A funny thing happened in the Federal courts last week, which few people noticed other than the gun nuts and constitutional lawyers: the Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that Congress had the right to pass a law which would automatically dismiss any lawsuit brought against the gun industry for knowingly selling guns that would end up on the black market.

Guns are the bane of our existance. More people are dead from gunshots than any of us can bear. We read in the paper all the time about innocent victims of stray bullets, armed robberies, accidental shootings and stick-ups. What gives? Our society loves guns. That was the point of Michael Moore's film, "Bowling for Columbine."

The gun problem can be easily corrected, in several ways. First, strict gun control with strict background checks. Second, hold the gun industry responsible for its knowing distribution of lethal weapons into the hands of the worst scumbags society has to offer. New York City tried the second route, bringing a lawsuit against the gun industry. According to the Court of Appeals, "The City claimed that the Firearms Suppliers market guns to legitimate buyers with the knowledge that those guns will be diverted through various mechanisms into illegal markets."

Specifically, the lawsuit claimed the following:

Defendants have reason to know or should know that (a) some of the firearms they manufacture and/or distribute will be diverted into the hands of those who would violate the law, and (b) they could take steps to reduce the number of firearms that fall into the hands of criminals by changing their merchandising practices.

Reasonable measures are available to ensure that the guns sold and distributed by defendants do not find their way into a secondary illegal market.

Defendants could, but do not, monitor, supervise or regulate the sale and distribution of their guns by their downstream distributors or deal-customers. Defendants could, but do not, monitor, supervise or train distributors or dealers to avoid sales that feed the illegal secondary market. Defendants make no effort to determine those distributors and dealers whose sales disproportionately supply the illegal secondary market.

The case also asserted that "The United States leads the world in the number of people and in the number of children who die and are injured each year by guns. The yearly toll of several thousand persons killed compares to no more than a few hundred per year in every other industrialized country. A teenager in the United States is more likely to die from a gunshot wound than from all natural causes combined."

That lawsuit was chugging along when Congress decided that cases like this were bad for America. To protect the gun makers, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Of course, George W. Bush, the Texas cowboy, signed that bill into law in 2005. That meant that lawsuits like the one brought by New York City were in jeopardy unless the City could find a loophole in the law to keep the case going. It couldn't find any such loophole, and the Court of Appeals ruled that this lawsuit has to be dismissed.

Very few industries in this country get favorable treatment from the government like the gun industry. Is there a macho strand in the national DNA that compels normal people to fall in love with the one instrument that can cause instant death, even by accident? What does it say about a society that lets the cat of the bag in allowing millions of guns to circulate into the hands of God knows what? Once the guns are in the wrong hands, you can't get them back. Anyone with a brain will tell you this would be a very different country without guns. Probably a lot safer.

Guns will never become an issue any national political campaign except to the extent candidates fall over themselves in promising to the gun nuts that they will protect the proverbial "right to bear arms" and that they themselves fondly remember going hunting with their fathers and uncles when they were little. Guns are like the Bible. Some voters will not support your candidacy if you come out against gun ownership and promote strict gun control.

The silver lining about guns was that the Supreme Court has never ruled that the "right to bear arms" in the Second Amendment actually endorses a right to own a gun. This may sound strange to people who only know the Second Amendment to refer to the "right to bear arms." But that's not what the Amendment really says. It says this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

What the hell does this mean? No one knows. There are too many commas, too many clauses, for any one phrase in the Second Amendment to have any meaning that makes sense in the context of other provisions of the Amendment. Used to be that scholars believed it did not protect any individual right but a collective public right to have a militia, such as the National Guard.

The Supreme Court is about the re-interpret the Second Amendment to protect some kind of individual gun ownership. We know this because the Supreme Court heard oral argument a few weeks ago in a case arising from Washington DC, a city rife with gun violence. The City banned handguns: "This law restricts residents from owning handguns, excluding those grandfathered in by registration prior to 1975 and those possessed by active and retired law enforcement officers. The law also requires that all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock."

The gun nuts who want the Second Amendment re-interpreted immediately challenged the Washington DC law, claiming that it violates the Constitution. The general sense is that the Supreme Court, with its recent George W. Bush appointees, is going to find in their favor. A court that has been scaling back individual rights over the last several decades is going to have to jump through hoops to find that the vaguely worded Second Amendment gives you the right to own a gun. The Supreme Court's expanded interpretation of the Second Amendment will likely be issued at the end of June. The presidential candidates will avoid any criticism of the anticipated Supreme Court decision the way that the rest of us would tiptoe around a loaded pistol sitting on the kitchen table.

