Libby Spencer gives yet another example of why it’s getting harder and harder to parody these nuts:
Just when you think they’ve hit rock bottom, the GOPers dig to a new low:
Newly minted Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a lecture posted to his YouTube channel that Congressional laws banning child labor are forbidden by the US Constitution.
Well I guess you could call this the GOP’s first attempt at actual job creation.
Via Woody, the man of a thousand blogs. I’m stealing this comment from Rick on his Facebook page as the best response: “We musn’t deny our citizens the opportunity to “bootstrap” it. Welfare is demeaning, and only encourages laziness. Our children don’t need hand outs, they need hand tools.”
Poopyman
Breaking news! Writers for Onion and SNL have given up! They’ve just been placed on suicide watch.
Poopyman
Seriously? This is a Yoo Ess frickin’ Senator that said that? In 2011?
RSR
That’s pretty well aligned with the ‘deport the latinos so we can send the urban black youth out to the field to pick the crops’ scenario from that western NY candidate.
matryoshka
And chickens, so they can get medical care.
Comrade Javamanphil
That would be exceptionally stupid policy in Utah, especially. Unemployment rates would quadruple or quintuple overnight.
maya
I can haz iPick?
Paul in KY
Par for the course anymore. I guess he sees all those kids out there in Utah just wasting their time all day playing & working on their Joesph Smith dioramas & thought ‘Why can’t they be helping our local biznesses. Their small, nimble fingers can clean out the chicken pluckers better than any adult Mexican’.
Speaking as a Democrat, when your opposition is on record as opposing Child Labor Laws, can’t we paint them in a bad light? Is there a good commercial in there somewhere?
Poopyman
Just to provide some background, his Wikipedia entry:
Lawyer. Tea Party. Alito. Yep! At least it’s all consistent.
ETA: Hey! The edit function works again!
bkny
i love the 45-car garage:
A Republican Fund-Raiser Is Indicted in a Ponzi Scheme
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
LOS ANGELES — A prominent Republican fund-raiser was charged Wednesday in a federal grand jury indictment with orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The fund-raiser, Timothy Durham, 48, was arrested early in the morning at his West Hollywood home and charged with 12 counts of securities and wire fraud in federal court here. …
From 2002 to 2009, more than 5,000 investors were defrauded out of more than $200 million, the indictment said. The company later filed for bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy trustee for Fair Finance told creditors in August that much of the $54 million Mr. Durham had lent himself helped finance his lavish lifestyle — at his Indianapolis home, a 45-car garage housed an Aston Martin designed to look like the car James Bond drove in “Goldfinger,” while in Miami he kept a four-bedroom yacht.
Mr. Durham donated more than $800,000 to the Republican Party and candidates in Indiana, including almost $200,000 to Gov. Mitch Daniels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/us/17durham.html?src=recg&pagewanted=print
Suffern ACE
@Paul in KY: He’s not actually opposed to such laws – they’re just unconstitutional. Hmmmm. I don’t think they are, but if they were ever found to be such, I wonder if the child labor amendment would even pass enough states to create that authority any longer.
Zifnab
How is it unconstitutional? STFU, that’s how.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Well…this is kinda old already, and the GOP seems to be proven willing to act on this nuttery if Missouri is any indication. So…yeah, enjoy, we probably have at least a decade of this bullshit ahead of us now. And it’s more than likely utterly unstoppable because the country apparently really does want these fuckers to rule wholesale.
dmsilev
Sigh. I see we’re going to have to go through this again. Attention Republicans! The following authors were writing cautionary tales or satires, not how-to manuals:
George Orwell
Margaret Atwood
Jonathan Swift
Charles Dickens
dms
Zifnab
@Paul in KY:
In Utah, good luck.
Although this does seem to exemplify yet another problem with the two party system. Namely, how it can quickly degrade into the one party system.
Paul in KY
@Suffern ACE: Well, that just messes my rant up. Dammit, I worked on that one for over 30 secs.
New Yorker
I think it’s time to invest in the German language program from Rosetta Stone, so if/when I need to flee the insane asylum that this country is becoming, I can get a good job in a nice place like Vienna or Munich.
Tim F.
