One Of Many Effects Of The Health Care Ruling

The above quote from Rand Paul has been circulating around the internet, and for good reason. That statement shows a laughable ignorance with regards to how the United States government works.

But that's not what stands out to me the most. That nifty graphic was posted on Facebook by an organization that had recently posted these two graphics:

Among others, these two graphics hint at questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's rulings, in the first case by asserting that it has been "bought out" by the infamously rich Koch brothers, and in the second that the then-impending ruling on health care would be illegitimate should Clarence Thomas not recuse himself.

Yet those doubts are completely reversed in the Rand Paul graphic that not only asserts the legitimacy of the court's ruling but take it for granted. In fact, the hilarity of Paul's quote rests on the assumption on the part of the reader that the court's word is lawful and compelling.

However, if the health care ruling had gone the other way, I'm sure we would have seen more graphics like the second two crop up around the internet, and the court's legitimacy in the eyes of the left would shrink. The court's legitimacy is affirmed and reinforced because of the side on which the ruling fell in the eyes of the left.

And only the left, it appears. Some state governments, including Scott Walker's Wisconsin, have already announced that they will not implement the health care law, going against the decision supported by all three branches of the federal government. Since the Supreme Court has no power of enforcement, Wisconsin could get away with it if the federal level executive branch were uninterested or in agreement with Wisconsin. My guess is that there will be a conflict between state and national government if Walker sticks to his words. But the main point is this: the court's power to decide the constitutionality of laws isn't enough for Walker, and while the court is going to enjoy enhanced standing among the left (and center), it will suffer in the eyes of conservatives. Another example would be the bizarre explanations some on the right have been concocting for why Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal majority.

And so goes the turbulent life of the Supreme Court.

New Song: To Your Soul I

I know I just put out a new song a week ago, but here I am being prolific and releasing another. I'm very proud of these last two pieces, but this one, "To Your Soul I," is particularly involved. It has 24 instrument tracks including 10 vocalists, and somehow the entire piece ended up being 8 minutes long. I think the recording and singing are some of my best. Take a listen below and I hope you enjoy the swirling genres. Also you can follow this link to find the other music I've recorded as my one man band First Regrets. Afiyet olsun!

 To Your Soul I

New Song: "Masculine"

I have exciting Father's Day news! Although it has nothing to do with Father's Day, I have released a new song today! It's called "Masculine" and can be played by clicking on the little triangle below. If that's unappealing, you can follow this link to the First Regrets MySpace page and click on the first song (sorry all you folks with iPads... send me a message if you'd like me to email you the MP3 file). Enjoy these blues, and 3 points for whoever can guess the artist I drew the inspiration for this song from (not intentionally of course, but you know how it is).

 Masculine

Photos from Two Day Trips

Horsetail Falls

Last week during my mom and dad visit to Portland for the first time (yippee!), we took a little side trip to the Columbia River Gorge - how could we not? - and drove by a few of the waterfalls. Weather was odd, and my camera got so wet that my down arrow button still hasn't recovered and my pants are just starting to dry. Enjoy some photo evidence!

Shepherd's Dell Falls. Behind me as I was taking this photo was a camera crew shooting a car commercial in the pouring rain. They did not look pleased.

Horsetail Falls

Horsetail Falls

Horsetail Falls

Then on Monday I drove out to the Oregon coast with Courtney and her friends to see Cannon Beach, where Haystack Rock sits. It was a good time. We arrived at low tide when the tide pools were explorable and we could walk right up to the giant rock. The sun was too high for high quality beach photos, but I think I got some that are worth showing off:

The lighting isn't great on this one, but you can see how gigantic Haystack Rock is.

Cannon Beach

An unnamed waterfall, or possibly a sewage deposit, emptying into the ocean.

A rainbow opens up above Haystack Rock despite there being no sign of rain. The little dots in the shot are birds.

Speed Dating Seattle Part II

The completion of the journey started in part I.

The thing everyone told me to do in Seattle was to see the EMP (Experimental Music Project) museum. The museum building, which I did not bother trying to capture on camera because of its impossibly untamed intricacies, was built to look like the pieces of the guitar Jimi Hendrix burned and smashed at the Monterrey Pop Festival of 1967 - from Kerry Park Viewpoint I could see what clearly resembled a guitar neck.

A large art piece of assembled musical instruments? Actually, this well-known piece in EMP is an instrument itself. Quite a few of those instruments are computerized and play works all day long that you can enjoy through provided headphones.

As a museum, it was very interactive. Computers and iPads were set up throughout the exhibits so one could casually browse through interviews and tracks at one's own pace. In the upper floors were recording studios where one could record a brief demo tape and small booths where one could take quick instrument lessons from a computer program. In another room more or less closed off by velvet rope, a bouncer, and a door sign that read "Performer Entrance Only" was a stage designed to allow guests to simulate the experience of performing in a live setting (above the door was a television screen showing a man banging gleefully on the drums and a woman pushing random notes on a keyboard). On the lower floor some free classes were offered; I think the art of singing duets was being offered while I was there. In other words, there was plenty to do, enough to take up a few hours.

