By Jeffrey Page

Americans don’t like to wait. We perceive a problem, discuss it for, oh say, 10 minutes, come up with what seems like a satisfactory solution – as facile as it might be – take action, and sit back with a knowing, self-satisfied  smile. Occasionally this works.

But we tend to get a little testy when something resists a quick fix. Take these wars of ours in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’re the result of 9/11, and a decade later we’re still at it. Was it Rumsfeld the Genius who said we would be wrong to call them a quagmire? They’re a quagmire, and we’ve lost more than 5,000 of our young people in it.

Nowadays we are very concerned by the presence of millions of illegal aliens – or undocumented immigrants in the kingdom of political correctness – and there have been many proposals put forth on how to deal with this. These include a fence to rival the Great Wall of China, armed troops, armed civilian militias, and that demagogue’s delight of a state law in Arizona.

The newest idea is to repeal Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This is the part that grants automatic U.S. citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including, therefore, the children of those who are here illegally. The 14th Amendment is a testament to the fairness and humanity of the United States because it was a repudiation of the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott in 1857, in which the justices ruled that black men and women could never become U.S. citizens, even those born here.

Now, 142 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is out front in the discussion about repealing the compassion, goodwill and humanity of the 14th’s citizenship clause as a way of dealing with Mexicans illegally crossing the border. It’s not drastic. It’s Graham, imitating Homer Simpson: “Doh! Nothing else worked.”

Well, if we’re going to spay the 14th Amendment because we’re unable to come up with a reasoned way of dealing with undocumented immigrants, we ought to consider changing other parts of the Constitution that we find bothersome. Thanks to Lindsey Graham, this seems to be the easy way to deal with annoying situations. Find it, fix it, forget it.

Let us modify the First Amendment to satisfy the opponents of the proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero by making it read: “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion except Islam.” There, wasn’t that easy?

For the benefit of Americans who get nervous by the sight of political demonstrators, we could change the assembly clause in the First Amendment to read: “Congress shall make no law regarding the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances as long as those assembling and/or petitioning are quiet, respectful, middle class, middle aged, do not shake their fists and generally are non-threatening.”

For those who oppose the possession of firearms, let us repeal the Second Amendment altogether. It’s only 27 words; who would miss it?

Then there’s that pesky Fifth Amendment. Let it now read: “No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself unless everybody knows he’s guilty as sin, in which case, he’d better talk.” The altered Fifth could be paired with an altered Eighth Amendment, which could read: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted unless we know the S.O.B. is guilty, in which case no trial is necessary. Just take him out and hang him.”

For the anti-tax folks, we’ll repeal the 16th Amendment, the one that empowers Congress to lay and collect taxes on income, and order a National Day of Prayer – pray or die – every year to ask God to rain down all the money we need to maintain civil society in the 21st Century, but without taxes.

There are people – come on, you know who you are – who’d like to do something about the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote. Hey, if the framers wanted women to vote, they would have said so, right? So, maybe late one night when the nation is fast asleep, Congress could start the machinery to, uh, do something about the 19th.

Wasn’t that easy?

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

For years I’ve been concerned about the debasement of our society as a result of the transfer of certain words from the do-not-say list to common, everyday nouns and verbs.

Note: This is not a call for government to send in the speech cops or the thought police. Nor is it about private speech between and among individuals. Rather it’s about my dismay that we’ve reached a point where you hear little boys and girls using “it sucks” as a statement of disapproval as in “The Mets? They suck.” You’d think parents would understand that “sucks,” used in this sense, derives from half a word used to describe someone who performs fellatio. And what parent wouldn’t jump at the chance to change their child’s vocabulary if it meant avoiding having to explain fellatio to a 5-year old?

The casual use of “sucks” is all around us. Not long ago I heard a commercial on radio for a book entitled “Your Marketing Sucks,” in which some guy promises to improve your business operation if you’d only read his book.