The Constitution was a notoriously liberal document. Let’s just roll that back and re-apply to the British Commonwealth.
dmsilev
And apparently he’s something of a moron as far as Constitutional law is concerned (I know, shocking, huh?). Following the links, we have:
So, he’s basing his argument on a Supreme Court ruling from 1918. Twenty years later, Congress passed a law restricting child labor which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. Now, Senator, pay close attention here because the next step is complicated. The Supreme Court is the arbiter of what is and isn’t constitutional. By upholding that law, they have declared child-labor restrictions to be constitutional. Barring a later Supreme Court decision overturning that one, the state of affairs is that Congress indeed has the constitutional authority to pass the law that you apparently hate so much.
dms
fasteddie9318
@Paul in KY:
Well sure, I mean there are good commercials to be made all over the place if you want to be all exclusive and shit and take actual positions on things. But excuse me, your majesty, the Democratic Party doesn’t take positions on things because some people might get offended by those positions. What if David Koch needs to hire a 12 year old to wash his balls*? Does the Democratic Party really want to stand in his way and maybe make him mad? He might donate money to elect Republicans then, and I think we can all agree that would be bad, can’t we? After all, better to elect the party that stands for nothing than the one that stands for all that bad stuff, which I’m totally not saying that any of it really is bad just in case some of you might actually approve of some of it.
*What? I meant his golf balls, you sickos.
New Yorker
Or maybe it’s time to get the Northeast to secede. New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and DC. We’ll allow a plebiscite to see if Northern VA wants to join us, and the wingnut parts of PA can vote to leave that state before it joins us too.
Paul in KY
@Zifnab: I’m thinking at the national level. You know how when one random commenter on a non-wingnut site says something hateful/stupid, the Repubs blow it up like it was Pres. Obama that wrote the comment.
Give them a little of their own medicine. Act like Sen. Lee is the formost Republican spokesman on economic matters, the vanguard of Republican thinking on the ‘new economy and how average Americans are going to fare in it’.
Paul in KY
@fasteddie9318: I’m guessing you must have a position at the DNC. If not, you’ve encapsulated their thinking. Kudos!
Comrade Dread
Well, since the GOP wants to get rid of public schools, they know that the poor and middle class kids are going to need something to do with their day or they’ll just spend their time figuring out how to rob their betters.
kay
Everyone scoffs when I say conservatives are going after commerce clause jurisprudence, and that they fully intend to take us back to pre-1930, but, the fact is, they are and they do.
They don’t want limited federal regulation. They want NO federal regulation.
This isn’t a joke. I don’t know what they have to do, take out a full page ad? Run commercials?
Every single progressive gain has to be protected, forever. They never, ever quit.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@dmsilev:
Considering our current court, however, an overturning of the precedent is very depressingly possible.
Paul in KY
@kay: Pre 1930 is OK for most tycoons. I think the rulers of Republand would really like for us to go back to 1890s (before that grandstanding Roosevelt got in after we parked him in a do-nothing VP slot).
Them were the good ole days…
Villago Delenda Est
The US Constitution also prohibits promoting the general welfare and the creation of a more perfect union.
I’m sure that’s in there someplace.
Villago Delenda Est
@Paul in KY:
1890’s, my ass. Try 1390’s.
These people want to bring back feudalism.
Poopyman
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik: There’s no doubt in my mind that a re-arguing of interstate commerce is one of the goals of the Republican Radical movement.
PeakVT
Mike Lee of Utah said in a lecture posted to his YouTube channel that Congressional laws banning child labor are forbidden by the US Constitution.
So he has a proposal to amend the Constitution to fix this problem, right?
The truth is that the US Constitution needs an overhaul, but there’s no way I would trust this country right now to actually make it better. Instead, we would end up with a clause ordering all coffee to be served in styrofoam cups.
kay
@dmsilev:
Right. Unless you believe the constitution is “in exile”.
What I love about conservative legal theory is what an absolute godamned disaster it was in practice. State regulation of labor practices didn’t work, because race to the bottom states brutally exploited workers, and more enlightened, less greed-driven states wouldn’t have been able to compete.
Which, of course, is just a variation on what we see today.
Is there some reason we have to roll out the retreads of failed conservative ideas and fight every battle over and over again? What level of failure might cause them to abandon these theories?
Brachiator
@kay:
I don’t scoff. The Tea Party People seem attached to the notion that they need to return America to 1820 (more white people in charge, fewer immigrants, no unions) and life will be good.