No one seriously expects that campaign coverage by the major U.S. media will focus on issues that actually matter to people. Health care, the environment, the economy, government-sponsored torture, war and peace, etc., are too boring for any extended debate, at least in the minds of the media. Instead, its about personality and scandal, real and imagined.

Anyone paying attention to public debate over the past month would have to wonder if the American political system has jumped off the cliff into a shitpile the size of the Rhode Island. This country is in very serious trouble. The environment has reached a tipping point that will destroy the ecosystem and make the lives of our children and grandchildren miserable and very, very difficult as global temperatures continue to rise and corporate interests further exploit and destroy our natural resources in the pursuit of profits. The war in Iraq will not end and no one knows how to get out of the castastrophic mess that George W. Bush and his foolish supporters in Congress dragged this country into. The economy is stuck in a shitpile the size of Long Island as jobs continue to move overseas for cheap labor and the price of gas reaches once-unimaginable heights.

A national referendum on these and other issues would require a serious look at where we are and how we got there. Things will probably only get worse if we can't stare at ourselves in the mirror and do something about the cancerous growth that is staring back at us. There will be no national referendum this time around, just as we had none last time around.

Instead, the media is focusing on Barack Obama's associations, real or imagined. His religious pastor has given some incendiary speeches over the years. Obama is being held responsible for this. Obama sat on a Board of Directors with a former member of the Weather Underground, a violent group during the days of rage of the late 1960's and 1970's. This is all bullshit. Anyone in American politics who has any aspirations to higher office is going to associate with questionable people, if only to reach out to the broader community. And prior to the "scandal" over Rev. Wright's speeches, did anyone ever give a damn about a candidate's religious mentors?

The issue over Obama's relationship with Rev. Wright is borderline racist. Why are only blacks held to answer for their associations? Why is it that only black candidates have to repudiate the views of Louis Farrakahn? Although Rev. Wright blamed the United States for the 9/11 attacks (he said the chickens had come home to roost), Republican candidates associate with the same cast of characters. Rudy Giuliani ran for president this year as a 9/11 hero, yet he happily accepted the endorsement of Rev. Pat Robertson, who blamed 9/11 on our society's acceptance of gays and lesbians, among other things. Giuliani did not have to answer for his association with this lunatic. John McCain solicited the endorsement of a nutjob, Rev. Hagee, who doesn't like Catholics and said that the hurricane decimated New Orleans because of our acceptance of gays and lesbians.

As I was writing this, a columnist for the New York Times focused on this theme, asking why Obama is being raked over the coals while Republicans get a free pass for their questionable associations. Describing a video of Rev. Hagee's speeches, columnist Frank Rich notes:

the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

John McCain sought out Rev. Hagee's endorsement. The columnist Frank Rich says there is a double standard for black politicians, and there is. John McCain embraced a man whose unlawful war killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 American soldiers, President Bush. Isn't it worse to associate with a killer like President Bush than Rev. Wright? The shocking reality is that no one is asking this question.

The Times over the weekend further noted this campaign's resemblance to the 1988 presidential campaign. For those too young to remember, George H.W. Bush ran against Democrat Michael Dukakis by attacking his patriotism. In particular, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis, who went to Harvard Law School, would not endorse a law requiring school teachers to lead their children in the pledge of alllegiance. As the Times points out, "He did so on the basis of an advisory opinion from the state court, which said the legislation was unconstitutional." So the governor will not sign a law that violates the Constitution. No matter to the Republican establishment, which knows that most Americans will not appreciate the finer points of Dukakis' objections. Attack his patriotism, ignore the issues, get elected and allow the country to rot further. George W. Bush and the modern Republican establishment has learned a lot from their elders.

The Byrds could have gotten lost in the shuffle between the Beatles and Bob Dylan. The Byrds were a little bit of both. They held their own during the 1960's, turning Dylan's folkie songs into rock classics through the Beatles' sense of melody. But the Byrds were not a cover band. The song below, Eight Miles High is one of the all time greats, capturing the spirit of the era. The video was made before anyone had the technology to make serious videos. Ignore the scotch tape holding together the special effects. Music doesn't get any better than this.

