I am really beginning to enjoy the books of Kevin Wignall. They are intelligent thrillers, each a standalone, that have an above average vocabulary. Where else could one discover the word "shambolic." Good word.
The protagonist is an interesting character. Lucas, an ex-assassin (although it's never made quite clear), he has been hired to protect, Ella, on vacation in Italy, the daughter of a wealthy man who made his money in rather heinous ways. At the start of the book, Ella's father, mother, and brother have all been assassinated. As the book moves from perspective to perspective, we follow Lucas, doing his best to protect his charge. (One nice touch: Lucas is an inveterate reader, never going anywhere without a book. When was the last time you saw a movie hero carrying a book around with him on missions.) Fascinating as Ella begins to go off the rails with a most satisfactory ending.
The movie is vastly different with a different premise. One thing that has always bothered me about these kinds of stories both in print and film. The protagonists never, ever, have money problems. Needs a flight to athens, no problem, first class ticket, no problem. Yet there never seem to have a job or source of income. Nor do they ever have to pee or get their periods, or have diarrhea from eating strange food. Got to be a lucky group of people.
Saturday, December 08, 2018
Review: Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore
Yikes!. How to review this book and avoid spoilers, and while I generally have no problem with spoilers, in this case letting you know that the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a train might ruin the splat.
Caleb's girlfriend, Bridget, has left him after throwing an ashtray at his head. We are not sure precisely what the infraction might have been (nor do we ever find out for certain although the hints are there,) but while drowning his sorrows in the bar he sees a stunning woman, an instant infatuation. Caleb is doing research on the physical manifestations of pain, e.g. hormones released, etc. Chemicals. "Guy gets hurt, his endocrine system responds. Adrenaline, endorphins. Damaged cells dump out different histamines. There’s paracrine signaling going on—that’s cell-to-cell communication—with compounds like prostaglandin and thromboxane. Bunch of other stuff. Pain leaves markers, and I’m following them. To quantify it."
He's also an expert in bizarre toxins. “Batrachotoxin." ...."The median lethal dose is ninety micrograms—a couple grains of salt,” Caleb said. “And all you’d have to do is touch it.” People start turning up loaded with this toxin.
I shall say no more other than to recommend this book if you have an interest in the bizarre mechanisms of the mind. Whether the events here represent anything approaching reality is a bit frightening.
Caleb's girlfriend, Bridget, has left him after throwing an ashtray at his head. We are not sure precisely what the infraction might have been (nor do we ever find out for certain although the hints are there,) but while drowning his sorrows in the bar he sees a stunning woman, an instant infatuation. Caleb is doing research on the physical manifestations of pain, e.g. hormones released, etc. Chemicals. "Guy gets hurt, his endocrine system responds. Adrenaline, endorphins. Damaged cells dump out different histamines. There’s paracrine signaling going on—that’s cell-to-cell communication—with compounds like prostaglandin and thromboxane. Bunch of other stuff. Pain leaves markers, and I’m following them. To quantify it."
He's also an expert in bizarre toxins. “Batrachotoxin." ...."The median lethal dose is ninety micrograms—a couple grains of salt,” Caleb said. “And all you’d have to do is touch it.” People start turning up loaded with this toxin.
I shall say no more other than to recommend this book if you have an interest in the bizarre mechanisms of the mind. Whether the events here represent anything approaching reality is a bit frightening.
Monday, December 03, 2018
Bingham, the Johnson Veto, and Privileges and Immunities (cont.)
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. Part of his rationale for the veto was that the Congress lacked the authority to confer national citizenship. He also used the words “privileges and immunities” in a new context. In 1866, Johnson had already vetoed the expansion of the Freedman Act that had come out of the Senate, sponsored by Charles Sumner’s Select Committee on Slavery and Lyman Trumbull (a veto that was over-ridden). Johnson’s rationale was that it expanded the power of the federal government at the expense of the states, and he was anxious to return the southern states back into the union as expeditiously as possible and with as little inconvenience to their former status.
The 38th and 39th Congress had other ideas, arguing that the southern states had rebelled, taken themselves out of the Union and therefore would have to reapply under conditions set by the Republican Congress. Ironically, Johnson, by suggesting that a constitutional amendment would be needed to do what the Congress wanted in the Freedman Act and Civil Rights Act, may have forced them to do just that in the 14th Amendment.