The casual use of “cojones” has been building for years. This Spanish vulgarism for testicles often is used to connote courage as in the English vulgarism “balls.” The formal word for “testicles” is the far less colorful sounding “testículos.” But “cojones” recently lost some of its ability to startle when, during an interview on Fox, Sarah Palin let fly with “Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not.” Brewer, the governor of Arizona, is a woman but this subtlety was lost on Palin.

In fact, she never missed a beat, never slowed down to consider her coarseness, never realized how ridiculous she sounded in her anatomically erroneous discussion of a woman’s cojones.

(And why should she? After all, it was Palin who assured the nation in 2008 that Alaska’s proximity to Siberia made her sufficiently qualified in foreign relations to be vice president.)

The irony – or hypocrisy – was too rich to ignore. Fox viewers might have been left scratching their heads and wondering what happened to Palin’s own “cojones.” Didn’t she quit as governor of Alaska as an ethics investigation was about to get underway?

The public crassness continues in the current issue of The New Yorker, which contains a full-page ad for the new Showtime series “The Big C.” The show is about a woman’s confronting her cancer. The kicker in the ad: “Grabbing life by the balls.”

In 2004, the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, was angered by Senator Patrick Leahy’s hard questioning of him about the Halliburton Corporation. “Go f–k yourself,” Cheney advised Leahy. It was on the floor of the Senate, which used to be known as the world’s greatest deliberative body.

The recently released movie “Dinner for Schmucks” is rated PG-13. The parental advisory at the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb.com) notes, “A man’s ex-girlfriend sneaks into his house. She is in a revealing outfit. She then proceeds to have sex with another man by making sexual remarks (so her boyfriend can hear.)”

The advisory also notes the script’s use of “f–k,” “s–t,” “bitch,” “ass,” and “hell” and adds that “God’s and Jesus’ names are abused many times as well.”

Just think, some genius at the Motion Picture Association of America gets paid to decide that “f–k,” “s–t,” “bitch,” “ass,” and “hell” are OK for children over 13.”

But nowhere do the producers explain that “schmuck,” while commonly used to refer to a dimwit, is the Yiddish word for “penis.” If “Dinner for Schmucks” is acceptable now, can “Dinner for Dickheads” be far behind?

Speaking of movie titles, remember “Meet the Fockers” of a few years back? My sense was that you were supposed to read the advertisements for the movie and be sufficiently titillated to make the connection between Fockers and f–kers. I checked IMDb.com and sure enough, there it was: “The surname Focker plays on the F word.” This movie also was rated PG-13.

Any number of times on New York radio, I have heard raging talk show hosts refer to the people they disliked as “a-holes” and “scumbags.”

So there you are, driving the family to a ball game with the radio tuned to some talker. And all of a sudden your kid asks, “Mom, what’s a scumbag?” Go ahead, rehearse a response.

Am I making too big a deal of this or have we been witness to and, by our inaction, participants in the degrading of our lives?

What’s your take on this?

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

 
By Jeffrey Page

When the details of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law were revealed, some people called for a boycott of the state. The counterargument was that this could cost people their jobs. Of course that might never happen but would I want it on my conscience if it did?

However the Arizona Atrocity is no minor irritant. When it comes to Arizona, we’re dealing with the enactment of the first American Apartheid statute, one that can get you arrested for passing a red light and then being scrutinized as someone who just might be in the country illegally. Or arrested for failing to have proof of legal residency on you at the time you pass that red light. As far as I know, there’s nothing in the law that requires certain other born-elsewhere Arizonans – John McCain, Jon Kyl, Jan Brewer – to carry proofs of their legal residency with them at all times.

So, boycott Arizona? Sure. Deal me in. But it should be known that this isn’t much of a sacrifice. I had no plans to go to Phoenix.

Then there’s Target.

Do I continue to shop at Target stores now that the CEO, Gregg Steinhafel, has contributed $150,000 in corporate funds to support the candidacy of a man named Tom Emmer, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in Minnesota and who stands for many things I find repellent? Or do I boycott Target? By the way, such corporate contributions are legal for the first time in about 65 years, courtesy of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.

