Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

A Republic in the Balance

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Next week, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services—a case that will quite possibly be the most important to come before the court in my lifetime. The ruling, which is not expected for several months, will tell us whether or not the United States of America will remain a federal republic, or whether the great experiment is effectively over.

Despite the official name of the case, a total of 26 states—a majority of the union—have joined against the federal government. At stake is whether that federal government has the authority to mandate that all citizens of the United States purchase or obtain health insurance.

Obviously, the answer is ‘no.’ The founders crafted the U.S. Constitution so as to only grant the federal government particular, enumerated authorities (which can be found in Article 1, Section 8). In fact, because the government had a short list of things it could do, many of the document’s authors did not think it necessary to include a Bill of Rights. Why should we need to say that people have a freedom of speech (for example) when the government, limited to the enumerated powers, would be theoretically unable to limit that freedom anyway? Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist #84:

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WSAB: What Should Apple Buy? (Updated)

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Apple, Inc. has a lot of money. This probably goes without saying; the maker of Macintosh computers, iPods, iPhones, and iPads is obviously a very successful technology firm. But in the sixteen years since the then-beleaguered company was teetering on bankruptcy, Apple has amassed an unusual pile of cash. Most companies don’t sit on large sums of money, choosing instead to spend all the cash they earn (and sometimes more) on growing and expanding the business. Apple, however, puts it in the bank.

The company carries no debt, and has just a hair under $100 billion in petty cash lying around.

So Apple will be hosting a conference call at 9am ET tomorrow (Monday) to discuss what they will be doing with the money. They have a few options. They can issue a large dividend to their shareholders (along the lines of $107/share), buy back outstanding shares, invest in buying parts of other companies, buy other companies outright, or some combination of the above. Or they can buy 100 billion dollars worth of ice cream. It’s really up to them.

To give you some perspective on just how big 100 billion dollars is: Apple could buy Ford Motor Company, Time Warner, and Northrop Grumman . . . outright (based on their market cap values as of Friday evening). Who wouldn’t want to see what Apple would do with cars, media, and military hardware? I think the time has come for a user-friendly, iPad controllable Aerial iDrone for use against al-Qaeda militants.

So what do you think? What should Apple buy?

Update 3/19/2012: Apple announced this morning that they plan to begin issuing a quarterly dividend of $2.65/share and initiate a 10 billion dollar stock repurchase plan (buying back outstanding shares). They expect to spend about 45 billion dollars over three years with these programs, which would leave about half of their stockpile in-place. Unfortunately, there were no announced plans for ice cream or military hardware.

Justice in Afghanistan

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Imagine that a team of British soldiers is on a joint training mission with U.S. armed forces here in the United States. One of these hypothetical British soldiers leaves the base where they are training, drives into a nearby town, and begins shooting at innocent American citizens as they go about their daily business. He kills 16 men, women, and children. How would we react?

I can tell you one thing: the perpetrator of the violence would not be permitted to leave the United States. We would not accept the British Army airlifting him home and declaring that he’ll face military justice there. No, his crime would have been committed in the United States, under U.S. jurisdiction, and we would insist that he be brought to justice under the U.S. system. It’s quite simple: when you are a guest in a foreign country, even when you are there as part of an active military force, you must obey that country’s laws.

Sadly, a variant of this hypothetical situation played out Sunday in Afghanistan. A yet-unidentified U.S. Army Staff Sargent went on an inexplicable rampage in an Afghan village, killing 16 innocent civilians—nine children and seven adults. And what did we do? We promptly airlifted the perpetrator to Kuwait, and he is expected to be brought back to the U.S. soon to face trial. We’ve told our outraged Afghan brethren not to worry; we’ll make sure he faces justice.

Nonsense. The accused committed a horrific crime as a guest in a foreign country, and that country has the right to detain, try, and punish him for what he has done. The fact that the accused is a U.S. citizen is irrelevant. The fact that he is a U.S. Army soldier is irrelevant. When he went ‘rogue’ and started committing acts of violence outside of his military duties (and clearly outside the agreed-upon rules of engagement), he lost any protection he might otherwise have been entitled to. As an individual American on the streets of Afghanistan, outside of his official duties, he is clearly subject to Afghan legal jurisdiction.

We must immediately return the accused to Afghanistan and turn him over to the Afghan authorities so that he can face justice in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. We would not accept anything less if the nationalities involved were reversed.

Let Me Have My Android Updates!

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I really like Android, the mobile operating system developed by Google, its many partners in the Open Handset Alliance, and the open source community. It lacks the user-interface polish of the largely-defunct Hewlett-Packard (HP) WebOS, which was and remains the most user-friendly mobile operating system ever produced to-date. But Android is steadily improving in this area, and I have managed to make myself a comfortable home there—along with many other WebOS devotees who were all-but forced to abandon the platform thanks to HP’s mismanagement.

Today, I have two Android devices: the Motorola Droid 2 Global (Verizon) smartphone, and the Motorola Xoom FE tablet. They are good devices and I have few complaints. But the one issue I keep running across is the perennial failure of the manufacturers and wireless carriers to keep the Android OS up-to-date.

‘Power users’ like myself, forged in the crucible of the desktop computer, are accustomed to having new operating systems available to us shortly after their release. We install each new version of Windows, Mac OS, and/or our chosen Linux distribution on our PC’s as soon as they become available. We are the early adopters. We love getting our hands on the latest and the greatest, even if it still has some kinks that need to be worked out. We’re willing to accept some risk, complication, and annoyance in return for a seat at the cutting edge of computing. And for the entire history of general-purpose computing, there’s been nobody standing in the way of the ‘power user’ (at least when it comes to their own machines). If Microsoft released a new version of Windows, but HP or Dell or Sony somehow blocked it from being installed on the machines they had manufactured, we would be incensed! How dare they tell us what we can and can’t install on our machines?

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Judging People in Death

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As Christians, we must recognize that we have no right to judge the final disposition of somebody’s soul. Oh, we can and should judge behaviors, and condemn sin, especially within our own ranks (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:11-13). But in the end, when somebody dies, none of us have any right to assume that they have gone to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. Only God can judge them in death.

Most modern Christians would agree with this sentiment, at least to a point. If I told your average modern Christian that I was certain Adolf Hitler was rotting in Hell, most would (rightfully) correct me. Jesus Christ died on the cross to forgive all human sins—even those as gruesome, horrific, and revolting as Hitler’s. It is possible that Hitler, in the very last millisecond of his earthly life, was truly repentant for what he had done. And if he was, he might not have ended up where our limited human instincts might expect. God’s forgiveness extends to the worst sins, and is contingent on nothing more than our honest contrition and repentance.

This is all well-and-good in the theoretical, talking about historical figures like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others far removed from our lives today. Christian theology on forgiveness is a radical theology that has the potential to extend even to these monsters, so long as they seek and accept that forgiveness. But what about when it is our loved ones who die? What about cases where we mourn the death of a close relative or friend?

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.