The south had always assumed that should their rebellion fail, it wouldn’t matter that much because, as Garrett Epps pointed out in his book Democracy Reborn, a prominent southern paper had written “Universal assent appears to be given to the proposition that if the States lately rebellious be restored to rights of representation according to the federal basis, or to the basis of numbers enlarged by the enumeration of all the blacks in the next census, the political power of the country will pass into the hands of the South, aided, as it will be, by Northern alliances. The South claims that this will be the fact, and the North does not dispute it.” So fears of a southern reversal of everything that had been gained by the war were not unfounded.
Johnson’s sustained attempt to defeat the Amendment both deepened and helped shape public understanding of the proposed text and its impact on the autonomy of the States. It was President Johnson, for example, who first declared that congressional efforts to protect the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” required a constitutional amendment. When Congress submitted a proposed amendment that adopted the President’s own phrases Johnson responded by challenging the very legitimacy of the Republican Congress and making opposition to the Amendment the focus of the Democratic platform in the fall elections. The Democrats were soundly defeated gave the 39th Congress a complete Republican majority. That gave them the authority they needed to propose the Amendment and nationalize the Bill of Rights.
Johnson’s suggestion that Congress lacked constitutional authority to confer the status of national citizenship would ultimately lead to the addition of the citizenship clause of the Amendment. But even more importantly, Johnson introduced the language of the rights of national citizenship to the legislative and public debate. Johnson announced in one of his speeches of 1866, that Congress had sought to confer the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States,” a category of rights altogether different from the state conferred rights protected under the Comity Clause. (Article IV of the Constitution that had been interpreted to mean only that states had to honor the privileges conferred on state citizens across state lines.) Johnson’s reference regarding the rights of national citizenship would soon become a part of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Bingham himself mocked the opposition for claiming they were "not opposed to the bill of rights," but only opposed to their federal enforcement. If states had no authority to violate the Bill of Rights, "how can the right of a State be impaired by giving to the people of the United States by constitutional amendment the power by congressional enactment to enforce this provision of their Constitution?” Such enforcement was essential, argued Bingham, in light of Chief Justice Marshall's Supreme Court's ruling in Baron v. Baltimore which had decided that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government and authority and not the states. Actions in the south that clearly were intended to remove protections from freedmen necessitated federal enforcement and application to the states, especially of due process and the privileges and immunities of citizenship.
Sources: Lash, Kurt T. "The Constitutional Referendum of 1866: Andrew Johnson and the Original Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2125363.
Epps, Garrett. Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post Civil War America. New York: Henry Holt, 2013. Kindle.
The 38th and 39th Congress had other ideas, arguing that the southern states had rebelled, taken themselves out of the Union and therefore would have to reapply under conditions set by the Republican Congress. Ironically, Johnson, by suggesting that a constitutional amendment would be needed to do what the Congress wanted in the Freedman Act and Civil Rights Act, may have forced them to do just that in the 14th Amendment.
The south had always assumed that should their rebellion fail, it wouldn’t matter that much because, as Garrett Epps pointed out in his book Democracy Reborn, a prominent southern paper had written “Universal assent appears to be given to the proposition that if the States lately rebellious be restored to rights of representation according to the federal basis, or to the basis of numbers enlarged by the enumeration of all the blacks in the next census, the political power of the country will pass into the hands of the South, aided, as it will be, by Northern alliances. The South claims that this will be the fact, and the North does not dispute it.” So fears of a southern reversal of everything that had been gained by the war were not unfounded.
Johnson’s sustained attempt to defeat the Amendment both deepened and helped shape public understanding of the proposed text and its impact on the autonomy of the States. It was President Johnson, for example, who first declared that congressional efforts to protect the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” required a constitutional amendment. When Congress submitted a proposed amendment that adopted the President’s own phrases Johnson responded by challenging the very legitimacy of the Republican Congress and making opposition to the Amendment the focus of the Democratic platform in the fall elections. The Democrats were soundly defeated gave the 39th Congress a complete Republican majority. That gave them the authority they needed to propose the Amendment and nationalize the Bill of Rights.
