wins (probably the least), and Huckabee, who I initially thought was the Kucinich of the Republicans, is actually leading in quite a few places. I’m really not sure who’s going to get their nomination.
  • As we saw in 2004, polls can be flaky. (I twice typed “pols” instead of “polls.” Freudian slip?) So this doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

One-sentence conclusion: It’s too soon to really have any idea how things will go, but Clinton has a discomforting majority in many states.

A few parting thoughts:

  • Read up on the Iowa caucus process if you’re not familiar. It’s quite foreign, really.
    • Apparently, only once in history (or once in five, put differently: an important distinction!) has the Straw Poll winner not matched the Iowa caucus winner. And this year’s Straw Poll winner was Romney. Both Giuliani and McCain screwed everything up by blowing the event off, and thus polled very poorly. I don’t know what this means: this might still tick off Iowa voters, tanking Giuliani in Caucus as well. But it also means that the data is probably skewed away from them right now, and if Iowa voters don’t have a vengeance, they may take votes away from Romney.
  • The Iowa Caucus is less than two weeks away, and the NH primary is less than three. Pay more attention to the statistics then.
  • Vote!

Catholic Voters’ Guide

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The Diocese of Manchester passed out a voters’ guide. As previously mentioned, this immediately worried me.

It begins with a disclaimer that they don’t endorse any candidate, party, or PAC, but outlines seven issues. (Bold captions are their headings, the rest of the text is my commentary on it, unless quoted, in which case it’s quoted from the aforementioned publication.)

The Right to Life and the Dignity of the Human Person.

Of course this covers abortion, but they also include “destruction of human embryos for research,” an “intrinsic evil.” (Of course, one’s “dignity” is the exact terminology used by proponents of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to promote one’s right to euthanasia when they’re in pain and near death, so it’s an ironic wording choice.)

Curiously, they add “This teaching also compels us as Catholics to oppose genocide, torture, unjust war…”

Of course, I oppose genocide and torture. The “unjust war” bit is interesting: I can think of only one thing that they might be referring to, but I don’t know if they’d be so vague if that’s what they meant.

Call to Family, Community, and Participation

It starts off that family, “based on marriage between a man and a woman” (of course they’d add this), is fundamentally important. While I’m not sure why the families have to be between a man and a woman, I’m also not sure what this one is trying to say. It basically just talks at length about how policies should work on supporting families, their needs, and “the common good.” (Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is universal health care.)

Rights and Responsibilities

They start off with right to life (anti- abortion and death penalty), but then add “Each of us has a right to religious freedom”–obviously the church isn’t going to oppose this, but I’m a bit proud that they’re eager to support peoples’ rights to not be Catholic, too. And then they add that we all have the right to “those things required for human decency–food and shelter, education and employment, health care and housing.” (Emphasis mine.)

Option [sic] for the Poor and Vulnerable

Amen!

Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

They call for a living wage and “opportunities for legal status for immigrant workers,” which seems to amount to tacit support for affording humane treatment to illegal immigrants.

Solidarity

I’m going to quote this one verbatim because it’s so well-done: “We are one human family, whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. Our Catholic commitment to solidarity requires that we pursue justice, eliminate racism, end human trafficking, protect human rights, seek peace, and avoid the use of force except as a necessary last resort.”

Care for God’s Creation

“God’s Creation” is then implicitly defined as the Earth.

All in all, I’m left with a positive note. One thing that drives me mad is when people try to use the church to justify atrocities. The “moral majority” often seem to be the same ones advocating killing illegal immigrants as they cross the border, torturing suspected terrorists, opposing health care, and fighting living wages. I wish they’d come to their senses about same-sex marriage, but I really can’t fault them on abortion, which is a much trickier issue. I thought I’d be outraged by this guide, but, in actuality, it seems to support many of the things I support, and, for the most part, does so very tactfully in a way that still requires that people think for themselves.

