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Hope you bought national security companies’ stocks last week. Boston’s unfortunate 26.2 mile misadventure will be good for their businesses and likely bring you a handsome profit.

If you are a conservative pundit with your own radio, TV show  - or podcast – your ratings will soar as you excoriate the government and the liberal and medias elites for failing to protect America, giving that terrorist his miranda warnings, or refusing to send him to our tropical gulag. If you inhabit the conspiracy theory suburbs, you can raise cash by darkly impling it was all an Obama plot.

Of course, if you are xenophobic, you now have an explosive new argument t0 blow away immigration reform. If you are a staunch defender of the Glorious Second,  you can claim it would have been great if every Boston citizen had had an AR-15. Of course, Islamophobes are in hog heaven… It is sad for racists that those boys were white…

Then there’s West, Texas. Just a tragic accident. nonexistent inspections?  Please, this is Texas. Even the West victims don’t blame the company. Just one of those things. Could have happened anywhere. Who could have foreseen it wasn’t really such a good idea to store tons and tons of fertilizer in the plant – or build a school, houses and a nursing home within a stone’s throw of that plant?

Strengthen regulations?  That would only take away jobs. Jobs sorely needed by the folks in West. What they really need is fast federal funds to rebuild. I mean, unlike those whining folks in New York and Jersey who were hit by a little wind and rain then got greedy, the good Texans in West are true blue Americans and  are only asking for what they deserve – and to get back some of their tax money from the feds (and some more from Jersey, New York, and all those other liberal states where everyone has more money than patriotism).

Congress gets such a bum rap. Supposedly deadlocked, our brave and caring legislators rose up en mass and, in a magnificent show of bipartisanship, and did something about the senseless budget cuts mandated by the Sequester. With the across the board cuts crippling things like chemotherapy treatments for poor cancer patients, Head Start for poor kids, and nutrition programs for poor old folks, the Senate and House chose to give relief to the real victims of those draconian cuts: airlines and their customers. Who says  Congress doesn’t care…?

 Those cancer patients  are likely going to die anyway. Poor kids and seniors will always be with us (and besides, they’re just moochers). Businessmen – makers not takers   –  trapped in Duluth for three hours must be rescued from that near literal hell on earth…

I’m not going to mention gun control. What is there to say? 

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The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

US CONSTITUTION, Article III

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger…

US CONSTITUTION, Amendment Five

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

US CONSTITUTION, Amendment Six

An American citizen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on American soil, commits a myriad  of state and  federal crimes, including at least four counts of murder, hundreds of extremely aggravated assaults, and probably a score or more of other heinous acts. He faces a possible death sentence. At a minimum he faces multiple life sentences in  maximum security prison.

United States Senators, like virtually every other government office holders – state and federal  - take an oath to uphold the Constitution:

   I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Neither of the Constitutional Amendments – nor the oath – provide for any exceptions to the duties mandated (except for war in Amendment Five). There is no exception in Amendment Six for acts the President, or Congress choose to call “terrorist acts”.   There is no language in the Constitution providing for suspension of any of the rights granted to the people other than times of open rebellion.

In the 1866 case Ex Parte Milligan, 71 US 2, the Supreme Court ruled  - unanimously – that the suspension of habeas corpus was lawful, but military tribunals did not apply to citizens in states that had upheld the authority of the Constitution and where civilian courts were still operating. In essence, the Court ruled that military tribunals could not try civilians in areas where civil courts were open, even when the military had been authorized to detain individuals without trial. It observed further that during the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, citizens may be only held without charges, not tried, and certainly not executed by military tribunals; the writ of habeas corpus is not the right itself but merely the ability to issue orders demanding the right’s enforcement. (Wikipedia)

No crime is more detrimental to the nation than treason. However, the Constitution not only doesn’t reduce the rights of a defendant charged with treason but requires a higher standard of proof:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

US Constitution, Article III, Section 3

Even during and after World War II Americans charged with treason were entitled to a jury trial. During World War II – when the very existence of our nation was threatened by Germany and Japan – no federal court ruled that American citizens acting on American soil could be summarily stripped of the Constitutional rights by executive fiat.

 Last week at least two Senators demanded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be denied the Constitutional rights set out above and that he be tried by a military tribunal. He should be denied the due process – including the most sacred, the right to trial by jury – afforded to every criminal defendant simply because his crimes are called “terrorist acts”.

Lindsey Graham and John McCain have violated their oaths to  the Constitution. It’s not a close question. There is no legal precedent denying a citizen charged with crime – including treason – due process protection and the right to indictment and trial by jury. Graham and McCain are willing to surrender the heart of the Bill of Rights to the dubious argument that stripping terrorists  of basic Constitutional rights will, somehow, Make America Safer.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s crimes did grievous harm to the people of Boston and hundreds of participants in the Boston Marathon. If convicted, he should face the full measure of the law. Boston will recover, however, and its citizens wounds will, in time, heal.

If Graham, McCain and their supporters have their way, the entire country will suffer grievous harm. Our nation’s very foundation – its heart of liberty – the Constitution,  will suffer an enduring wound. Once opened, from that wound the blood of freedom may bleed away.

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William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

A Man for All Seasons

Coney Island!

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BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

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There are lots of sour things about getting old. One of the worst is watching people who were young when I came of age in the late fifties and early sixties reach old age and die.

When I was experiencing the early spring of adolescence, I became enraptured with Annette  Funicello, one of the original mouseketeers. To be more precise, I was enraptured by her precocious breasts that so nicely filled out her white sweater.  When I would see her swelling chest I would become a little dizzy and excited (why I felt those emotions I had no idea). As time passed and Annette and I both matured my fascination grew as her bosom grew more prominent.

My interest waned as I reached my mid teens. By then I understood what my reaction to her  comely tits meant. I knew enough about sex to know what I yearned for. Other, sexier women, Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner’s luscious big-titted Playments, for example, fueled my surging erotic fantasies.

Still, Funicello retained a near mythical place in my heart. She was the first to stir the sap, becoming the avatar of my boyish sexual desire.

Now, at seventy, she is gone. Another bright, alluring light of my youth extinguished. Only in sweet memory do her girlish face and figure burn bright.

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