We all know the system is rotten. Rotten to the core, in fact. As kids, we learned about the American political system, and how Congress passes bills and the President signs them into law, and the cartoons or examples provided to us showed concerned citizens speaking to their representatives in government in order to get a law passed. Representative democracy.

But the truth is far different. No one told us about lobbyists, the people who meet with government officials in order to get laws passed favorable to their corporate clients. No one told us about campaign contributions, which serve as legalized bribes when large donors spend a fortune to get certain politicians elected. And no one told us that the government sometimes passes laws that place profits over people.

The New York Times today provides a glimpse into this rotten process. Congress is regulating the tobacco industry.According to the paper, "The legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration the power to oversee tobacco products, would try to reduce smoking’s allure to young people by banning most flavored cigarettes, including clove and cinnamon."

But there is a catch. Not all flavored cigarettes will be regulated under this law. Menthol cigarettes fit inside that loophole. According to the Times, "Menthol masks the harsh taste of cigarettes for beginners and may make it harder for the addicted to kick the smoking habit. For years, public health authorities have worried that menthol might be a factor in high cancer rates in African-Americans."

So what's the point in exempting menthol cigarettes from the new regulations? They are too profitable to regulate them. Get this:

The reason menthol is seen as politically off limits, despite those concerns, is that mentholated brands are so crucial to the American cigarette industry. They make up more than one-fourth of the $70 billion American cigarette market and are becoming increasingly important to the industry leader, Philip Morris USA, without whose lobbying support the legislation might have no chance of passage.

“I would have been in favor of banning menthol,” said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, who supports the bill. “But as a practical matter that simply wasn’t doable.”

In other words, profit over people. If menthol makes the cigarettes taste better and it therefore induces more people to take up and continue smoking, it would be an easy target for government regulation. But its too profitable for the tobacco industry to regulate. So menthol stays.

Riding out the final months of his disgraceful presidency, in which George W. Bush turned everything into shit with his magic wand, this thoroughly dishonest Commander in Chief is trying to drag everyone else through the shitpile with him. In Israel this week, Bush launched a thinly-veiled attack against Barack Obama, calling him a terrorist appeaser because Obama does not see the world in black and white and wants to engage in dialogue with other world leaders, including precisely the dictators and dangerous men that, my view, are not in any way distinguishable from Bush, a terrorist by any rational definition. Bush did not refer to Obama by name, but your head would have to be filled with concrete to think he was talking about anyone else.

If George W. Bush wants to see a real terrorist appeaser, he should look in the mirror. Looking back at him would be a man whose outrageous and lawless war killed over 4,000 American soldiers and wounded many thousands more. A man who completely squandered the international good-will that came our way following September 11. A man who went to war against a country that did not attack us, posed no threat to us, and was too weak to attack anyone else. A man whose disgusting war killed hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, many of them guilty of nothing. May the good Lord condemn this little man who is single-handedly destroying this country brick by brick, every day in every way. Traitors like Bush who've sold this country down the river have no right to question anyone else's patriotism.

Macho politics will get you killed. Macho politics will bring you home in a pine box. It will paralyze you and destroy your life and the lives of your loved ones. That's what happens when you go to war for shits and giggles. Hard to believe that a progressive has a chance to replace Bush, but Obama is going to have to work at it. We've become used to mediocrity and a generation of Americans don't know any better. It's been eight long years.

Barack Obama has been the subject of a smear campaign since March, as right wing ideologues have blamed him for the provocative views of his pastor. Of course, the robotics in the Republican party ate this garbage up like an alley cat in the Dumpster. Anything to tar and feather someone who does not boldly stand for "patriotic" values and support a war that has absolutely placed this country at great risk of another terror attack and totally distracted our response to September 11. Unlike John Kerry, who was swift-boated and turned into a war coward (despite his heroic medals), Obama is fighting back. Let him take Bush's words and cram them up his, well, you know where.

If we are to slowly drag ourselves from the hell-hole that Bush and the Republican warmongers have thrown us into, Obama is going to have to join Bush and John McCain at the hip. McCain supported all of Bush's disgraceful foreign policy initiatives, costing this country hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of dead American soldiers. Obama is going to have to fight back and take advantage of Bush's 30 percent disapproval rating. Turn McCain into Bush. Go get him Barack. And don't let up.

Here is what Obama said, according to the New York Times. Do it, Obama. Tell it like it is.