Saving the Auto Industry

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My whole family drives Toyotas. We love America and all, but we want good, solid cars. The U.S. is, understandably, concerned about how much oil we’re using. So we’re trying for a requirement that, by 2020, all cars sold get 35mpg at a minimum. Of course, the car companies are complaining that this is going to be incredibly difficult to do.

Two comments:

  • This is utter BS. My mom gets 50 mpg with her Prius. Honda did it in 1987.
  • Why does the government need to get involved? The way I think it should be working is that we say, “$3 a gallon for gas is ridiculous! I want a car that gets better gas mileage!” We stop buying cars that get horrible gas mileage, and, consequentially, Detroit stops making cars that get horrible gas mileage because no one is buying them. It costs me $40 every time I fill up. I wince every single time.

I found this video online. I’m not going to lie: it’s dry, and 20 minutes long. I was kind of proud to follow him most of the time as he talks about internal rates of returns and demand pull and the like. He makes some extremely obscure references, and even now, I’m not sure what he was talking about with oil at $12 a barrel.

And yet, despite it being presented in a technical, academic manner to an audience that’s definitely not normal people, he makes some points that are really, really, really worth hearing. One of the simplest ones: efficient cars are going to be made, the question is who’s going to make them. And, at least right now, it’s not us. (And it really boggles my mind, frankly. Ford makes one hybrid: the Ford Escape Hybrid. 34mpg on an SUV is impressive (I get 20-22). But what the heck market are they appealing to? They manage to completely dilute the effects of a hybrid engine by putting it in an SUV.)

GM developed a “concept car” 16 years ago that, as I recall, got close to 100 miles a gallon. Where is it?

Besides oil, another huge problem we’re facing is a ridiculously huge trade deficit. If we could make cars good enough that we wouldn’t have to keep importing cars, we could certainly help.

He presents some amazing statistics, too. 87% of the energy from fuel used in cars is utterly wasted. Only 6% of the total energy actually moves the car. (And when you figure in that the car weights significantly more than the passengers and luggage, he says that less than 1% actually moves the passengers.)

He says the solution is to lighten the car. I cringed for a minute. Lighter cars, especially on today’s roads, are asking for disaster. You can go drive your 500 pound car, and I’m sorry if I kill you when you crash into my SUV.

But it turns out that this is somewhat wrong. He showed a picture of a McLaren SLR (a $400,000+ car) that was made out of carbon fiber. It’s very light. Some idiot T-boned the car. Their car was totaled. The McLaren driver had to buff out a scratch in the paint. He suggested that, if you were to smash the car head-first into a brick wall, about 25 pounds of carbon fiber is all it would take to absorb the impact and let you walk away unharmed.

He goes on to call heavy cars “hostile cars,” and really, he’s got an excellent point. We’re making heavy cars solely for safety with other cars. But we can increase fuel efficiency, maintain (or increase!) driver safety, and decrease risk to other motorists by simply changing materials.

Oh, and one final point he makes that I thought was interesting: we think of OPEC as a cartel that has tons of power. In actuality, our power of demand far outweighs their supplier power, and we have the power in the equation. Except that we can’t stop buying oil. Years ago we saw a lull in demand, and basically gave OPEC the bird. He suggests doing it again.

I didn’t expect to watch the whole video, which is 20 minutes long. But before I knew it I was done. And it’s pretty thought-provoking.

The Results are In…

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While I make no secret of my political beliefs, I ordinarily try to shy away from outright endorsement of candidates. I used to think that politics was kind of like religion: something that’s a very important part of peoples’ lives, but something that’s bound to offend people if you talk about it much. Plus, I really don’t like to divulge too much in the way of significant personal information, and who I supported (or how I prayed) was no one’s business, I thought. But to me, my vote on January 8 is going to be one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

And I’m going to break with tradition and tell you who I’m voting for. I’m going to case my vote in the primary for Barack Obama. And I’d like to encourage you to do the same.