Johnson’s suggestion that Congress lacked constitutional authority to confer the status of national citizenship would ultimately lead to the addition of the citizenship clause of the Amendment. But even more importantly, Johnson introduced the language of the rights of national citizenship to the legislative and public debate. Johnson announced in one of his speeches of 1866, that Congress had sought to confer the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States,” a category of rights altogether different from the state conferred rights protected under the Comity Clause. (Article IV of the Constitution that had been interpreted to mean only that states had to honor the privileges conferred on state citizens across state lines.) Johnson’s reference regarding the rights of national citizenship would soon become a part of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Bingham himself mocked the opposition for claiming they were "not opposed to the bill of rights," but only opposed to their federal enforcement. If states had no authority to violate the Bill of Rights, "how can the right of a State be impaired by giving to the people of the United States by constitutional amendment the power by congressional enactment to enforce this provision of their Constitution?” Such enforcement was essential, argued Bingham, in light of Chief Justice Marshall's Supreme Court's ruling in Baron v. Baltimore which had decided that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government and authority and not the states. Actions in the south that clearly were intended to remove protections from freedmen necessitated federal enforcement and application to the states, especially of due process and the privileges and immunities of citizenship.
Sources: Lash, Kurt T. "The Constitutional Referendum of 1866: Andrew Johnson and the Original Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2125363.
Epps, Garrett. Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post Civil War America. New York: Henry Holt, 2013. Kindle.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Kavanaugh and Impeachment
We hear a lot from assorted political folks about how to interpret the Constitution. One popular among conservatives is called "originalism." Generally, it's defined as assuming that we should interpret the Constitution as if it had a stable content, that we need to look at the original intent of the authors, and if times change, then the steps in Article Five should be used to change it. Original intent has become less popular among originalists who now adhere more to the belief that we should focus on the original meaning, i.e., what reasonable people would have understood the meaning of a phrase to be. This syllogism is closer to textualism and Antonin Scalia is the justice most associated with the philosophy.
I got to thinking about originalism and impeachment and high crimes and misdemeanors. There is lots of loose thinking about impeachment these days. A recent paper by Gene Healy, Indispensable Remedy, helped focus some of these ideas.
The first impeachment of a federal official was in 1803, that of Judge John Pickering formerly of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, then of the US District Court for New Hampshire. He was beginning to show signs of mental impairment soon thereafter and he was impeached by the House for coming to court drunk and raving and ranting and "unlawful rulings." The Federalists raged that Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party were trying to eliminate jurists with a federalist mindset. Pickering was convicted and removed from office. He died a year later.
The Federalists' fears were warranted when President Jefferson pushed the House to impeach Justice Samuel Chase (not to be confused with Salmon Chase the later Chief Justice) whose federalist rants from the bench ran clearly against Jefferson's political leanings. Jefferson also feared that the judiciary, thanks to Marshall's establishment of judicial review in 1803, gave the judiciary far too much power. Chase has vehemently protested Jefferson's repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 which had eliminated lower court federal judges, many of whom were Federalists. Chase was charged with political bias and defended by Aaroin a trial presided over by vice-president Aaron Burr in a trial before the Senate. The Senate, even though dominated by Jefferson's allies, refused to convict (For more details, a good summary is here. ) His acquittal some have seen as solidifying support for an independent judiciary not subject to political whim.
The Kavanaugh hearings and his partisan rant before the Senate on Thursday reminded me of these two cases and their import. Now, I disagree with Kavanaugh's judicial philosophy, at least as far as it can be determined as an examination of the decisions of Merrick Garland and Kavanaugh provide little dissimilarities and the term "conservative" as a pejorative label strikes me as overly simplistic. His loud, rude, and biased attack on his Senate adversaries was impolite if not stupid. Yet, based on what I heard, calls for impeachment seemed inadvisable. If the trial of Samuel Chase show us nothing else, it demands that we maintain at least the appearance of an independent judiciary. Should Kavanaugh show up drunk on the bench, however, all bets are off.
I got to thinking about originalism and impeachment and high crimes and misdemeanors. There is lots of loose thinking about impeachment these days. A recent paper by Gene Healy, Indispensable Remedy, helped focus some of these ideas.
The first impeachment of a federal official was in 1803, that of Judge John Pickering formerly of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, then of the US District Court for New Hampshire. He was beginning to show signs of mental impairment soon thereafter and he was impeached by the House for coming to court drunk and raving and ranting and "unlawful rulings." The Federalists raged that Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party were trying to eliminate jurists with a federalist mindset. Pickering was convicted and removed from office. He died a year later.