All right, who is Tom Emmer, and why should I care about what happens on Election Day in Minnesota? After all, it’s 1,200 miles from my house to Minneapolis.

This is the extent of Emmer’s thinking about marriage: “I believe marriage is the union between one man and one woman.” Twelve words to deny basic rights to a segment of the Minnesota population. At his campaign web site, Emmer makes no mention of where marriage is discussed in the Constitution and how it became a political issue. He doesn’t explain why anyone would care about his definition of marriage.

But never mind Emmer. Let’s concentrate on Gregg Steinhafel. Some of the gay employees in Target’s 1,700 stores became alarmed with his sending that check to aid one of those not-now-not-ever candidates and then trying to wriggle out of the public spotlight.

Target has 350,000 employees. What’s the American gay population? About 5 percent of the total? So let’s agree that Steinhafel has about 17,500 gay and lesbian people on his payroll. He heard their shouts and the best he could come up with was: “Target’s support of the [Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender] community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company.”

Unwavering? When you remove the plain brown wrapper, the truth lies there like a rotting walleye, the Minnesota state fish. Steinhafel divides where division is not possible. You can’t lean back on prettily written corporate personnel policy – Target supports domestic partner benefits and some other programs important to gay people – while forking over $150K to someone who would withhold a basic human right to 17,500 of your employees.

So follow the money. I frequently buy socks, shirts and veggie burgers at Target. The money I spend there goes into the corporate treasury. The treasury is tapped to allow Steinhafal to donate money to Tom Emmer so Emmer can wage war on human rights for 5 percent of the population. Does that sound unwavering to you?

The result is that it’s some of my money going to help Emmer.

Spend my money at a Target store, such as the one in Middletown? No. There are other places to buy socks and veggie burgers.

Either I stand with the struggle for full rights for all people or I turn my back. There’s no compromise.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

It’s been a handful of decades since I had contact with Vic Ziegel but as I leafed through some papers over the weekend I came across his obituary and was transported back to my earliest days in a newspaper’s city room.

Vic – young in my recollection; 72 when he died – was my boss for a time at The New York Post, where he was an editor on the night sports desk in the years before Murdoch. He was the one who taught me the most important lesson in journalism: Get it right. The facts you present must be correct. The names of the people must be spelled correctly. The quotes you attribute to them must be correct. The words you choose to tell your story have to be correct. And when you have doubts, look it up, check it out, ask someone you trust. But never embarrass the paper and yourself through laziness.

A little background. I began work as a copyboy at The Post about a month after President Kennedy was murdered. I filled paste pots, sharpened pencils, restocked the carbon paper, took coffee and sandwich orders, and ran the reporters’ stories to the editors. Then I either took the stories back to the reporter for more work or out to the composing room where the stories would be set in type. Then I’d do it all over again.

It was boring as hell. When the chance came to be a temporary editorial assistant on the night sports desk while the regular guy was out, I leapt.

When Vic Ziegel was satisfied that I understood the rules, he gave me a chance to do something more productive for the day’s edition of The Post than take coffee orders.

One night he had me take dictation on the phone from a guy named Jerry DeNonno, who was the Post’s thoroughbred racing handicapper. Jerry’s job was to pick winners. My job was to make sure his picks got into print.

Vic said I would type the names of Jerry’s three best picks in each race at Aqueduct, and God help me if I got anything wrong because Jerry had a reputation to uphold. Get it right, I thought.

Jerry called in, was transferred to me, asked who I was, and sounded quite concerned about having a newcomer take his pari-mutuel wisdom. He went slowly. We went through the entire Aqueduct card. And then he told me to read it all back to him – race by race, horse by horse, spelling out the more unusual names. When I finished, he insisted I read it back to him again.

It was bad for Jerry when his picks ran out of the money, Vic told me, but it would be far worse – for me – if Jerry’s readers bet the wrong ponies because some dumb clerk screwed up the listing of his choices.