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have told you that I was somewhat unhappy with politics. I was sad when Kerry lost the 2004 elections. But I’ve gone from “somewhat unhappy” to being truly afraid for the future of our country, and for being truly disgusted with some of the betrayals of the American people. I’ve been exploring jobs in other countries. Not because I want to send some sort of message that I don’t like politics, but because I don’t think I’m living in the America I was so proud to belong to. I hate alarmists, but, well, sound the alarm bells: America is in crisis.

Maybe about six years ago, I started getting disappointed every time I turned on the news. Something bad was always happening. And it’s happened every day for all these years. Most of the world hates us. Not all of it, but huge parts of it. While much of the world is already suspicious of our motives, we start a series of wars in Islamic countries and then go and issue proclamations expressing our support for Christianity. We seek to teach the “backwards” world about the benefits of freedom and democracy, by capturing them, transporting them to secret prisons, abusing them, and then torturing them in barbaric fashions. Does no one see the blatant hypocrisy? And when we point out that we already outlawed this, and that it flies in the face of everything that is America, we debate it. We’re at war against people who torture people and defy democracy, and we need to be able to torture people and defy democracy in order to do it, after all. The kings of democracy also have a whopping one state that permits same-sex marriage, something that more advanced countries have been permitting for years. And when we started calling it unconstitutional to deny people a basic civic right, we changed the Constitution in many states, and tried to change the Constitution. Forty-two states, and the Federal government, also passed laws explicitly prohibiting gay marriage.

When I graduate from college, I’ll have no health care until I get a job that offers it. But I count myself as lucky, because millions of people just don’t have health insurance at all. We tried to pass a bill ensuring that poor children could get health insurance, but we struck it down. Twice. We spend more than any nation on health care, and yet our system is among the worst. But people argue that there’s no problem, or that, if there is a problem, we shouldn’t pay for it.

Oh, and the American economy, kings of capitalism, is in the toilet. No offense to Canada, but it’s pretty depressing when the Canadian dollar surpasses the American dollar. We had an investment banker come in and talk to us a while back. He moved all of his money out of the country a few years ago.

I want to turn on the news and smile once. I want to stop looking at jobs in the Netherlands.

I want to be proud to be an American again.

I’ll admit that, at first, I didn’t want to support Obama. As much as he blew me away every time he spoke, I was really concerned about his lack of experience. Foreign policy is going to be huge, and he’s a one-term Senator. Why should he be the guy?

I think it’s the same reason that I’d be an amazing police chief, or an amazing president of my school. No, not hubris. Because he has a fresh experience. You spend too much time at something and you start to maintain status quo. Look at a lot of the businesses, especially small ones, that have been around for decades. What are they doing? Nothing new! Where are they going? Nowhere! They’ve built themselves a fabulous box in which to think, in which there’s really not a lot of room to maneuver. They found something that works and stuck to it. But this box–these blinders–prevent change. It’ll help you keep things going, but it won’t help you change the direction things are going on.

And if there’s anything we need, it’s change.

But don’t take my word for it. While I strongly support him, you owe it to do your own homework. Check him out. Read about his stance on the issues. And, living in New Hampshire, go see him speak. I always go in with high expectations and leave with them surpassed. And I’m firmly convinced that he’s the right man for the job. We’re not picking some arbitrary thing. We’re choosing our fate for the next four years. And we have an obligation–not just to ourselves, to our neighbors, and to the world, but to future generations–to make sure we elect the best person for the job.

If Facebook Voted…

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Top Presidential candidates, and their current number of supporters on Facebook:

  • Barack Obama, 174,650
  • Hillary Clinton, 56,935
  • Ron Paul, 45,906
  • John Edwards, 26,255
  • Mitt Romney, 23,155
  • Fred Thompson, 19,311
  • Dennis Kucinich, 18,587
  • Mike Huckabee, 17,161
  • McCain, 15,320
  • Rudy, 13,043

The numbers are interesting. Obviously, this isn’t a scientific poll, but I think it’s useful as a straw poll of where young people come down. And Obama is dominating, with about three times the support of his next rival, Clinton. Ron Paul is close on her heels.