The Federalists' fears were warranted when President Jefferson pushed the House to impeach Justice Samuel Chase (not to be confused with Salmon Chase the later Chief Justice) whose federalist rants from the bench ran clearly against Jefferson's political leanings. Jefferson also feared that the judiciary, thanks to Marshall's establishment of judicial review in 1803, gave the judiciary far too much power. Chase has vehemently protested Jefferson's repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801 which had eliminated lower court federal judges, many of whom were Federalists. Chase was charged with political bias and defended by Aaroin a trial presided over by vice-president Aaron Burr in a trial before the Senate. The Senate, even though dominated by Jefferson's allies, refused to convict (For more details, a good summary is here. ) His acquittal some have seen as solidifying support for an independent judiciary not subject to political whim.
The Kavanaugh hearings and his partisan rant before the Senate on Thursday reminded me of these two cases and their import. Now, I disagree with Kavanaugh's judicial philosophy, at least as far as it can be determined as an examination of the decisions of Merrick Garland and Kavanaugh provide little dissimilarities and the term "conservative" as a pejorative label strikes me as overly simplistic. His loud, rude, and biased attack on his Senate adversaries was impolite if not stupid. Yet, based on what I heard, calls for impeachment seemed inadvisable. If the trial of Samuel Chase show us nothing else, it demands that we maintain at least the appearance of an independent judiciary. Should Kavanaugh show up drunk on the bench, however, all bets are off.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Review: Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification by David Waldstreicher
Even though the Constitution never explicitly mentions slavery, it's legacy is throughout. Of the 84 clauses, "six are directly concerned with slaves and their owners. Five others had implications for slavery that were considered and debated. . . " I'm not sure we'll ever escape our heritage of bondage. Even the interpretations of the opinions rendered in Heller and McDonald were grounded firmly in the history of slavery. The minority, which argued for a "militia" interpretation noted that James Madison had been urged not to ignore the right of states to form militias (several states had already enacted constitutional rights to bear arms "for the common defense,") because southern states in particular were terrified of a slave rebellion and wanted to have armed militias to respond. The majority looked to the amendments after the Civil War which applied the Bill of Rights to the states and especially the importance of providing weapons to unarmed slaves to protect themselves from rampaging white Ku-Klux-Klan-like entities.
The three-fifths rule is the most notorious of the Constitution’s nod to enshrining slavery but Waldstreicher argues that many of the property protections written into the Constitution had the effect of protecting that “peculiar institution,” as well. And since all money bills had to originate in the House, the 3/5ths clause gave southern slave holders even more power since they then controlled the purse-strings. Not only that, but it prohibited Congress from making any laws prohibiting trade in slaves for 20 years after ratification. Given their control of the House, they could be pretty sure of few impediments down the road. Rules related to property further protected slave-owners since while ostensibly protecting trade by making property laws federal rather than state, fugitive slave laws were enshrined. (As an aside, the reason why the District of Columbia became the Capitol of the United States rather than Philadelphia, was because Quakers had passed laws freeing slaves whose masters took up residence in Philadelphia and the Founders most of whom owned slaves, did not want to risk losing their property.)
The conventional wisdom is that the Founders ignored the issue of slavery assuming it might disappear gradually, yet Waldreich suggests instead that they were obsessed with the issue. They were attempting to craft a stronger federal government yet had to deal with the parochial rights of the slave states. They preserved the “peculiar institution” while making a stronger federal system. That stronger federal presence, coupled with expanding power of the northern anti-slave states, mixed with some unfortunate Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott (although it was declaring the Missouri Compromise that really inflamed things) and Prigg v Pennsylvania which overrode states which were trying to prevent local officials from having to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Prigg was another nail in the federal bulwark.
Slavery was so intertwined with the economy that its abolishment could only be done on the national level. Wealth was defined less by land than by the number of slaves one owned since they were needed to work the land. Any farm state would be at a serious economic disadvantage by unilaterally abolishing slavery. In the north where industrialization was taking hold, this was less of a factor. The southern states, heavily represented at the Constitutional Convention were determined to enshrine slave rights in the new national government.
Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2 reads:
A person charged in any state with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
Waldstreicher argues these clauses in particular were inserted to please southern slave owners as they prevented slaves from seeking freedom by fleeing to free states. The southern states used the power of the federal government to enforce their property rights (ironic in view of the Nullification Crisis of 1832.) Under Prigg the federal government was left with enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act when states such as Pennsylvania passed laws excluding local magistrates from having to do the enforcement, laws which, of course, enraged the slave states. As Calhoun wrote in a letter, “the new personal liberties laws rendered slave property utterly insecure" and was a "flagrant violation of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution."