Later, Vic told me I would be taking dictation from Milton Gross, one of The Post’s most popular sports columnists. Milt, too, was not happy with someone he’d never spoken with before. But he dictated and I typed. Once, when I yawned, he asked petulantly if he was boring me. He was serious. In the length of a yawn – two seconds more or less? – I might miss one or two of his 800 words. When I had the column down, I had to read it back, word for word while noting every punctuation mark, every new paragraph.

Vic also assigned me to write some headlines. Nothing big, like the banner across the back page, but what were known as No. 1 Heads, which went on stories of one or two short paragraphs.

Something like: Cubs Top Cards, 3-1.

Vic assured me that people actually read these little out-of-town items, and that if I accidentally made the score 4-1 or 2-1, I’d be back sharpening pencils. For years I kept a small spiral notebook of those headlines.

Soon, the guy I replaced was back and I returned to paste pots and dull pencils. I stayed a year, asked for a tryout as a reporter, and was told to get a job out of town and then reapply.

As it happened I never went back to The Post and never again encountered Vic Ziegel. But you never forget the people who take a chance on you and point the way.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

America loves its celebrities. So in all likelihood, the late Larry Rivers will be remembered as a celebrated painter, film maker and pop art pioneer, and Roman Polanski will be recalled as a renowned movie director. By rights, they ought to go down in history as child abusers.

Thirty years ago, Rivers came up with the idea of making a film featuring his two young daughters. OK so far, right?

Except he filmed the girls nude, starting at age 11, because the focus of the movie was the development of their breasts. Still OK? Or maybe you’re getting a little slimed out.

Dani Shapiro, writing in The New York Times, noted that Rivers zoomed his lens to get close-ups of the girls’ breasts and genitalia. The vomitorium is to your right.

After Rivers’ death in 2002, the films became the property of the Larry Rivers Foundation, which has sold most of its holdings to New York University. NYU has said it doesn’t want the films. Rivers’ daughters do, and have moved to get possession of them, presumably to make sure they never again see the light of day and to maintain a modicum of personal modesty and dignity. Who’s going to take issue with that?

But The Times also reported a foundation spokesman saying a decision on whether to give the films to Rivers’ daughters had not yet been taken.

Shapiro noted that in the narration of the film, Rivers acknowledges his children were disinclined to be so photographed, leading one to believe that Daddy presumably used his Daddy power to make the movie.

Is anyone really going to argue that what Rivers did was art simply by virtue of the fact that he was an artist? Or impose the handy cliché that it’s unfair to judge until you’ve seen the movie? Or regurgitate the line about one of the purposes of art is to unsettle the everyday order of the universe, and thus anyone who complains about such “art” is a philistine?

More recent is the Swiss disposition in the case of Everyone In The Civilized World vs. Roman Polanski. Polanski is the celebrated director of such movies as “Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Tess,” and “Repulsion” who pleaded guilty to raping a girl in 1977 when she was 13 and he was 43.

Fearful that the judge would come down with a sentence harsher than expected, Polanski fled to France and has been in exile ever since. Last year, he was arrested in Switzerland and held for extradition to the United States. But Switzerland has declined the American request. So Polanski pretty much beat the rap.

Though his friends bemoan his inability to return to America, Polanski’s life in exile hasn’t exactly been one of drudgery, privation or hard times. In 2003 he won the Academy Award for directing “The Pianist,” which also was nominated for best picture. In 1981, he was nominated for the Oscar for best director for “Tess.” He won scads of other awards during his years outside the U.S.

Still, his friends insisted, it just wasn’t right for a great artist like Roman Polanski to be forced to stay out of America. All because of something that happened so long ago, some say. Oh, by the way, what was it that happened 33 years ago? Polanski drugged the kid with a Quaalude and gave her some nice champagne to wash it down. She told a grand jury at the time that she asked to be taken home, which Polanski did after having vaginal and oral sex with her and urging her not to tell her mother or boyfriend about what happened. Once again; she was 13 years old.

