Memorial Day Constitutional Tea Party Picnic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJHKtLnT0Ak

(I'm not sure why this just printed the link. This is a funny poke at government spending).

Your Government is looking out for you. Not.


Head on down to West End Park from 11:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 24th, for our Memorial Day Constitutional Tea Party Picnic! Bring your own food and drinks, hear some patriotic music and a few NON-POLITICIAN speakers, and participate in a Tribute to our Veterans at 2:00. Other activities are planned for kiddos, too.

Keep our momentum going!

San Antonio!

We're back from the Twenty-Seventh Annual Multi-State Labor and Employment Law Seminar in San Antonio! We got some really good information -- I was totally clueless about the colossal, overbearing, indecipherable, contradictory requirements of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, especially about records-keeping. I'll have a few rants to share in coming days -- including quite a few about the union-wonk lawyer who spoke on the Employee Free Choice Act.

(I'll note that not everything was all-business. We also got to stroll down memory lane when we stayed one night in the VIP quarters at Ft. Sam Houston, and Pepper got to see a few of his favorite PGA golfers at the Valero tourney being played at the Westin La Cantera.)

But, for today, I'll focus on the sub-title of the conference: The 2009 Barbecue and Mexican Food Tour of the Texas Hill Country! Doug is our researcher and tour guide on all these excursions (one year he found a Jamaican grocery store for jerk chicken and goat in an urban Florida neighborhood where we really had no business visiting -- the old men playing checkers at the other table didn't seem to pay us much heed, though), and he had a detailed schedule of gastronomic delights lined out. I think Pepper and I must have gained 20 pounds between us.

It all started with the 3rd Annual San Antonio Soul Food Festival and Gospel Choir Contest. Giant smoked turkey legs, lots of stuff on a stick, and sweet potato pie to kill for.

Then came the barbecue tour of Luling and Lockhart -- 3 stops with enough ribs, brisket, and sausage to feed a family of four for a month (we didn't have enough room left in our tummies to go to Doug's planned 4th stop!). There's nothing like excellent barbecue sauce under your fingernails!

In Luling we became familiar with the Watermelon Thump Queen contest via posters featured in the windows of Main Street businesses by the 4 contestants, especially in City Market -- my favorite among the barbecue stops. In Lockhart, we were blown away by the beautiful, ornate courthouse in the town square (down the street from Black's Barbecue and a few tattoo parlors). We got a piddling little serving of meat to go at Kreutz's.

The Mexican Food category led us to a touristy place one night that actually had good food (and a mariachi band). And we enjoyed the smoky salsa and fish tacos at Rosario's near the Villejito. But the crown jewel was not on "the list."

Doug wanted barbacoa (cow head), and found a bakery far away from downtown that prepared it on weekends. When we got there, no barbacoa was in sight, but we got some mighty fine, mouth-watering Mexican pastries. So, we headed back down the street and decided to stop at a small, freshly-painted restaurant that advertised itself as "under new management." While "freshly-painted" usually doesn't suit Doug's criteria for "local, hole-in-the-wall" joints, and "under new management" can be disastrous, we were running low on time and decided to give it a shot.

At first glance, the menu looked pretty standard and Doug was a little disappointed. Then he tried the salsa. Then they brought a different type of salsa and he was hooked. We found barbacoa on the menu for him, ordered, and waited. The wait proved worth itself. Wow! What fabulous food -- cooked to order -- at prices that more closely resembled those in the 1960s than 2009. And Las Cazuelas was owned and staffed by a friendly, funny family who sought to meet our every need. I can't say enough good things about it.

Now -- a few plane rides and one delay later, we'll probably be grazing on salads for weeks to un-do the damage rendered by the 2009 Barbecue and Mexican Food Tour of the Texas Hill Country. Mooooo!

Ya Gotta Wonder What He Was Thinking . . .

Remember this picture? The Tax Day T.E.A. Party sign?

Someone stole it.

It was about 15 feet from the Neighborhood Watch sign.

I'll just get over the theft if the thief plants it in his yard. Or mails it to Congress.

N'Awlins Air Show 2009

May 1, 2009 -- Belle Chasse Joint Reserve Base/Naval Air Station.

The N'Awlins Air Show -- awesome!

(And I don't use that word lightly!)

Tiptoe: The Young President's First Whack at the Supreme Court

This one may just drive us all over the edge. The Young President has already been given the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. Speculation is all over the place.

Some pundits think that, knowing he'll probably have more than one appointment over the next 3 1/2 years, he may back off and nominate a fairly moderate centrist. Others think he'll dive directly into the left end of the pool. Of course, race/ethnicity and gender will be criteria. Immutable characteristics such as skin color and reproductive organs are certainly reliable predictors of judicial acumen. Yawn.