“George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” Mr. Obama said at a midday forum here, listing the Iraq war, the strengthening of Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden’s being still at large and stalled diplomacy in other parts of the Middle East among their chief failings.

“If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said, “that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place.”

. . .

Consistently throughout his comments about foreign policy, Mr. Obama yoked Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain as one entity, mentioning their names in the same sentence 10 times in barely 10 minutes. He portrayed them as being not only inflexible, but also “naïve and irresponsible,” the characteristics they ascribe to him.

The remarks were made a day after Mr. Bush, addressing the Israeli Parliament, spoke of what he called a tendency toward “appeasement” in some quarters of the West, similar to that shown to the Nazis before the invasion of Poland.

Mr. Bush also said he rejected negotiations with “terrorists and radicals,” implying that Democrats favored such a position. Mr. Obama said he found the remarks offensive.

“After almost eight years, I did not think I could be surprised by anything that George Bush says,” Mr. Obama said, criticizing Mr. Bush for raising an internal issue on foreign soil. “But I was wrong.”

. . .

In the Bush-McCain world view, everyone who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an appeaser,” Mr. Obama said.

The California Supreme Court last week decided that the laws making same-sex marriages illegal violate the civil rights laws. I don't have to tell you how significant this. California, by far, is the country's largest state. You could say that, as California goes, so goes the nation. That's not true in this instance, though. Most of the state courts that have ruled on the legality of anti-same sex marriage laws have upheld the prohibition.

I don't say this out of arrogance, but the general public knows very little about how the courts work in this country. For some people, the criminal justice system is summed up by the O.J. Simpson case, where a jury set free a guy who in all likelihood had something to do with the brutal stabbings of his wife and her friend. And the civil justice system is summed up by the McDonald's hot coffee case, where a woman got a large jury award after scalding herself with hot coffee. Of course, these cases are not representative of the legal system. Neither is the same-sex marriage case from California. It's worth taking a look at what the court actually did, brushing aside the hateful and ignorant comments about the consequences of this ground-breaking ruling.

Here is what the court did. The Supreme Court has interpreted the U.S. Constitution as protecting the fundamental right to marry, raise children and procreate. This language is not in the Constitution, but the Court decided many years ago that any civilized society would recognize these rights as fundamental. Most state courts have interpreted their own constitutions the same way. These rights are not absolute, however. You have the right to marry, but you can't marry your sister or have multiple wives. That's because, while the right to marry is fundamental, the government does have some control over this issue. But the government cannot prevent you from marrying someone else without a compelling reason. There are compelling reasons to prevent people from marrying children, their sisters, or more than one person. The question in the California case (and in all cases involving same-sex marriage) is whether the government can identify any compelling reason why two consenting adult men (or women) cannot marry each other if they are not married to anyone else.

The short answer to this question is that there is no compelling reason to prevent same-sex marriages. It is not a compelling reason that society has frowned upon these unions in the past. It is also not a compelling reason that some people have religious or moral objections to same-sex marriages. Were that the case, the Supreme Court would have upheld laws making it illegal for people of different races to marry. Instead, in 1967, the Supreme Court struck down those laws despite claims these laws were necessary to ensure the purity of the races.

As the California court said, "tradition alone . . . generally has not been viewed as a sufficient justification for perpetuating, without examination the restriction or denial of a fundamental constitutional right."

Over the last decade or so, other state courts have found ways to continue the prohibition against same-sex marriages. They did this by playing games with or outright misinterpreting the language in prior Supreme Court rulings on the right to marry, or side-stepping the issue by holding that elected officials in the state legislatures are the proper avenues for making same-sex marriage legal. These courts had no guts, and they should be ashamed of themselves. The California Supreme Court did the right thing, consequences be damned.

There will be consequences. Anti-gay-marriage organizations in California are trying to get a measure on the ballot this November so that voters can reject same-sex marriage and overturn the court ruling. They only way this measure can pass is through intensive lobbying by "pro-family" groups who hate gay marriage and do not want society to recognize this lifestyle. That means that gays and lesbians will be demonized through television and other advertisements, and candidates who support same-sex marriages or do not condemn them strongly enough will be deemed radicals in favor of the "homosexual agenda." It will not be pretty to see this issue dragged into the political process.