So until his fawning claque gets active again, Polanski must avoid the United States and any country with which it had an extradition treaty.

But hey, Switzerland’s not so bad. Allow me to paraphrase Harry Lime in “The Third Man,” itself a great movie by Orson Wells: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Roman.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

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By Jeffrey Page

At long last, it appears that the question of gay marriage is switching to an express track to the Supreme Court.

A pair of cases, decided last week in Boston, are not the emotion stirrers of tenant rights, sodomy laws, employment, adoption and health. Instead the cases were decided by an examination of the hoary Tenth Amendment, the last item in the Bill of Rights, which reserves all powers to the states if the Constitution doesn’t grant them to the federal government. So, the questions – Can two men marry? Can two women? – were answered not with ancient prejudices and irrational fears, but on a federal trial judge’s ruling that the Constitution says nothing about marriage.

Therefore, he reasoned, marriage is a matter for the states – several of which have already legalized same-sex marriage.

Specifically, Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled, the federal ban on same-sex marriage – contained in the Defense of Marriage Act – is unconstitutional because it violates the the 28 words of the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.”

Declare war? Congress, not the states, is empowered to do that. Enter into treaties with other nations? Raise a Navy? Punish pirates? Coin money? Same thing; they’re matters for the federal government. But create an official definition of marriage? No.

The Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law 14 years ago by Bill Clinton, Last week, a judge ruled that DOMA has Tenth Amendment problems. It’s impossible to know how many people have been victimized by DOMA during its existence. I think of gay friends, dead now, who likely would have married if they’d had the opportunity. I think of them when I read newspaper stories about same-sex marriage and wonder what their lives were like with the knowledge that a political faction in the United States considered them less than human.

The Defense of Marriage Act is intellectually indefensible especially in light of that stirring business in the preamble to the Constitution about establishing justice, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty. These were not, and are not, pretty poetry. They were, and remain, the glove slapped across the wretched face of tyranny. It will be fascinating to watch Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalia jump through flaming hoops to craft a response to Tauro’s reasoning.

By the way, just who is this Judge Joseph L. Tauro anyway? Why, it turns out that he was appointed to the federal district court in Boston by none other than that radical, commie comforting, pink to the core socialist bum, uh, Richard M. Nixon.

Clearly, the matters that went before Tauro can never be concluded in his courtroom. Doubtless there will be at least two appeals, one to an appellate panel, and one to the Supreme Court, several of whose members have decried activist interpretations of the Constitution. And to find marriage where marriage does not exist, such as in the Constitution, sounds like the very definition of judicial activism.

For now at least, it is important to note that nothing unusual happened in the several days since Judge Tauro’s ruling. This should ease the terrible fears of people who believe that two men holding hands on Tuesday mean the death of America on Wednesday.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

After watching the self-inflicted downfall of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, I’m thinking about firing off a letter to the Army about an incident at Fort Dix years ago. I want a do-over.

The general and some of his top aides cracked wise to a reporter for Rolling Stone about their civilian commanders. And generals are supposed to be smart. The response was quicker than most things President Obama does. Within days, McChrystal was fired and now fades away with retirement pay of $150,000 a year. (May I digress? Have you heard New Jersey Governor Chris Christie or any other critics of public pensions railing about McChrystal’s retirement benefits, or do they save their anger just for teacher pensions?)

Now, when I was in basic training at Fort Dix, I responded – in a manner considered disrespectful – to a sergeant who had imposed an absurd punishment for an infraction that couldn’t be avoided. For that I was hauled before the company commander and offered my choice of punishment.

While McChrystal gets his $150K, I was told I could request a court martial for disobeying an order and probably wind up in the stockade. Or I could accept what was known as non-judicial punishment, which meant my pay could be cut and I’d probably draw extra guard duty and/or KP. Or, the captain of Tango Company, Second Training Regiment said, I could come in after training and sweep and mop his office three nights running, and we would call it a day. He didn’t offer to pension me out and send me home.