There is also here a psychological reaction to Obama as president. He is the personification of the federal government, so they have to create this vision of a severely limited Constitution in which all power belongs to the states, even if it means that they support crazy stuff like child labor.
It’s sad, but the craziness is snowballing.
celticdragonchick
@Poopyman:
That, and also getting rid of Griswold V. Conn.
TRNC
Notwithstanding the ignorance and lack of morals displayed, who in hell thinks the best solution to the unemployment problem is to make an additional demographic eligible to work?
Alex S.
Life isn’t free. Kids should pay for being born. They should also pay for mother’s milk. And there should be a compensation payment for small body size and strength. They should never be able to free themselves from the debt because, after all, everything they can possibly achieve is only achievable because of someone else. I propose that future parents open up an account at their private financial institution of choice and borrow the money their child needs to pay them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Alex S.:I think we could securitize those loans by dividing them into tranches based on probability of repayment. What could possibly go wrong?
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@kay:
The most infuriating thing isn’t so much that conservative ideas keep popping back up forcing us to retread the fight to debunk them.
It’s the fact that, after a decade of putting them into practice proving said ideas and policies as failures, they’ve more ascendant than ever. Trickle-down failed in almost all avenues imaginable over the Bush Administration, and yet it’s THE only economic theory that’s even fucking allowed throughout our whole fucking national discourse. We’re being strangled by it, and yet it’s the single theory that all our economic policies are now crafted through, even on our side of the aisle.
Poopyman
@celticdragonchick: Not sure they need to eliminate Griswold, now that they’ve hollowed it out so much. (Sigh.)
Stooleo
Tools for tots! Coming next Christmas!
Stefan
Or maybe it’s time to get the Northeast to secede. New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and DC.
I say we join Canada. And we may as well take Washington and Oregon with us while we’re at it.
Stillwater
@kay: Everyone scoffs when I say conservatives are going after commerce clause jurisprudence, and that they fully intend to take us back to pre-1930, but, the fact is, they are and they do.
They hate liberals, so they hate liberal legislation, departments, programs, institutions. If they could just de-liberalize the country, everything would be alright. Their entire platform is simply to obstruct what liberals are doing, to undo what liberals have done.
Poopyman
@TRNC: Because we’re currently at the point where 2 incomes per household let said household barely scrape by. The obvious next step is to increase the number of incomes per household.[1] Problem solved!
[1] – Increasing the number of families per household would put an undue burden on developers. Can’t have that!
Suffern ACE
@bkny: What the heck is a 45 car garage? Isn’t that known as a parking lot?
Woodrowfan
and since Lee undoubtedly also knows about the 1941 decision, he’s also a bald-faced liar…
Hungry Joe
Child labor laws looked pretty safe, but —
Listen, and understand. They’re out there. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse … And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.*
*Adapted from “The Terminator.” It seemed like an amusing exaggeration when I typed it in, but …
Suffern ACE
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik: Maybe because it’s because that policy worked as intended, just not as advertised.
Woodrowfan
@kay:
that’s like asking “how high is ‘up’?” or “How low is ‘down’?”
stuckinred
@Suffern ACE: It’s a garage where I keep my car with the .45 colt under the seat.
Marc McKenzie
To use a quote from one of my favorite films, John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing:
“You’ve gotta be f**king kidding!”
These guys are nuts–absolutely, completely, utterly insane.
And yet there’s still the cry that there’s no difference between them and the Democrats.
The mind reels….
Citizen_X
The kids are going to be sorely disillusioned when they find out that Bob the Builder is a real dick of a boss.
Culture of Truth
In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting
No it wasn’t.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Stefan: There will be a test for you. We have enough wanna-be teabaggers as it is up here
Culture of Truth
“I’m not saying we should this reprehensible thing, no in fact I don’t think we should, I’m just saying it’s interesting that we could. If we wanted to. Not that I want to, but if we did. Just saying.”
Chad N Freude
@Poopyman: That is abundantly clear.
Any factory that doesn’t straddle a state line has nothing to do with interstate commerce.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: I wish I’d said that :-)
jibeaux
Unless someone decides to pay to annoy the hell out of a dog or to leave dirty lunchboxes in bookbags, my kids are going to be complete crap in the new economy. But at least they won’t have to compete with Utah families, who can probably deliver twenty or so kids to the worksite just doing a sweep of their house.
