Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Muppets



This clip from The Muppet Movie (1979) always makes me smile. Note the cameo by Steve Martin toward the end.

It appears that there will be a new Muppet movie in 2011, so it's time to catch up with our shaggy, googly-eyed friends: Ode to Joy, Popcorn and Bohemian Rhapsody should brighten your day.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

No... really. It's called "tyranny."

When "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (you know, the law that is currently reducing patient care and driving up prices) passed the U.S. Congress, I was as angry and as disgusted with government as I've ever been. My blog posting on that evening was entitled, "Tyranny", and I referred to the bill as "unconstitutional, immoral and fiscally unsustainable". Those who disagreed took issue both with my use of the word "tyranny" - apparently imprecise and inflammatory - and my assertion of unconstitutionality. Interestingly, no one contested "immoral" or "fiscally unsustainable", but I'm sure critics have more important things to do, like polishing their jack boots and competing for spots on Death Panels.

I'm doubling down.

The key provisions of the "health care" "reform" act are unconstitutional. Ever since soon-to-be-ex-Speaker Pelosi deemed the very question of constitutionality un-serious, sober people have come to understand that, in fact, relying upon the Commerce Clause to justify the bill's primary mechanisms is shameless, utter nonsense. Lawsuits claiming that the bill is invalid on constitutional grounds are piling up, while judges and scholars are falling over themselves to confirm the validity (and, yes, seriousness) of that argument.

The American belief is that man is born into this world completely free, and that all subsequent joys, rewards, benefits, and consequences - both pleasurable and painful - are primarily determined by what man does with that freedom. The U.S. Constitution acknowledges this, and establishes government not to grant individual liberties, but to protect man from encroachment upon those liberties (including encroachments by the government itself). The U.S. constitution then grants very specific powers - "enumerated powers" - that give the government the right and ability to perform certain functions toward this end. Those powers not given to the government by the Constitution are very simply unconstitutional. Period.

Over the last 100 years (another direct result of the 17th Amendment), the U.S. Supreme Court has colluded with the U.S. Congress (the USSC is confirmed and funded by Congress) to expand the accepted understanding of one of these powers: the ability "to regulate [...] commerce among the several States". The interstate commerce clause was originally and rightfully seen as a firm restriction of Congress's ability to enact legislation. However, we have come to the point where some believe that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the ability to do anything, including forcing a private individual to transact business with private companies to obtain a service against the will of the individual - as in the health care reform law.

If government can confiscate your property, your income, and your freedom to make your own economic and medical choices, what can't it do, exactly? And if the answer is "nothing", then that's tyranny.

(And Mr. Obama, would you please clarify if this really is a tax, or if - as you said in 2009 - you still "absolutely reject that notion"? It actually does matter to those of us who have to pay it...)

December 13 UPDATE: Health Care Law Ruled Unconstitutional:

In a 42-page opinion issued in Richmond, Virginia, Judge Hudson wrote that
the law's central requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance
exceeds the regulatory authority granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

No kidding.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Long live rock and roll.

On Saturday night, I was in New York City with my brother to attend a concert at Maxwell's - just across the river in Hoboken, NJ. The opening band is one of my favorite garage / surf / hillbilly bands called, The Woggles. They were followed by the always entertaining Southern Culture on the Skids. A grand time was had by all.

Billboard magazine even wrote a review of the show.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Woggles:







Friday, July 30, 2010

Pink Martini



This evening, I ambled down to Barbican Hall, hoping to score a ticket to the sold out Pink Martini show. I was standing desperately in the "returns" line when someone simply walked up, handed me a ticket, and said that she was giving it to me for nothing. I already liked Pink Martini, but somehow, free music sounds better.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Limited government and the problem of Progressivism.

George F. Will has an outstanding column today about the fundamental incompatibility between the constitutional vision for limited government and the contrasting view of The Progressives (Wilsonians). (Read the article by clicking here.)

I am fascinated with this conflict inherent in our modern politics. The RestoreFederalism website is my attempt to focus attention on a specific, emblematic issue at the core of this debate. Three years ago, very few people were talking about it. Today, articles on the subject are written every week.

Now that's progress.

Image is James Madison by Gilbert Stuart.

Friday, May 28, 2010

To live is to fly.

