Letterman, Leno, O’Brien… Latrigue? No, I didn’t get screwed out of my turn at hosting The Tonight Show, but I (and by extension Wordsmoker) am the most recent late night casualty in NBC’s profit-seeking corporate bastardry. However, unlike Conan, I am cynical. I’m also greedy, litigious and vengeful. Before I get ahead of myself, let me fully brief you on my legal case.
On Veterans Day, when Americans are apt to take an expansive view of their freedoms and the role of their armed forces in securing them, The New York Times ran an article calling into question the commitment of one sitting Supreme Court justice to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who is considered a staunch First Amendment defender, addressed an assembly on October 28th at the tony Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The talk was covered by the student newspaper, The Daltonian. The judge’s staff insisted that he be able to pre-approve the resulting article, and the school complied with this demand.
Jesús lloró.
The image to the left is the Republican Vision of Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. Let me tell you why the Sotomayor hearings make me ashamed to be an American.
WISE GUYS
The Republican party has spent the week actively insulting the first Latina woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Based on the sheer volume and level of her accomplishments and experience, this nominee is more qualified than anyone currently on the Court and arguably more qualified than anyone who has EVER been nominated to the Supreme Court.
In a blow to my nascent campaign to arrange the possibly televised murder of Jay Leno, a U.S. House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.) (and I think about 14 other internet buzzkillers) could soon make it illegal for Wordsmoker or any other web media outlet thing “”To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through “Severe, Repeated, and Hostile” Speech.”
Fuck.
In the wake of the recent vote in the House of Representatives to impose a 90 percent tax on those goddamn AIG bonuses, high-powered legal thinkers like Howard Fineman and Lawrence O’Donnell have weighed in on the constitutionality of the measure.
Finally! How were the rest of us supposed to be able to figure out whether that shifty lower house of Congress was trying to take away our precious right to be paid millions of federal dollars for performing our private sector jobs in the worst way imaginable without the sage analysis of a Newsweek hack and an oily beltway insider/actor? According to Fineman, this new tax may even be double unconstitutional(!), while O’Donnell praised Nancy Pelosi’s decision to put the clearly unconstitutional tax measure forward as a brilliant parliamentary move designed to “trap” Republicans in their own hypocrisy. Savvy!
There’s just one problem with the Fineman-O’Donnell doctrine: The ex post facto clause and the prohibition against bills of attainder are widely understood to apply only to criminal laws –not the tax code. And most of us know that Congress is constantly reshaping the tax code to encourage certain behaviors, such as buying a house, and disadvantage others. If you have ever tried to cash out your 401(k) before turning the magical age of 59 and one-half-years old, then you know what I’m talking about.
But Fineman and O’Donnell (along with many others, including MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer) shouldn’t be discouraged. Everyone knows that our constitution is a living document whose genius lies in its ability to be reinterpreted for changing times. These Betsy Rosses of the new millennium clearly think it’s time for our courts to expand their interpretation of the ex post facto clause and the prohibition against bills of attainder. After all, these clauses haven’t been used in years. I mean when was the last time you heard about Congress passing a law that tinkered around with the retroactive criminal liability of an individual or discrete group of people? That would be positively un-American! Oh wait.
But where will we torture terror suspects now?
Oh boy.