And then there’s a huge gap, with Edwards at the front. I’m somewhat surprised to learn that Romney is right behind him, and even more surprised that Fred Thompson is next on the list. No offense to him, but I’d never considered him a viable candidate. He just slightly nudged out Kucinich, who’s about as likely to win as Thompson in my mind. Rudy and McCain, who I’d thought would be front-runners, are way down at the bottom. (Technically, it’s not the bottom, but I left off people way down there… Poor Richardson, who I would vote for in a heartbeat, has 8,272 supporters.)

Of course, we know that young people have the least voters of any age demographic… But imagine if we changed that this election. I hope to.

Is Congress Insane?

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There are a lot of issues that I really understand both sides of. Most anything with money will benefit some at the expense of others. I don’t think gun control or drug policy have “clean” answers: I’m not at all comfortable banning guns, but I’m not at all comfortable allowing felons to own automatic weapons; I don’t get why smoking marijuana is a crime, but I’m not at all opposed to putting heroin dealers in jail. And I still struggle with the issue of abortion.

But there have been some really strange things going on…

  • In 2006, the military established a policy manual describing what was–and what wasn’t–an acceptable interrogation method. In particular, it banned:
    • Forcing detainees to be nude for interrogations
    • Engaging in sexual acts, real or simulated
    • “Beating, shocking, or burning” them
    • Mock executions
    • Waterboarding
    • Starving or freezing them
    In my mind, this is a no-brainer. We’re not some backwards third-world nation led by a cruel military dictator. (Well, snide comments aside…) We’re the freaking United States of America, and we pride ourself on being ‘advanced’ past barbarism. The 2006 military policy confirmed this.
  • A bill that would require the CIA to follow the same rules got struck down in Congress. Of course, don’t be so quick to fault Congress–if it had made it through, the Administration said it would veto it anyway.
  • So what did Congress pass? I’m glad you asked! The House passed House Resolution 847. It’s a non-binding resolution, which is a nice way of saying that it’s utterly pointless and carries no weight. It contains lots of feel-good stuff endorsing Christmas. But a lot of people seem troubled by the fact that it also “recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world.” I mean, I’m a Christian, and, if you define “great” in terms of numbers as opposed to quality, it’s a fact that Christianity is one of the “great religions.” But I’m still left with an uneasy feeling about this. Even if “it’s true,” why is Congress giving Christianity its stamp of approval? It just seems really strange. And our Founding Fathers were uneasy about it, too. (Of course, the First Amendment bans Congress from establishing a religion, not endorsing it. But a case from the 80’s gives us a clarification that government endorsement of a religion still construes an Establishment Clause violation.) But of course it’s a moot point, because the First Amendment starts off with “make no law,” and this isn’t a law. It’s a Resolution. And it doesn’t really do anything except proclaim to the world that the United States likes Christianity. And frankly, I’d like it if our proclamations to the world were kept in line with our Constitution.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against Christianity. I just find it really, really weird that Congress is endorsing it. Especially when half the world thinks we’re in a war against Islam, where endorsing Christianity is only going to further that misinterpretation?

Raise your hand if you think that Congress has lots its mind!

Guantanamo Bay

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With all the talk about the torture in Guantanamo Bay, it’s easy to lose sight of another fact that I still find really strange.

It’s in Cuba. We’re renting the space from them, despite an embargo on trade with their country.

Why don’t we move it somewhere else, even if it’s just over to the Dominican Republic or something of the sort? I just find it really bizarre that we’re paying them (and that they’re taking our money) when they’re our sworn enemies. Why are we in Cuba?

Separation of State and Church

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Note the title: I’m not talking about politicians staying clear of religion. That’s a separate issue.