One of the mechanical guitars.

I spent a substantial amount of time in a theater within the building that showed Jimi Hendrix concert videos on loop - Seattle is very proud to be Hendrix's hometown. I got to see for the first time that 1967 Monterrey show where he burned and smashed his guitar in the most sexually provocative way possible, then tossed the pieces out to the crowd (two of which I saw in the museum's guitar collection). Besides being shocking even now, 45 years later, and beside the presence of a family with small children in the theater watching as well, the experience was emotional for me as someone who has played on that stage with Berkeley High School and seen the spot where it all took place. I guess I always knew it was historical, but it means something so much richer now.

A security guard watches over the upper level of EMP. This art piece was the only thing I managed photos of at EMP.

The next day Steve took me to a park on Bainbridge Island and we walked around either taking pictures (me) or scouring the sand for worn-down shards of glass (him and his wife Lynn). It was a peaceful, uneventful morning, a nice contrast to the rain we heard in the forecast. Instead there were just clouds, beautiful, dazzling clouds ready to eat us all up.

Steve and Lynn, a distant pair of dots, walk down Fay Bainbridge Park.

A tire is batted around my little waves.

On the ferry back into town, the city never seemed so insignificant.

Seattle under the sky.

Seattle above the water.

I think I forgot to adjust my white balance after taking pictures inside the museum, so some of these pictures seem a little too blue for me. Still, it makes the orange of the Space Needle stand out.

I didn't expect to love the Space Needle as much as I did. It was by far my favorite visual of Seattle, despite being a building with no practical purpose. It distinguished Seattle's skyline by on the one hand being of unique construction and on the other by being separate from the rest of the city. As I wrote in part I, Kerry Park Viewpoint is the only landed place in Seattle where the Space Needle appears to be in the downtown area with the rest of Seattle's architecture. As it turns out, the Space Needle isn't even the tallest building in Seattle, although it does have the advantage of being on higher ground. If it were in downtown, it would be lost among the office buildings. It stands out because it stands alone. I found that very attractive.

Finally, I ended the trip by waiting at the zoo for my friends. Having arrived earlier than anticipated, I was able to practice my experimental photography and "round" out my photographic journey that weekend. That is, until my camera battery died.

Psychedelic Zoo!

Like the spinning of a record.

You spin me right round baby, right round.

Working on focusing the center of my whirlpool on something.

And the world spins madly on.

Pine cone pupils.

Bitiş

Kansas Free From Religious Establishment

I'll get to the second part of my Seattle adventure shortly.

It's now ripe news that Kansas recently passed a law banning Sharia Law (more or less Islamic religious codes) from being used by "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," in an apparent attempt to prevent foreign laws from taking over the Kansas democratic system.

This law has been made fun of its fair share of times - one headline reads "Governor Brownback Turns Attention to Non-Problem of Sharia Law." Indeed, the law seems intended to solve a problem that isn't there, as the New York Times iterates:

There are no known cases in which a Kansas judge has based a ruling on Islamic law. But the new law’s supporters have cited a pending divorce case in Sedgwick County in which a man has asked for property to be divided in line with Shariah.

Beyond the obvious fun that can be poked at this new law and its 20 siblings still in state legislatures around the country (including in Arizona, Michigan, and Tennessee, surprise surprise), there is something valuable to be gained from the xenophobia, chiefly in the way the law's writers worded it in order to appear non-discriminatory. The law specifically forbids "courts, administrative agencies and state tribunals [from basing] rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." Still, the bill's supporters made it very clear the intention is to stave off the non-existent "infiltration" of Sharia Law.

I wish we could take this law at face value. Forgetting the veiled racism of the intention, I believe the country and each state really should be governed and managed exclusively by the federal and state constitutions. What I see in the law's wording is an attempt to prevent religious establishment, aimed primarily at Islamic establishment but, in its effort to seem non-discriminatory can and should apply to all religious doctrine.

For religiously based doctrine has fed much law making that has deprived American citizens of many rights guaranteed them in the constitution (I'm thinking of women's rights and LGBT rights specifically, among others). After all, what explanation besides a religiously-based one is there for abstinence-only sex education, especially considering that the research that suggests that not only does abstinence-only sex education not prevent teen pregnancies but actually the opposite? What explanation besides a religious one defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, not to mention all the other rights homosexuals have been deprived of thanks largely to bible passages?