Painting by Michael Sowa

Won't say I love you babe
Won't say I need you babe
But I'm going to get you babe
and I will not do you wrong
Living's mostly wasting time
and I waste my share of mine
but it never feels too good
so let's not take too long
You're as soft as glass and I'm a gentle man
we got the sky to talk about
and the world to lie upon

Days up and down they come
like rain on a conga drum
forget most, remember some
but don't turn none away
Everything is not enough
nothing is too much to bear
where you been is good and gone
all you keep's the getting there
To live is to fly low and high
so shake the dust off of your wings
and the sleep out of your eyes

It's goodbye to all my friends
It's time to go again
Think of all the poetry
and the pickin' down the line
I'll miss the system here
the bottom's low and the treble's clear
but it don't pay to think too much
on the things you leave behind
I may be gone but I won't be long
I'll be bringing back the melody
and the rhythm that I find

We all got holes to fill
and them holes are all that's real
some fall on you like a storm
sometimes you dig your own
But choice is yours to make
time is yours to take
some dive into the sea
some toil upon the stone
To live is to fly low and high
so shake the dust off of your wings
the sleep out of your eyes

Monday, March 29, 2010

Anna Elizabeth

Our daughter, Anna Elizabeth Truslow, was born on March 29, 2010 at 4:35 in the afternoon. She weighed eight pounds and eleven ounces, and was twenty one and a half inches long.

We continue to update truslow.org with the latest photos of both girls.



Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Crow



One of my favorite albums over the last year has been Steve Martin's bluegrass / banjo album called, "The Crow." As Steve once said in an old stand-up routine, "You just can't sing a depressing song when you're playing the banjo... When you're playing the banjo, everything's okay... I think it's the one thing that could have saved Nixon." The video above is the title song from that album, but if you click here, you can watch an absolutely amazing performance with Steve and other banjo luminaries on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Tyranny


The "health care" "reform" bill forced through the U.S. Congress this evening is unconstitutional, immoral and fiscally unsustainable. The process by which this bill was passed is deceitful, plainly corrupt, unbecoming of that body, and assures thirty more years of bitter, partisan divide ("hope" that President Obama would unite this country was exposed for the myth it was). The bill creates for citizens a new relationship with the federal government that is quintessentially un-American, and antithetical to the Framer's core belief that government is created to secure individual liberties. It is the most consequential (not to mention entirely untested) change to the American way of life in almost a century, and every one of those who voted for the bill should be removed from office come November.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

- C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock
State legislatures should act immediately to repeal the 17th Amendment and end this tyranny of the mob.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Don't Do That

Let the wild rumpus start.
From Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

Don't Do That
It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything
hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red
along with some resentment I’d held in
for a few weeks, which was not helped
by the sight of little nameless things
pierced with toothpicks on the tables,
or by talk that promised to be nothing
if not small. But I’d consented to come,
and I knew what part of the house
their animals would be sequestered,
whose company I loved. What else can I say,

except that old retainer of slights and wrongs,
that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown—
I’d brought him along, too. I was out
to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me,
but did not ask about my soul, which was when
I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red
to find the right kind of glass, and pour.
I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall,
then walked past a group of women
dressed to be seen, undressing them
one by one, and went up the stairs to where

the Rottweilers were, Rosie and Tom,
and got down with them on all fours.
They licked the face I offered them,
and I proceeded to slick back my hair
with their saliva, and before long
I felt like a wild thing, ready to mess up
the party, scarf the hors d’oeuvres.
But the dogs said, No, don’t do that,
calm down, after a while they open the door
and let you out, they pet your head, and everything
you might have held against them is gone,
and you’re good friends again. Stay, they said.
This poem by Stephen Dunn was found in The New Yorker, June 8, 2009.

Monday, January 25, 2010

So... how ya' doin'?

"Falling Man" (Gold Butte, Nevada), by Kenneth Johnson

As Robert Plant once said, "It's been a long time since I wrote in my blog."

Fatherhood, jobs and whatnot have kept me frantically busy and away from the online project I envisioned at the end of 2008. I have interpreted 13 months of inactivity as a definitive sign that the project will not get underway soon. It is time to shelve hope (a common practice these days), and do what one can do.

Let me 'splain 2009. No... there is too much, let me sum up:

I spent the first nine months of this year being run ragged by employment and fatherhood. Thankfully, I was able to sneak in some joyful, notable events: I kept up with my running, including the ING Half-Marathon and The Peachtree Road Race (10k). We traveled to New Orleans for a Liberty Fund conference. I escaped to Baltimore to see the Chelsea / AC Milan soccer match. We visited Sewanee twice. I traversed the country by train, from Atlanta to Tucson.

In October, I turned 40 - thank you, thank you - and celebrated by writing two articles that were published. The first was on the subject of the 17th Amendment and was printed in Roll Call. The second addressed specific questions of morality in the health care debate and was printed in The American Thinker.

Then, at the end of October, I learned that I would have to leave GSU at the end of the year as a result of the university's accreditation process (too many non-Ph.D.s) and everything stopped - again. A full-court job hunt began. It was like having a third (or if you count parenthood, a fourth) job.

The year ended well, with a family (Truslow / Ferguson) Christmas trip to Jekyll Island, Georgia.

2010 will be filled with all sorts of exciting changes, fo' shizzle. I expect so many changes that I doubt I can keep everyone informed... unless I blog it. Watch for right-side updates this week.

So, here we are again.