My local church has announced that next week it’ll hand out a “Catholic Voter’s Guide.”

I find this an insidious abuse of religion. Not so much because I think it’s wrong for the church to leverage its power to influence politics (although I do), but because church is about God, not about politics. While I’m not one to quote scripture, consider Matthew 21:12, where Jesus can fairly be described as flipping out when people try to sell stuff in church. It’s not about politics, true, but I think the point is the same: church is about worshiping God. Attempting to campaign in a church strikes me as an unacceptable practice, and really, an affront to religion.

Granted, it could be worse. We don’t have enormous TV screens and invite candidates to our church to speak about politics as you sometimes see happening in the South. But I still can’t bring myself to support the church handing out political leaflets. Am I crazy to think this?

Misery

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Tonight Oprah and Obama spoke at the Verizon Center. I went, both as a fan (of Obama, not Oprah) and to try to get some great shots.

I’ve heard Obama speak before. He’s really good. I went in tonight with Obama being my likely pick, but with Edwards still having some chance, and with the idea that Richardson would rock, too, but that he doesn’t stand a chance right now. I came out convinced that, without a doubt, Obama’s my guy.

Oprah also turned out to be an amazing speaker. I generally don’t have anything positive to say about TV celebrities, but she turned out to be great. She spoke about how, when she’s not on TV, she’ll often say, “Somebody should do something about that…” to all the things wrong in America right now. So, for the first time in her career, she stepped up and endorsed a political candidate, the one she thinks will “do something about that” to all our contemporary problems.

Michelle Obama spoke, too. Granted, she’s biased, but she had nothing but good things to say about her husband. She spoke about how when she first met him, they were both lawyers. While she was focused on wanting to be the next millionaire with her law degree, Obama received his degree and then went into destitute, rural areas to help.

And of course, Obama spoke. While he called himself the third-best of the three when it comes to speaking, his speech didn’t disappoint. Hearing him talk almost gives me goosebumps. I’m so focused on all that’s wrong with America: millions don’t have health care (as soon as I graduate from college, I’ll join the ranks of the uninsured), we keep botching things like Katrina, maybe because all of our National Guard / military is tied up with Iraq’s civil war. Our economy heads further south and shows no signs of stopping…

But when he talks, I suddenly have a vision of what America should be: veterans coming back from Iraq receiving a hero’s welcome and receiving veteran’s benefits, restored relations with the world community, health care for everyone*, the end of a pointless war, and the end of the clash between blue states and red states–a United States, if you will.

So why is my post entitled Misery? Because my camera died.

Here’s Cameron, a 10-year-old student, reading a letter to Obama, imploring him to provide more aid to the autistic:

title=”10 year old! by n1zyy, on Flickr”>10 year old!

He received (much-deserved!) hearty applause.

title=”NH Governor John Lynch by n1zyy, on Flickr”>NH Governor John Lynch

There’s our beloved John Lynch addressing the crowd. We were near the back of the Verizon Center, so we didn’t have the best angle, but I knew from past experience that Senator Obama was very cognizant of the fact that the crowd wasn’t just directly in front of him, so he would turn around and make sure all the crowd got his attention. So I was excited. Obama would surely come around to the other side of the podium at some point, and I’d get some great shots. The lighting was good enough that I was getting 1/100 and better shutter speeds at ISO800 (on a slow f/5.6 lens); the only thing I could have wished for was a faster lens to throw the background out of focus a bit more. But I was golden. A lot of people say photography’s all about light. To me, it’s all about angles. And we’ve all seen head-on shots of politicians. They’re boring. I had a good perch.

So, you might ask, where are all the shots of Oprah, or Michelle and Barack Obama?

Err 99. Canon’s catch-all error message.

For a lot of people, it’s a bad connection between the camera and the contacts on the lens. For others, it’s a CF card error. But I tried it all in vain. I “reseated” the lens. No luck. I tried taking a shot with no lens. No luck. I tried shooting without a CF card. (That wouldn’t do me much good, but it’d tell me if the CF card was the problem.) Still Err 99. I tried reseating the battery, which apparently sometimes resolves the error. No luck. I even took the battery out and removed the little CMOS battery. No luck.