/dark humor
/ ring of truth tho
daveNYC
Between the child labor stuff and their comments on the Texas gang rape, I say we just combine the two and say that the Republicans are pro child prostitution.
And in all seriousness, I would not be shocked if the deep south states end up as hot destinations for sex tourists.
Poopyman
Almost on-topic, now we can write off the next troll as a govt sockpuppet.
(H/T Democratic Underground)
Paul in KY
@Suffern ACE: It is also known as an ‘zeppelin hanger’.
Poopyman
@jibeaux: Maybe you’d better welcome your new economic overlords, the Duggars.
Chad N Freude
@daveNYC: And keep US dollars here at home where they belong instead of sending them to Thailand.
Poopyman
@daveNYC:
Like New Orleans? I mean, Florida is full of old people.
mac007
That a United States Senator could be so poorly versed in the Constitution, its amendments, and settled Constitutional law should be shocking, but today nothing shocks me. But don’t blame Mike Lee, blame the voters in Utah who were too busy looking for an ‘R’ on the ballot.
Chad N Freude
@Poopyman: Not impressed. This appears to be nothing more than partially automating the time-honored practice of manually posting social media comments under multiple false identities. The Pentagon had to pay a contractor to do it, since there are no high-school level programmers in the military.
Paul in KY
@Poopyman: Will be interesting to know if the ‘manipulator’ of the sockpuppet will be a 44 year old LtCol/GS-13 trying to act young & hip or will they give this job to young enlisted types.
Better yet, high paid contractors who happen to be the slacker kids of political pros.
Certainly seems like a waste of money, on the surface.
stuckinred
Here’s a gem
jibeaux
@Poopyman:
No kidding. Not to mention that the oldest of the Duggar kids is now having kids. So there is an endless, seamless, stream of exponentially increasing labor without any hint of a gap. Man. Anyone need their dog annoyed? We work cheap.
Stillwater
Just finally got to reading the article. He’s not arguing for child labor, he’s making a 10th amendment argument for limiting the powers of the federal government to determine what ought to be the provenance of the individual states, like (for example) whether a state ought to have the authority to permit (say) polygamy (hypothetically) as a cultural institution (for example).
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@stuckinred:
Which essentially means that, to the GOP, prosperity is only measured by how much the richest of us have, not how much we as a society have together as a whole.
That’s not prosperity in my book. But then again, what the hell do I know, I’m a dirty fucking hippie and thus an enemy of the state.
Poopyman
@Chad N Freude: @Paul in KY:
Well of course it’s a waste of money. And probably doomed to failure, because I’m guessing they’d be fairly easy to spot. But I am disturbed that the govt apparently sees no problem in doing this, and especially in not being concerned that it be done in secret.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@Suffern ACE:
He’s not actually opposed to such laws – they’re just unconstitutional.
Gotta love the fetishism: The Constitution doesn’t explicitly forbid X, therefore… X is okay!
Suppose, for arguments sake, that laws against child labor really were unconstitutional. Wouldn’t the appropriate response then be “Eff the Constitution!”?
ppcli
@kay:
@Brachiator:
Yes, this has to be repeated over and over again. We’ve gotten used to various loons making bad arguments about Roe v. Wade, and by implication Griswold vs. Connecticut. But really I don’t think the real powers in the Republican party ever wanted those rulings overturned. Too much political advantage to be had by whipping up the Christianist Forced-Birther base without worrying about the backlash that would ensue if these laws were actually passed and middle class types started finding it impossible to get abortions for daughters “in trouble”. But this wave is different. It is deadly serious, it is well-funded, and its not looking for compromise. There is a substantial bloc of Federalist society types who feel that the following cases were properly decided (among others):
Lochner vs. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
Coppage v. Kansas (1915)
Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923)
They now feel that they have secured their position to the point where they can begin to be open about it. Make no mistake, these are not just isolated kooks.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Poopyman:
Shit, that’s going to severely impact txradioguy’s duty day on FR.
Sgt Lardass generally posts thousands of times a month across several websites, all with the connivance and acquiescence of his chain of command up to O-6.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@ppcli:
Not to mention that they’ve done a spectacular job of destroying the ability to get abortions on the state level without having to even touch either of those cases.
Paul in KY
@Poopyman: I’m disturbed too. My flippant comments may not have conveyed that.