The Young President has been quoted as saying he believes the time for radical judicial activism has passed, but another quote has him desiring a nominee "who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book." Huh? Being able to empathize with a litigant's "pain" does not help one to construe a statute or to discern legislative intent.

The Supreme Court rarely seeks the abstract concept of "justice" as its goal; the Supreme Court is tasked by the Constitution and the Common Law system with interpreting the law as it applies to a specific set of facts. Our law school profs taught us that first you argue the Law, and if the law's not on your side, then you argue the Facts; only as a last resort do you argue Public Policy (read: justice). It's that whole hobgoblin-of-small-minds concept.

I just can't see him abandoning juicy judicial activism. He's already thrown most of the Constitution out the window -- why not toss common law precedent out there, too?

Crossposted here.

Going to Gitmo: Part Deux

Dropped in snail mail today:

President Barack H. Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Obama:

I am writing to you once again as an Independent voter from Louisiana. As you might surmise from the watermark on this page, I was an active participant in the New Orleans Tax Day Tea Party -- one of those "folks waving tea bags around."

On April 15th, your economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, announced that you were unaware of the many Tea Parties taking place in small towns and large cities all across the nation; but, in your First-100-Days Town Hall Meeting in Missouri, you not only acknowledged the Tea Parties, you actually proceeded to mock both the participants in and the significance of Tea Parties. Unfortunately, in your belated effort to smile, nod, and belittle the grassroots Tea Party movement, you chose to miss the point intended by most Tea Partiers -- or, worse, you chose to mischaracterize it.

As a consequence of your words at the Town Hall Meeting, I am indeed gratified to learn that you are "happy to have a serious conversation" about the issues facing the nation which you believe to be the most urgent -- your holy trinity of healthcare, energy and education, joined by Social Security during your performance in Missouri. I am most certainly pleased that you and "Claire" are working diligently to audit all federal spending, even though you didn't suggest what might be the outcome of that audit. I am thrilled beyond belief that you sent the world notice from Missouri that you intend to have a "serious discussion" about how to reduce health care spending -- open, thorough, and genuine debate are the hallmarks of democratic deliberation -- instead of rolling out another juggernaut like you did with the Recovery Act. That is what you meant by that comment about "serious discussion," isn't it, Mr. President?

But, then you suggested that the Tea Parties were all about -- and only about -- the Recovery Act. Wrong.

The ill-thought-out, helter-skelter overspending embodied in the Recovery Act is certainly an element of "the point" of the Tea Parties. What you must come to understand, however, is that "the point" is most assuredly not only about the Recovery Act. The passage and signing of the Recovery Act were simply the tipping point.

In April, the implementation of the Recovery Act was coupled with teasers of what other spending plans you and Congress had yet to announce. Add that fact to the rapid growth of the federal government in the mere first weeks of your administration, together with overt steps in Congress that threaten individual freedoms contained in the Bill of Rights. When all these straws came together, the Recovery Act broke the camel's back.

We camels -- we defenders of the Constitution -- coalesced, we spoke, and our numbers grow daily. That is another point. Our numbers grow daily.

Your administration's condescension to the patriotic men and women who serve in our military is deplorable; its social agenda to "spread the wealth" is a turn to the "failed policies" of former first-world nations. You and the Congress have corrupted the spirit of volunteerism with the passage of the Kennedy Act. The road upon which you and the Congress have placed the country is heading straight toward the destruction of the Republic by centralizing too much power in Washington in defiance of the Constitution.

You were elected to be our president -- a leader -- not our nanny or our omniscient exalted ruler. Please start listening to all American citizens and assume the appropriate presidential role as conceived by the Framers.

Sincerely,

Send cookies to my cell at Gitmo, and tell my family I love them.

Crossposted here.

The View of Trying Terrorists Isn't Quite as Clear-Cut Off the Campaign Trail

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reports that the Young President's Administration may reverse itself on trying Gitmo detainees via military tribunal, and unleash the military prosecutors after all. Adhering to the Obama administration S.O.P., this tidbit was, of course, leaked on a Friday afternoon, without attribution:

But in recent days a variety of officials involved in the deliberations say
that after administration lawyers examined many of the cases, the mood shifted
toward using military commissions to prosecute some detainees, perhaps including
those charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The more they look at it,” said one official, “the more commissions don’t
look as bad as they did on Jan. 20.”

Several officials insisted on anonymity because the administration has
directed that no one publicly discuss the deliberations.

Administration officials said Friday that some detainees would be
prosecuted in federal courts and noted that Mr. Obama had always left open the
possibility of using military commissions.

Still, during the presidential campaign Mr. Obama criticized the
commissions, saying that “by any measure our system of trying detainees has been
an enormous failure,” and declaring that as president he would “reject the
Military Commissions Act.”

Are we moving a little steeper up the terrorism learning curve, Mr. Y.P.?

The view from the Oval Office isn't quite as clear-cut as it was from the campaign trail, now, is it.