All indications are that it’s the worst possible fate: a shutter problem. There do look to be some small scratches on the shutter, although I wasn’t about to stick my hand in and try. (Because then it’s guaranteed to become a shutter problem…) The shutter isn’t really user-serviceable. Taking the camera apart is very involved. You have to send it back to Canon, for what’s apparently a $200 repair.

Is this a sign that I should get the Rebel XTi I’ve been eying? Or just a sign that I should give up photography?

The worst part, though, wasn’t sitting there knowing that my pride and joy of a camera had just become little more than a paperweight. It was knowing that I was missing some great shots. Initially, I kept just powering it back off and on trying to get some good shots. As Obama walked out, there was a huge sign blocking a lot of people from seeing him as he walked out. So he ducked down and waved underneath the sign. I had a nice, clear shot, and was at 1/100. I clicked the shutter. If all I had gone well, I’d have held it down and gotten three off in rapid succession, ensuring that at least one came out well. But all didn’t go well. Err 99. I got nothing.

A bit later on, he was speaking, and I noticed that Michelle Obama had her arm across Oprah’s back as they sat there. 200mm was just enough length to just about fill the frame with the two of them and Barack at the podium to the left. Err 99.

I spent a long while trying to see if I could resuscitate it, but eventually gave up.

  • Before you fault this for the cost, consider that we’re spending many, many billions more than any nation in the world. As President Clinton remarked last month, if we were to put all the other country’s health care systems up on a board, throw a dart and pick whatever it hit, we’d save billions. And yet, despite paying billions more than we should be, we can’t even cover everyone!

Mnemonic

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I don’t think there’s a mnemonic aid for “mnemonic,” but I’m studying for a law exam, and it’s insanely conducive to various visual associations:

  • Engel v. Vitale, the 1962 case that ruled that mandatory school prayer was an Establishment Clause violation. (You think?) Remember angels and that some thought it was vital to pray.
  • A trio of conscientious objector laws:
    • Welsh v. US: you needn’t have organized religious beliefs to object, if your beliefs are held with the strength of organized religion.
    • Gillette v. US: you can’t be a CO if you only object to one war; it has to be war in general
    • Clay v. US: it’s based on individual beliefs, not your whole sect’s beliefs. In particular, you must remember 3 prongs:
      • Oppose war in any form
      • Religious, not political, beliefs
      • There must be evidence that your beliefs are sincere
    • Remember Welsh grape jelly (and eating it individually, not in church), Gillette stadium (and protesters there opposing the Iraq war but supporting the war in Afghanistan), and, well, Clay is easier if you know that it’s Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali). The three items are pretty easy to remember on their own.
  • There was a Pinette case where the KKK wanted to put up a cross. It was for pretty intimidating purposes, but the court “had to live with its own precedent” that it was protected free speech. Imagine that the cross was made of pine.
  • VA v. Black: you can’t ban cross-burning, but if it’s used as intimidation, it’s illegal anyway. Remember that cross-burning was usually done as intimidation against black people.
  • Loving v. VA: essentially struck down anti-miscegenation laws. After all, marriage is about loving, not skin color.
  • Baehr v. Anderson and Brause v. Board of Vital Stats were two cases with a lot in common:
    • They both had the state’s anti-gay-marriage laws ruled violations of the state constitution
    • They both resulted in the state constitution changing to define marriage differently, banning gay marriage and doing it in a way that can’t be unconstitutional (since it’s in the constitution)
    • They both occurred in “Western extremity” states (Alaska and Hawaii)
    • They both involved people with strange B-names

Of course, we’ll see in an hour if this helps, or if I just sit there thinking that I could really go for some Welsh grape jelly having no idea why I’m thinking about it.