Off to watch basketball. Go Cards & Cats!
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
FTFY.
DFH no.6
And further irony (I know, not that conservatives grasp irony):
Utah has the highest percentage of its population (i.e., the constituency who voted in Mike Lee) on welfare of any state in the union. Lotta polygamist families with lots of kids contributing to that.
Maybe Mr. Lee is just looking for a way to get a bunch of those future celestial god-beings (that’s the Mormon afterlife) into some character-building earthly sweatshops, that would just happen to be owned and operated by the Mormon church (or at least run by Mormon bishops who tithe diligently to the church). Everybody wins!
But, yeah, they’re all rock-ribbed rugged individualists who don’t need the federal government for anything, like all the conservatives who have made their own way with no help from anyone throughout my beloved and dusty West.
Brachiator
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Well, duh!
There are Southern California radio talk show hosts who consistently push the line that since America is the land of free enterprise opportunity, anyone who is not prosperous is a lazy loser who is not doing it right, and if this person asks for any help or government social services, then he or she is obviously a parasite or leech.
Tsulagi
As with Peak Wingnut being constrained by a glass ceiling, it’s only glass holding up their Peak Bottom. Both are regularly cracked open.
jibeaux
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
The argument is more like “the Constitution doesn’t expressly grant that power to the federal government, therefore it belongs to the state and the people.” Which, to the best of my knowledge, the Constitution doesn’t contain the words “Air Force” or “free health care for Congresscritters”….
Martin
@Zifnab:
If Jesus didn’t twitter it, it’s unconstitutional. That’s what the Founders said.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ppcli:
Agreed.
The 2012 election results for both the WH and the Senate will be crucial in determining if they are correct or not. If they can defeat Obama and take the Senate in 2012, then given the age of the justices currently on the court the way will be clear to stacking SCOTUS with a Lochner-esque majority by 2016.
daveNYC
@Poopyman: Naw, I don’t mean like hitting NOLA for a party weekend. I mean more like hitting podunk Alabama, where the unemployment is high and the locals are desperate enough to sell anything/anyone.
MikeJ
@jibeaux: I’m all for disbanding the air farce. The Navy already does half of it, anything else they need to do can be rolled back into the army where it belongs.
Chad N Freude
@Poopyman: The Guardian article says that this is for propagandizing outside the US in non-English languages.
New Yorker
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Yup. Your definition of prosperity is the same as mine. I dunno, somehow I get the feeling that life in Germany, where our ideas have the upper hand, is better than life in El Salvador, where wingnut ideas rule. I guess that makes me a Maoist.
ppcli
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yep. The wet dream is to replace Kennedy and Ginsburg with the reincarnated corpses of James McReynolds and Willis Van Devanter.
Joel
@DFH no.6: And here I thought the Scientologists aspired to Mormonism. Looks like I got it backwards.
Chad N Freude
I don’t want to get into an argument about this, but the Air Force is responsible for GPS and a bunch of other satellite communication systems. Why do these belong in the Army? And “rolling [them] back” would be a bit more complicated and expensive than changing nameplates on doors.
MikeJ
@Chad N Freude: The army handled space stuff in the early days of rocketry. There’s no reason those things can’t be done by the army, and you’d have one fewer hungry bird demanding what they consider their fair share.
KG
@Poopyman: as someone who attended quite a few Federalist Society events in law school and even after (easy CLE units), I can guaran-damn-tee you that reversing Lochner is on the agenda, and it’s damn high on the agenda. There will be a shit ton of amicus briefs before the appellate courts and the Supremes if/when the health care law goes up arguing just that.
And in theory, I can sympathize with, the aggregation principle can get crazy. But applying the pre-Lochner rules to contemporary politics and economics would be an absolute nightmare. But at the end of the day, a lot of these folks are the philosophical descendants of the Anti-Federalists… except for the part about wanting strong protections like most of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.
ed drone
@Woodrowfan:
From Malvina Reynolds:
Chorus:
Do you think you’ve hit bottom?
Do you think you’ve hit bottom?
Oh, no.
There’s a bottom below.
There’s a low below the low you know.
You can’t imagine how far you can go … down.
(Chorus)
Every once in a while you’ll rise and glow,
But that’s only so they can let you go … down.
(Chorus)
You sit at a party and watch the fun,
It don’t touch you none cause you’re off and gone … down.
