I was going to spend this week's column ripping into the gutless Democrats in Congress for their capitulation over the FISA bill, which will essentially edit the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution. But though the House passed the bill and the Senate failed to block it, they at least put off voting on it until after the Fourth of July recess. And the closer this vote gets to Election Day, when Democrats have to answer for all these knives sticking out of our backs, the better the chance they'll actually nut up and vote this bill down.

That is not a likely outcome at this point. Only 15 senators, 14 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders, voted to filibuster the bill, which would give the telecommunication industry immunity to lawsuits over its providing the Bush administration with information on its clients (read: you) and give the executive branch broad, sweeping powers to wiretap without warrants in the future. That anemic vote on the filibuster is a sure sign that the Dems will vote for the ugly piece of work come July, including, most likely, the Democratic presidential nominee, who up until this point has done a nice job of being all things to all people.

In any case, that's a few weeks down the road. So instead of going into the tragicomic farce that is congressional Democrats, I'd like to hip you all to the brilliant legal mind of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, stay with me here. I'm still the same person who's been writing a column for several months that is not exactly approving of the Republican cause. Despite that, and despite the decidedly conservative bent of the high court these days, I had to agree, in some cases grudgingly, with all three of the court's major rulings last week.

Thing is, I don't really have much of a problem with conservatism. Things like fiscal responsibility, the avoidance of unnecessary foreign entanglements and the protection of individual liberties are great ideas, and if the Republican Party actually stood for any of them, it might not be facing the electoral equivalent of an old-fashioned, biker-gang chain-whipping this November.

First up, the court ruled 5-3 that the punitive damages levied against ExxonMobil in the 1989 Valdez disaster were too heavy; Justice Samuel Alito recused himself because he owns ExxonMobil stock. I don't really agree with that, but the court stated that punitive damages couldn't be higher than the damages the company had to pay in actual compensation. Because ExxonMobil paid about $500 million in compensation for the Valdez oil spill, punitive damages couldn't be more than $500 million. My initial reaction, as it was with most of the Supreme Court's reasoning last week, was one of outrage. ExxonMobil makes $500 million in about half a week. How then, can such an amount be "punitive?" Besides, Lee Raymond, the president of ExxonMobil at the time of the accident, is exactly the person I had in mind in last week's column when I referred to oil executives as "triple-chinned fuckwits." In fact, that rat bastard's retirement package was about the same as the amount of money the company must now pay in punitive damages — sickening, no? At the same time, these damages have ranged so wildly, and seem to vary so greatly from case to case (recall all the Big Tobacco lawsuits, in which various juries awarded smokers thousands, millions or billions, seemingly at whim), that some sort of rule of thumb is needed. The court may not have picked a very good rule of thumb, but at least it picked one.

Next, the court ruled 5-4 along the usual lines (John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer on one side, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the other, with Anthony Kennedy breaking the tie) that the death penalty isn't a proper punishment for the rape of a child under the age of 12. Again, my first thought was that, if there is any crime worthy of death, preferably death by public castration, this is it. But then, I recalled the strange case of Genarlow Wilson, who just stepped out of prison last October after doing more than two years of a mandatory-minimum, 10-year sentence for getting a blow job from a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. The Georgia Supreme Court finally ruled his sentence was cruel and unusual. And the death penalty, of course, is the one punishment that can't be taken back. The specter of someone like Wilson getting a needle in his arm is enough for me to know that the death penalty shouldn't apply — hell, there's not many cases where it should.

Finally, after the liberal side of the court won out on the death penalty case, the conservatives came roaring back, overthrowing Washington, D.C.'s 32-year-old ban on handguns by ruling that, yes, the Second Amendment — A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed — does mean that every individual has the right to keep and bear arms, not just members of a militia. Until the day we repeal the Second Amendment, it's the right ruling. On page 54 of his majority opinion (New Danation motto: "Reading 217-page Supreme Court decisions so you don't have to!"), Scalia writes, "Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." So, for the most part, status quo maintained: Background checks are still OK, and outlaws and the insane don't get to legally own guns, while those of us who have yet to be convicted or certified can keep packing heat. The Second Amendment is certainly a weird little quirk of American democracy, but last week's ruling really just confirmed what most of us have already known; until there is no Second Amendment, there will be firepower.

In the meantime, of course, Congress is free to trash the Fourth Amendment all it wants. Apparently, my right to own a gun is far more important than my right to have the government stay the hell out of my business. But at this point, having anyone in any of the three branches sticking up for any of my rights is a moral victory. Right, then. I'm off to the shooting range.

Send guns and ammo to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney's stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

You will be prompted to register or log in when posting.

Comment

Please note that by clicking on "Post Comment" you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Service. Be polite. Inappropriate posts may be removed by the moderator.