Ebbs and eddies

Cognitive dissonance
I call your attention to an excellent story in the online edition of the Athens Banner-Herald. This should be required reading for anybody who takes seriously Republicans’ self-serving and self-evidently ludicrous blather about their deep and abiding respect for the Constitution, and how it’s being destroyed by the (activists, socialists, Marxists, radicals, Dementors, Legions of Lord Voldemort … pick your bug-eyed epithet of choice) of the “democrat party” and the Obama administration.

Trust me: When people who totally trashed the Bill of Rights in the name of fighting terror tell you how much they love the Constitution, you should definitely listen.

But that’s not what the Athens piece is about. It’s about the curious ways some Republicans have of squaring their supposed reverence for the Constitution with their agenda to rewrite it.

Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia explains: "We need to do a lot of tweaking to make the Constitution as it was originally intended, instead of some perverse idea of what the Constitution says and does."

OK, linguists and logicians. Break that one down.

So … the Constitution needs “tweaking” to make it “as it was originally intended.” Which, it should go without saying, is something the likes of Paul Broun and Jeff Sessions and Michele Bachmann understand infinitely better than intellectual midgets like James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, etc., who wrote it in the first place.

Bachmann’s proposed amendment is especially priceless. The founder of the congressional tea party caucus and one of the most consistently entertaining spokesloons of the Nutcase Right wants the Constitution to restrict the president's ability to sign international treaties. Why? Because she’s convinced the Obama administration could replace our monetary system with some sort of global currency.

‘Fess up, now: Weren’t you getting nostalgic for those halcyon days of black helicopters and unconditional U.S. surrender to the Trilateral Commission?

Still reeks

The Troy Anthony Davis case stinks. There’s just nothing about either the conviction – or, for that matter, some of the defenses of this guy -- that smells like justice.

Davis, in case you’ve been on Mars for the last 20 years, is on Death Row for the 1989 murder of Mark McPhail, a Savannah police officer who, although he was off duty at the time (working security for Burger King), heroically rushed to the defense of a homeless man who was being assaulted, and got shot to death for his trouble.

McPhail was a Columbus High alum, and his family still lives here. I can’t imagine what they must be feeling, and maybe I need to admit I’d probably feel exactly the way they do. They’ve been waiting more than 20 years for justice, and they want this over with.

But when people as distinguished, as different and as ideologically diverse as Jimmy Carter, Bob Barr, Desmond Tutu and former FBI chief Williams Sessions all say there’s something wrong with this conviction, you have to wonder.

U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. said of Davis’ latest – and perhaps last – evidentiary review that it “casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction” but is “largely smoke and mirrors."

Just how much “additional, minimal doubt” about the guilt of somebody sentenced to die should it take to give reasonable people pause?

The bigger question, and one that really eats at me: Why are we, as individuals and as a culture, so much more outraged about the possibility of somebody guilty getting off light than we are about somebody innocent being imprisoned or executed?

There’s just no moral stature in that. None.

Speaking of innocence …

A Houston man was set free last month after 27 years – twenty-seven years, man – for a gang rape he had no part in. DNA evidence excluded him as one of the perpetrators. Michael Anthony Green is 45, meaning he’s spent more than half his life in the pen for a violent crime he didn’t commit.

Oh, and here’s a nice footnote: Authorities now know who did do it, but the statute of limitations has expired. So three guilty guys are free, and Green has been in the slammer since he was 18.

The atrocious frequency of stories like this would trigger all our sanctimonious superiority about human rights and justice if they took place in places like Iran or Libya (which, no doubt, they do). So why does this keep happening here, and why does it keep getting relegated to the back rows of our collective consciousness and conscience?

Here’s what we should do. We pass laws that say whenever one of these wrongly convicted folks is cleared, there is an immediate and detailed review of the arrest, investigation, trial and conviction. And anybody found to have engaged in willful misconduct does the time society owes the dude who just got out. Every damn hour of it.

Police blotter

A Houston priest is free on bond after allegedly threatening insurance giant Aflac and its employees with violence.

John Rouse –Father John Rouse, according to his lawyer – is accused of suggesting to a customer service rep that if his claim wasn’t settled promptly, he’d be back with (a) a shotgun, (b) a bomb, and/or (3) an airplane.

Obviously, this guy hasn’t been convicted of anything, so let’s play it by the book and presume him innocent. But if he’s not, you have to wonder: Just what denomination does this Padre represent? Whatever it’s selling, I’m pretty sure I don’t want any.

Vocabulary update

TV puts people into totally artificial and contrived situations and calls it “reality.”

Sports fans wager real money on real games involving real players and call it "fantasy."

What am I missing?
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