(Chorus)
There’s the nightmare kind where you fall and fall,
And you wake to find you haven’t been dreaming at all.
(Chorus)
There’s a low below the low you know.
You can’t imagine how far you can go … down.
(Chorus)
. . . . . . .
Ed
Stan of the Sawgrass
Hey, this is actually the SECOND goper that thinks child labor laws are an undue burden on Free Enterprise. It was last week or so, and it was a state Reboob rep, but I was taking bets on how long it would take for another moran to champion it, so now I have my answer.
I’ll google and see if I can find the culprit (think I saw it in In These Times.)
PS– I’ve had trouble posting at BJ for a week or so, so if you’re not reading this, it probably didn’t post. If-a-tree-falls, etc.
Dennis SGMM
It’s an indictment of the way that History is taught, or not taught, in this nation that little dicks like Sen. Mike Lee (And teabaggers in general) think that somehow they’ll come out on top after doing the will of big dicks like the Koch brothers. Once the little dicks have finished gutting everything worthwhile about this nation the big dicks will, legally at that point, have them put to sleep.
Ash Can
@dmsilev: LOL! The poor dumb schmuck can’t even be controversial without fucking it up. And this is what Utah ditched Bob Bennett for.
Culture of Truth
Suppose, for arguments sake, that laws against child labor really were unconstitutional. Wouldn’t the appropriate response then be “Eff the Constitution!”?
Not necessarily, in the sense that are some limits to federal power, and most people would agree that’s appropriate.
I’m certainly willing to entertain academic notions about what authorized federal powers are, but, to put it bluntly, I don’t trust these fucking Republicans any farther than I can throw them.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kay: Thank you kay. There is such denial about this going on; it confuses me. I say things similar to what you just posted, based on, well, things like what I’ve been seeing GOP types saying (and legislating) around the country for the last couple of years and intelligent people I respect chuckle and look at me like I have three heads. Repeatedly. So I figured perhaps I was overreacting, and quit saying them.
El Cid
A century ago the whole family worked for the mills in the South.
They lived in the company housing, went to company schools and company churches, and still considered it a better choice than scratching a few plants out of a tiny plot of dirt, which they were free to return to if they didn’t like it.
The difference now is that the companies wouldn’t give a shit where the workers (families) lived or whether or not kids went to school.
If kids went to school, it would be in hours off work, which suggests then that they could be working more hours.
Lazy bums.
Mnemosyne
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
I will defend the current court on one point only: no matter what, there’s no way in hell they would allow child labor laws to be overturned. If Alito is disturbed enough by animal abuse videos that he’s the sole dissenter on the case, I seriously doubt he’s going to put 5-year-olds to work.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Culture of Truth:
Conservatives are deluding themselves if they think that emasculating the federal govt would have prevented all of the liberal reforms ushered in by TR, FDR, LBJ, etc. On the other hand is possible to imagine a United States in which, in the absence of federal legislation most of the social reforms and govt activism of the last 110 years took place at the state level rather than coming from the federal govt. That is an alternative path which we didn’t pursue and the argument over which way to go was pretty much decided by 1865.
Dennis SGMM
@Mnemosyne:
Call me a cynic but, I think that you’re underestimating the power of the words “Business friendly,” and “globalization.”
Not to mention the distinctly corporatist bent of the current SCOTUS. My take is that if the corps want kids the Supremes will not stand in their way.
Stan of the Sawgrass
@Stan of the Sawgrass:
Found it! Missouri state rep.
rumpole
@dsnik
But don’t you see? They got it WROOONG (along with Heart of Atlanta, Raich, Wickard).
Stan of the Sawgrass
Damn that HTML!!
This is the URL of the story about the Missouri state rep who first raised the idea of restoring the freedom of children to work in sweatshops:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7002/missouri_legislator_wants_to_increase_child_labor/
Chad N Freude
@MikeJ: The Army waged aerial warfare in WW II, and the AF was created because of the perception that aerial warfare was sufficiently specialized to require a dedicated force. Subsequently, the AF has been given (or taken, if that’s your POV) responsibility for anything military that isn’t tied to the surface of the planet. If I understand your logic, the Army could also take on the role of the Navy.
mclaren
As I’ve been pointing out for 20 years, the implosion and collapse of the USSR pulled the moderator rods out of capitalism. With the final discrediting of communism as a viable alternative to capitalism, the full savage fury of laissez faire cannibalistic market economics has now been unleashed on the bottom 99% of the population.