Walstreicher argues that the Constitution’s imprecision with regard to slavery (I don’t think t was imprecise at all, it was clearly pro-slavery) led to both sides being able to claim the Constitution was or was not in favor of slavery. Given that most of the founders owned slaves and considered them property, I don’t think Justice Taney really had much choice in deciding Dred Scott in the way he did.
The assumption that southern population would grow faster than that of the north proved illusory as most immigration went to the anti-slave, industrial north thus rendering the infamous three-fifths clause moot and soon the southern states were desperately trying to add slave states to the union to retain some measure of power.
Quote: Many historians insist that the use of the word “slavery” to refer to taxes or restrictions of liberty simply came to seem hypocritical in light of racial slavery. It certainly did eventually, but this emphasis neglects the more basic, original link of British rights to property, the fact that slaves were property, and that both slavery and property were intrinsic to what colonies were all about: agricultural production and trade. . . The Americans had emancipated themselves, but in doing so had raised, not resolved, the question of slavery. On both ides of the Atlantic, people waited to see what exactly Americans meant when they said they would never be slaves.
I also recommend Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills
The three-fifths rule is the most notorious of the Constitution’s nod to enshrining slavery but Waldstreicher argues that many of the property protections written into the Constitution had the effect of protecting that “peculiar institution,” as well. And since all money bills had to originate in the House, the 3/5ths clause gave southern slave holders even more power since they then controlled the purse-strings. Not only that, but it prohibited Congress from making any laws prohibiting trade in slaves for 20 years after ratification. Given their control of the House, they could be pretty sure of few impediments down the road. Rules related to property further protected slave-owners since while ostensibly protecting trade by making property laws federal rather than state, fugitive slave laws were enshrined. (As an aside, the reason why the District of Columbia became the Capitol of the United States rather than Philadelphia, was because Quakers had passed laws freeing slaves whose masters took up residence in Philadelphia and the Founders most of whom owned slaves, did not want to risk losing their property.)
The conventional wisdom is that the Founders ignored the issue of slavery assuming it might disappear gradually, yet Waldreich suggests instead that they were obsessed with the issue. They were attempting to craft a stronger federal government yet had to deal with the parochial rights of the slave states. They preserved the “peculiar institution” while making a stronger federal system. That stronger federal presence, coupled with expanding power of the northern anti-slave states, mixed with some unfortunate Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott (although it was declaring the Missouri Compromise that really inflamed things) and Prigg v Pennsylvania which overrode states which were trying to prevent local officials from having to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Prigg was another nail in the federal bulwark.
Slavery was so intertwined with the economy that its abolishment could only be done on the national level. Wealth was defined less by land than by the number of slaves one owned since they were needed to work the land. Any farm state would be at a serious economic disadvantage by unilaterally abolishing slavery. In the north where industrialization was taking hold, this was less of a factor. The southern states, heavily represented at the Constitutional Convention were determined to enshrine slave rights in the new national government.
Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2 reads:
A person charged in any state with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.
No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
Waldstreicher argues these clauses in particular were inserted to please southern slave owners as they prevented slaves from seeking freedom by fleeing to free states. The southern states used the power of the federal government to enforce their property rights (ironic in view of the Nullification Crisis of 1832.) Under Prigg the federal government was left with enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act when states such as Pennsylvania passed laws excluding local magistrates from having to do the enforcement, laws which, of course, enraged the slave states. As Calhoun wrote in a letter, “the new personal liberties laws rendered slave property utterly insecure" and was a "flagrant violation of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution."
Walstreicher argues that the Constitution’s imprecision with regard to slavery (I don’t think t was imprecise at all, it was clearly pro-slavery) led to both sides being able to claim the Constitution was or was not in favor of slavery. Given that most of the founders owned slaves and considered them property, I don’t think Justice Taney really had much choice in deciding Dred Scott in the way he did.
The assumption that southern population would grow faster than that of the north proved illusory as most immigration went to the anti-slave, industrial north thus rendering the infamous three-fifths clause moot and soon the southern states were desperately trying to add slave states to the union to retain some measure of power.
Quote: Many historians insist that the use of the word “slavery” to refer to taxes or restrictions of liberty simply came to seem hypocritical in light of racial slavery. It certainly did eventually, but this emphasis neglects the more basic, original link of British rights to property, the fact that slaves were property, and that both slavery and property were intrinsic to what colonies were all about: agricultural production and trade. . . The Americans had emancipated themselves, but in doing so had raised, not resolved, the question of slavery. On both ides of the Atlantic, people waited to see what exactly Americans meant when they said they would never be slaves.
I also recommend Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills
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