Hindsight is 20/20, but it's hard to believe that no one in the Federal government saw it coming, that a court would find that paper money discriminates against visually-impaired people. It happened on May 20, 2008, when the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. paper money discriminates against the blind.

The case is American Council of the Blind v. Paulson. The case interprets Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which protects against disability discrimination in government programs that receive federal money. For most of us, spending paper money involves taking it from our wallets or purses and giving it to the guy behind the counter. But shut your eyes and figure out if that bill is a $5 bill or a $20 bill. That's what it's like to be visually-impaired. So the D.C. Circuit is ordering the federal government to do something about it.

The Court notes that "The current design of paper money springs from the world of the sighted." It adds:

Upon casual inspection, anyone with good vision can readily discern the value of U.S. currency; yet even the most searching tactile examination will reveal no difference between a $100 bill and a $1 bill. The Secretary has identified no reason that requires paper currency to be uniform to the touch. Instead, the fact that U.S. paper currency does not include features that are detectable by the visually impaired appears to have been a result of the type of “thoughtlessness and indifference” that Congress targeted under section 504. Moreover, the centrality to the Rehabilitation Act of empowering the disabled to engage in economic activity imbues the accessibility of currency with special importance. The visually impaired can hardly be “empower[ed] . . . to maximize [their] employment, economic self-sufficiency, independence, and inclusion and integration into society,” if in everyday transactions they cannot use the paper currency that they possess without the assistance of third persons. Where the basic task of independently evaluating the worth of currency in excess of 99 cents is difficult or impossible, the visually impaired are forever relegated to depend on “the kindness of strangers” to shop for groceries, hire a taxi, or buy a newspaper or cup of coffee.

This decision hits the federal government hard. The government defends itself by arguing that the blind can find ways to cope with the burden of paper money, i.e., relying on others to advise the nature of a $10 or $20 bill, using expensive computer equipment or folding their bills in a certain way to distinguish them from each other. But the Court of Appeals isn't buying any of this: "The Secretary's argument is analogous to contending that merely because the mobility impaired may be able either to rely on the assistance of strangers or to crawl on all fours in navigating architectural obstacles, they are not denied meaningful access to public buildings."

The government also suggests that there is no evidence that the visually-impaired have been scammed as a result of their inability to distinguish between denominations. The Court of Appeals suggests this is "[a] somewhat astounding proposition on its face" as the government "implies that criminal victimization is a necessary predicate for the disabled to invoke the rights protected under section 504. However, section 504 “is intended to insure that qualified individuals receive services in a manner consistent with basic human dignity.”

In a disability discrimination case, the government can defend itself by arguing that accommodating the disabled will be an "undue burden." Not here, though. The government can afford to redesign paper money, and apparently suggesting that $1 bills can stay as they are, the court notes that "approximately half the paper currency that the Bureau prints in any given year are $1 bills." The government has redesigned paper currency in 1996 and 2004 to prevent counterfeiting, and it apparently squandered that opportunity to throw in some other changes to paper money that would have accommodated the disabled. Since other currency systems -- apparently abroad -- use different bill sizes or other ways to distinguish paper currency by touch, "the Secretary’s burden in demonstrating that implementing an accommodation would be unduly burdensome is particularly heavy."

The result seems so obvious. Blind people cannot tell the difference between a $1 bill and a $50 bill. Why did the government even bother defending itself in this case?

It takes a bullshit artist to know that someone else is a bullshit artist. For a few years, Scott McClellan was a national laughingstock as President Bush's spokesman. It was McClellan who had to defend the indefensible and bob and weave after reporters began asking too many questions about the administration's shenanigans. But we all knew that McClellan was just the spokesman and that, hey, someone's gotta answer the questions.

McClellan is now calling shenanigans on Bush and Co., in a new memoir.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

. . .

[I]n a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary."

. . .

Bush is depicted as an out-of-touch leader, operating in a political bubble, who has stubbornly refused to admit mistakes. McClellan defends the president's intellect -- "Bush is plenty smart enough to be president," he writes -- but casts him as unwilling or unable to be reflective about his job.

"A more self-confident executive would be willing to acknowledge failure, to trust people's ability to forgive those who seek redemption for mistakes and show a readiness to change," he writes.

In another section, McClellan describes Bush as able to convince himself of his own spin and relates a phone call he overheard Bush having during the 2000 campaign, in which he said he could not remember whether he had used cocaine. "I remember thinking to myself, 'How can that be?' " he writes.