Don’t like it?
Slit your throat. You can’t even emigrate to Russia anymore.
This means that capitalism is rapidly moving back to the unlivable and unworkable brutality of the 1880s, when twelve-year-old girls were harnessed to coal carts and used to haul loads out of coal mines until they dropped dead from exhaustion, because a twelve-year-old girl was much cheaper to replace than a horse.
geg6
@Stefan:
I’ll make your lives miserable unless the Pittsburgh and Philly regions of PA get to join you.
pk
Hand tools like these maybe.
http://students.cis.uab.edu/archived/uvancha/Project%20Conclusion.html
Brachiator
@mclaren:
Unfortunately, communism was never a viable alternative to capitalism. And even China has quietly transformed itself into a capitalist totalitarian state. And as for Russia,
Oh, the irony.
liberal
@stuckinred quoted:
Actually, he’s completely correct, as long as you realize that SOMEHOW he dropped the first syllable of “ineqality.”
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I think people want that to be true, that there is some “principled intellectual” faction in the GOP or conservative legal circles that will put the brakes on all this stuff. And there’s some logical justification to that, because they haven’t taken apart the protections grounded in the commerce clause YET.
I just don’t believe that anymore. I think they’d do it, if they saw either a short-term political or long-term economic advantage.
Look how fast the public debate on the legality of the mandate in the ACA changed. In six months it went from “this is a slam dunk under the commerce clause” to two federal judges ruling it unconstitutional. The law didn’t change in six months. Commerce clause jurisprudence didn’t change in that period. Conservatives managed to frame the question differently, and control the media dialogue. In six short months, it was all of a sudden a close question.
I don’t know how you can look at what they’re doing w/the ACA and NOT think they’re aiming to narrow the commerce clause dramatically. How are 26 state attorneys general a joke or “fringe”? They’re not a joke to me.
geg6
@mclaren:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
The idiot who took as gospel the Internet rantings of an MIT lecturer (or whatever he is) in Lean/Six Sigma procedures for MBA students as the best and latest word on an almost Level 7 nuclear accident expects us to take her seriously on any subject ever again?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brachiator:
Indeed, at this rate there is a dangerous possibility of those commies ganging up on us and a “billionaire gap” developing.
Tonal Crow
See, you libtards, the so-called “Commerce Clause” means that the federal government CANNOT regulate commerce. It’s EXPLICITLY restricted to regulatin’ ‘bortion, homo “marriage”, and DRUGS. Oh, ‘cept the drugs that Rush takes, when Rush takes ’em. Not when YOU take ’em, you libtards.
That clear?
/wingnut
David Koch
What’s wrong with puttin’ Trig Palin to work?
Fredom isn’t fee.
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
According to the story, Europe has already been left behind:
And of course, who’s Number 1? Not a gringo.
Viva Mexico!
Redwood Rhiadra
@Mnemosyne:
The difference is Alito actually cares about dogs – post-born children, not so much.
New Yorker
Just another thing to throw out there: doesn’t the fact that the framers of the Constitution added in the ability to amend the document make it abundantly clear that they had no intention of writing the values of 1790 into stone. Times change, people change, the nation changes, and the Constitution changes with it.
James Madison and Co. had the prudence and foresight to not fetishize the America of 1790. It’s a pity that over 200 years later, we have lunatics who ARE fetishizing the America of 1790.
Poopyman
@Brachiator: And how did they become billionaires? Their corrupt cronies in the government sold off the govt assets at pennies on the dollar.
Irony, indeed.
Mnemosyne
@Dennis SGMM:
Notice that I said “the current court.” You only need one of the conservatives to switch to have a majority, and I would be honestly shocked if Alito and Kennedy (two name just two possibilities) both chose to re-institute child labor. Also, too, I suspect that John Roberts spends a lot of time thinking about his “legacy” as chief justice, and he’s not going to want that endangered by a stupid decision.
If you get another couple of conservative justices on the court, though, all bets are off.
kay
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I just turn it around. Tea party types like to claim Obama has all these schemes up his sleeve. Guns. They thought he was going to take their guns. But he hadn’t done one thing to advance that imaginary goal.
