Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

The Oaths of Office

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Gadsden Flag

In light of the madness that has occurred in the halls of power over the last several years—trillion dollar bailouts, nationalization of the auto and banking industries, a requirement that we buy health insurance whether we want it or not, etc.—I want to remind our officials of the solemn oaths they took upon taking their offices.

How many of our officials (on either side of the aisle) have actually worked to ‘support and defend’ the Constitution lately? You don’t support and defend something by shredding it, and the previous and current administrations seem to have had their Constitutional shredders working a lot of overtime.

The President of the United States, on taking office, promised this:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives promised this:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) 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.

Members of the federal judiciary, including Supreme Court justices, promised this:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me, according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution, and laws of the United States. So help me God.

Hold your representatives accountable. Demand that they do what they swore to do. If they refuse, and many of them will, it is incumbent on you and me to vote them out of office as soon as they are up for reelection . . . before elections, too, become part of the Constitution that the government just ignores when it’s inconvenient.

Health Bill Passes House of Representatives

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The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a sweeping health care reform bill by a narrow 219-212 majority. This version of the bill was passed by the U.S. Senate in December, and will now proceed to the President’s desk for signature or veto. President Barack Obama (D) is expected to sign the bill.

The House has also passed a reconciliation bill to make changes to the Senate reform plan by a similar 220-211 margin. The reconciliation bill will still need to be considered and approved by the Senate before going to the president for signature or veto.

The health care reform bill is considered to be the largest social program passed by the United States Congress in over forty years, and has been widely criticized by the Republican minority and the general public. Most recent polls indicate that solid majorities of the American public support health care reform, but oppose the specific bills passed by the House tonight.

Health Care We Can Believe In

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Contrary to the way it has been couched in the media and elsewhere, the debate going on in Congress tonight is not between ‘pro-health care’ and ‘anti-health care.’ There are a number of accurate and semi-accurate ways of presenting the argument, but that isn’t one of them. People like me who vehemently oppose the plan that will likely pass the House tonight don’t do so because we are ghouls who want children to die, or any of the other things that we are accused of. We do so because we think this plan is horrible and goes about reform in entirely the wrong way.

I concede without significant disagreement that access to health care is a human right. For many years, health care has been one of the few issues where I agree more with the ‘liberals’ than I do with the ‘conservatives.’ But the bill that will probably be heading to the President’s desk tonight is so fundamentally flawed that it will likely do more harm than good, and should be wholly rejected.

There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, I believe in the United States Constitution. Without a Constitutional amendment, health care is not and cannot be a federal issue. If we truly want to make health care available to everybody, it must be done through fifty state-based systems—the same way we have provided public schools to our nation through fifty state-based systems in the absence of an amendment to federalize it. There are a few elements of health care that rightfully fall in the federal purview, but they are things this bill doesn’t even cover! For example, the federal government (under the Interstate Commerce clause) may permit the sale of insurance plans across state lines, which would increase competition and decrease costs.

What else might a real reform plan include?

Read more . . .

What Did Jesus Look Like?

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Most educated people are well-aware that ‘classical’ depictions of Jesus—the European look and long, brown, wavy hair—are not a realistic depiction of what he probably looked like. Critics of Christianity will sometimes use this to pick on us for our supposed lack of scientific and historical curiosity, as-if our artistic depictions of Jesus have any import on . . . anything. Surprise; art is not science!

It is still an interesting thing to consider though. What did Jesus look like?

Msgr. Charles Pope writes on the Archdiocese of Washington blog about this and, while he comes to no definitive conclusion (nor should he), he does present some food for thought. Jesus was a Jewish man, likely of Semitic origin. Hair styles at the time are believed to be shorter than the traditional depiction, and Semitic hair tends to be coarser and darker. Semitic men tended to have larger noses.

The image at right is a forensic reconstruction based on the skull of a Semitic man from the 1st century. He probably looks a lot more like the real Jesus than the traditional, European depiction.

Congress Car in the Snow

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Super busy this weekend with a whole lot of catch-up stuff . . . buying a mattress, working on some techie stuff, and various other to-dos. I’m only half done so my posting may be a little sparse for a while yet.

In the interest of not leaving my faithful readers hanging, here is a picture I took all the way back on Saturday, January 30 but (for some reason) never posted. That was a really busy weekend, complete with a sick cat, snow, getting new phones (and a new carrier), and more . . . so it probably just slipped my mind. I stumbled upon it in my iPhoto gallery today.

The last picture I took on my AT&T BlackBerry Bold before trading it in for my Verizon Palm Pre Plus was of a U.S. Congressman’s car on the snowy streets of Washington, D.C. The California license plate says ‘US Congress’ on the left, and ’28’ on the right. Assuming that the ’28’ means ‘District 28,’ which is not necessarily the case, this would be Representative Howard Berman (D-CA 28th).

I see Congressmen’s cars fairly regularly in the area, but I still think it’s kinda cool.

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.