Random Thoughts

The news is making me just shake my head so much these days.

1. The Marine sergeant is discharged for putting on Facebook that he would not obey an order from President Obama. Sorry, son, but that is not any option when you are in uniform.  Yes, you have an obligation to protest and if possible not enforce an order that tells you to do something that is patently illegal … but you really can’t pick and choose. If you are in the military, you salute and ask How High? when the president orders you to jump. Sorry, but there really are no First Amendment rights to criticize your boss when you put on the uniform. You may not like your bosses, but you are obligated to follow their orders. You say you won’t and, if y0u are an officer, you resign; if you are enlisted, they give you an “other than honorable” discharge … but the choice is yours.

2. The Labor Department has proposed new rules that will prohibit persons under the age of 18 from performing “farm chores”. Good grief, where are people getting these ideas? It blows me away. This is stretching the commerce clause of the constitution and the general welfare statement in the preamble to the breaking point I am afraid. The federal government has absolutely no freaking business telling a family what its family members can or can not do on a family farm … sorry that is so blatantly unconstitutional it will be amazing if the courts don’t dump this new regulation at the first challenge.  Whatever happened to the 9th and 10th Amendments … I guess with our current federal governors, that like other restraints on federal government actions like the War Powers Act, are no longer operative and the Executive Branch can just do what it wants.

3. The Supreme Court of the US heard arguments on that Arizona law that essentially, from my understanding, made what was already federal law now a violation of state law as well. I am sorry, but I don’t have a problem with that. If it is against federal law, and federal agents can do it, I can’t see why a state can’t pass a law that makes the state law conform with federal law and then enforce the same thing. Sorry, the logic there somehow eludes me.

If the federal government can prosecute someone for not carrying their immigration documents (which it can, and it can demand those documents be presented at any time … and I can attest to personally because my wife is a Canadian citizen and we went the two and a half years and a chunk of moolah to get her legally able to stay in the US as well as work.

So, I am sorry about those who claim racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants, but tough bananas.