Conservatives have. They filed about 15 challenges to the commerce clause-based provision in the ACA.
Why wouldn’t I think they want to narrow the commerce clause? Why would I ignore what they’re actually doing and rely instead on what they might or might not think?
I even have a short-cut term I use when I think about “ignoring what they’re doing and insisting I know what they really think”.
I call that an “Andrew Sullivan”. That’s what he does. He says “conservatives are…” or “conservatives will…” or “conservatives believe…” while completely ignoring what they do. I just think that’s crazy. How do I know they want to narrow the commerce clause? Because they’re trying to narrow the commerce clause! Now. Today. I don’t think it’s outlandish or a conspiracy theory if they’re actually saying AND doing it. I have to take them at their word, and DEEDS.
Captain Splendid
@New Yorker
James Madison and Co. had the prudence and foresight to not fetishize the America of 1790.
Pity the barrier to amendment is so high. The Founders hedged too many bets, bless ’em.
DonkeyKong
Another reason the 90’s were better.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: That is not atypical of mclaren’s style. She has also cited authority from employment law cases to support criminal law propositions. Her MO appears to be finding a piece of evidence that seems to support her POV and then presenting it with a flourish and a touch of righteous anger.
FormerSwingVoter
@Suffern ACE:
GLarlarglhlble1!!11one
Why the FUCK don’t Republicans believe that the Commerce Clause is a thing that exists??? Jesus fuck, hasn’t a single goddamn one of them ever, and I mean ever read the fucking Constitution???
Ruckus
@Paul in KY:
Are your kids unruly? Do they demand food through out the day? Are you tired of picking up after them? Are their doctor bills driving you crazy? Are you wearing out your car driving them all over town to soccer practice, band practice and on and on?
Send the down to the mines! Get their asses over to that old piece of swamp land were they can learn how to handle a shovel! Make them productive and have them bring home the bacon!
Child labor can replace that 16 yr old babysitter that your lecherous husband is trying to bang.
So go on, call a republican today and get child labor restored!
trollhattan
A tiny bit ‘o good news, FDIC going after WaMu CEO/banksta’.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014523269_wamu18.html
El Cid
Once again reality proves far more awful than I have thought at my most cynical.
I really didn’t know that there are more than 400 billionaires in the US and over 300 in Asia, so on and so forth.
We are so fucking stupid.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chad N Freude:
The best reason I can think of to dismantle the USAF is it’s the branch of service with the most serious Jeebofascist infestation.
Villago Delenda Est
@FormerSwingVoter:
No.
This has been today’s simple answer…
Ignatz
@Stan of the Sawgrass: Yep, she’s the Missouri State Senator from Chesterfield, MO. Supposedly, MO’s labor laws prevent kids from mowing lawns or running lemonade stands, and that’s what she’s trying to correct. Never mind that there have been zero cases of closed-down lemonade stands.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est: RE: Jesus fuck, hasn’t a single goddamn one of them ever, and I mean ever read the fucking Constitution???
The sadder thing is that these goobers made a big show about reading the Constitution aloud at the start of this session of Congress.
Apparently, reading and comprehension are utterly disconnected for this crew.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Reading they learned that in the 4th grade.
Never did get no comprehension learning.
Tonal Crow
@Brachiator:
When a Republican mentions the Constitution, it is always for the purpose of propagandizing his or her audience. I thought that was clear about a decade ago.
PanurgeATL
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Why do you think that? I thought they won because we stayed home. No–the country doesn’t want it; Wisconsin showed that. But they don’t know how to get things moving in another direction. They stopped it in 2006 and 2008, and TBH they’ll probably stop it in 2012. Part of it is spinning these things our way–or at least not spinning them their way.
Paul in KY
@MikeJ: Heck, just give us the ships & the tanks & you can disband the army/navy.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: I think you have the makings of a radio ad, circa 2016.
Imagine that voiced by that ex-homeless Ted Williams dude.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Wasn’t that way when I was in (mid 80s). Back then, no one gived a shit where you went to church or if you went to church. Everyone (even little old lady secretaries) swore like mule skinners, etc.
JRon
I haven’t subjected you guys to one of my lame comics in awhile, but I couldn’t resist this one:
http://shallowsage.com/post/1115394928/and-he-did-it-with-no-help-from-anybody-west
some bootstraps, anyway.