But the juicy thing I really love about this legislation is that in fighting against foreign religious doctrine it also fights against most Christian doctrine. To claim Christianity as American would be amazing folly - the bible is a translated document. Only American-based sects such as Mormonism could legally pass under this law's nose (did Mitt Romney dream up this legislation?). Legal arguments against marriage equality would crumble since equal protection is a protection given the American people under the federal constitution, so revoking one demographic's right to marry would be illegal discrimination. Abstinence-only sex education, the withholding of important health information, would disintegrate as its purpose, to prevent premarital sex (and teen pregnancies, but we've already seen how well that's worked out), has no basis in the constitution and is a biblical-based value - plus, as I've argued before, it's sexist and can therefore be construed, once again, as discrimination.

Now, a supporter of the Kansas law might say that Christianity is not foreign in order to extricate it from the law's grasp. How come it's not foreign? It's explicitly not established as a national religion in the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. If that supporter says it's not foreign because the vast majority of Americans are Christian, then we have yet another case of disenfranchisement of a minority in favor of a majority, the kind of mob rule the federal constitution was expressly designed to protect against. And of course, the constitution does not allow for the establishment of religion even in the event that the majority of its citizens share that religion. In my mind there is no way Kansas courts can allow disturbingly prejudiced legislation fashioned with Christian values in mind to remain legal, thanks to this new law.

Now, I'm getting a little ahead of myself with excitement. This law only applies to "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," so it does not prevent the enactment of laws based upon Christian theology. But maybe it will come, a law preventing the enactment of legislation with any basis on "foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." And then Christian lawmakers would be miffed as their destructive pet bills with no constitutional basis get struck down, rightly and legally, for having violated the very law they had championed thanks to their own bigotry.

Oh, their own flaws would be their downfall! It's so poetic! I can't wait!

Speed Dating Seattle Part I

The top of the Space Needle has been painted orange in honor of the color it was during the world's fair for which it was built.

Memorial Day Weekend was my first opportunity to investigate the city of Seattle, Washington. In fact, it was one of my first chances to find myself in the state of Washington at all, despite living in Portland, Oregon, which borders Washington - once, on the way to the airport, I missed a turn and biked until I saw the "Welcome to Washington" sign, then continued biking until I was beyond it in order to say I had been in the state.

A couple of friends were heading to Seattle to visit family and offered to take me along for the ride. It was all very last-minute. I called my Dad's high school friend Steve on Thursday telling him I'd be there for the weekend starting Friday night, and luckily enough he was available to visit and give me a place close to the city where I could spend a couple of nights, although no plans were final until about mid-way through Saturday.

Mostly the visit was for travel's sake, but also I needed to evaluate Seattle's livability, since there is an excellent law school there that I may be seriously considering in a year from now (while Portland is just fine as far as cities go, it doesn't have any top notch law schools except Lewis and Clark, which is only top notch for environmental law). It turns out that big cities - Seattle - have much more going on than little metropolises - Portland - and there's still much more to see before I get a real idea of what living there would be like. I guess this means we have to schedule a second date.

Still, Seattle is beautiful and green, and it has some great architecture. I'll split this post in two parts just because there are too many photos to bombard you with in just one "welcome to June" announcement.

While I was there a large folk festival, "Folklife Northwest" was taking place. I did check it out, but it was far too crowded and noisy in general. I couldn't stand it, in short. But there were some small, removed patches where I was able to escape before I escaped the entire festival altogether. Off to the side one table sold books of poetry written by kids in juvenile detention, where an organization called Pongo Teen Writing teaches non-profit poetry. It felt like something I could support, and the poems, which now sit in my room, are often quite good for being written by kids aged 13-17.

Then I made my way to Kerry Park Viewpoint, up a huge hill that rewarded me with a sweeping view of the cityscape. This is where my picture taking of the day started, because it's the only place in the city where a shot of the Space Needle makes it look like it's actually within downtown Seattle, while in reality it's off to the side in a different section of town from the skyscrapers.

See? No skyscrapers nearby.

The next day I went to Waterfall Garden Park (of course) because the public transportation was limited during the holiday weekend and I couldn't make it out to Snoqualmie Falls as I had originally planned. It turns out I wasn't allowed to take pictures with a tripod in the park because it's a private garden and no professional photographers are allowed. I was too flattered to be considered a pro despite my dinged up tripod to protest.

Waterfall Garden Park is a quite, tucked away fountain in the shape of a waterfall. It

's a few blocks away from where the Seattle Seahawks play.

Later, on the way back to the Space Needle, I accidentally ran into the downtown public library, an example of Seattle's bizarre and amazing architecture. Portland also boasts a fine public library, but not ten stories of modern glassy book holdings, complete with a book spiral built exactly how I imagined my protagonist's home to be in the novel I'm writing. It was a legitimate research library and piece of art, and made the prospect of being a University of Washington student seem quite appealing.

A wall of the library

Outside the library's entrance

Part of the library's roof

All right, enough for part one. More travel writing to come in the next installment. Hope you all enjoyed your holiday weekends too.