I started to complain and the captain said, “Shut up, Page, and just go get the broom.”

“But the man’s a dope,” I managed. He cut me off. Such disrespect could not be tolerated if unit cohesion was to be maintained, he said. Which sounds like a principle someone ought to have taught General McChrystal.

He and his aides insulted the president of the Unites States in the most sophomoric manner and he gets his pension and a ticket home. I insulted a staff sergeant by failing to do 10 pushups for “refusal to come to parade rest as commanded” and lost most of three nights sleep. (Note: The men of Tango Company had been standing on a small mountain of construction rubble waiting their turn to enter the mess hall for breakfast. Standing at parade rest was not possible.)

The depth of McChrystal’s disrespect for his civilian commanders was staggering. One of his staffers was quoted in the Rolling Stone article as saying of an early meeting of President Obama and General McChrystal: “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed.”

Rolling Stone also reported on McChrystal’s preparing to deliver a speech and jokingly saying that if asked about Vice President Biden – with whom he had differences on counterterrorism – he could respond: “Are you asking about Vice President Joe Biden? Who’s that?”

An aide had a better idea and offered it up: “Biden? Did you say Bite Me?”

What was that business about unit cohesion?

There’s more. Biden’s counterterrorism plan would lead to “Chaosistan” in Afghanistan, McChrystal said. One of his men dismissed Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones – himself a retired general – as “a clown,” while another revealed McChrystal’s view of Obama’s man in South Asia, Richard Holbrooke: “The boss says he’s like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired. So that makes him dangerous.”

McChrystal’s contempt for Obama created a situation designed for hypocrites. He was a general who was “pretty disappointed” with his commander, but apparently not so disappointed that he thought about resigning his commission and putting in his retirement papers. And so he continued to send his soldiers into harm’s way in Afghanistan to satisfy a commander he believed was not fully engaged.

How do you explain that to the spouses and parents of your troops who are killed or gravely wounded in battle?

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

Last time, it was a member of the House of Representatives calling for the deportation of the children of illegal immigrants even if the kids are American citizens.

Duncan Duane Hunter, a first-termer from Southern California, would ship the kids back though he doesn’t say to where. Which raises the question: Why would Mexico or Poland, Peru or Saudi Arabia accept them if they’re native born citizens of the United States?

If he had actually read the 14th Amendment, Hunter might have been shocked to discover that his own U.S. citizenship is no more sacred than that of a young Chicano who was born or naturalized here – no matter if the kid’s parents are here legally or not.

But Hunter was last week’s news. Now, in the fearful time after the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, my friend Ken Farber sends along a note about the mischief Senator Joseph Lieberman is disguising as serious legislation. Lieberman would strip the citizenship of anyone who provides material support for a group that the government has designated a terrorist organization – whether or not that person has been convicted of a crime.

“Let’s just throw the Bill of Rights out the window,” Ken says in disgust.

“If they’re a U.S. citizen, until they’re convicted of some crime, I don’t know how you would attempt to take their citizenship away,” House Republican Leader John Boehner said. “It would be pretty difficult under the U.S. Constitution.”

Oh right, that bothersome Constitution.

Meanwhile, what is material support anyway?

Writing in The Washington Post, David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law school, notes the meaning of “material support” is “so broad that it makes it a crime to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, to lobby Congress, to teach human rights or to write an op-ed piece, so long as it is done with, or for, a designated group.”

Could this mean that if you exercise your First Amendment right to petition the government on some matter that Joe Lieberman finds offensive you could lose your citizenship? I don’t believe we really want to go down that path.

On the matter of stripping someone of his citizenship, Cole says the Supreme Court has previously ruled that citizenship is a constitutional matter and thus can’t be arbitrarily terminated by the government.

In these dangerous days some politicians are trying to prove how tough they are. The problem for the rest of us is that people like Lieberman and his three co-sponsors – including Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the successor to Ted Kennedy – might not know when to stop. If we ship American kids out of the country and revoke the citizenship of people not convicted of anything, when do we get back to internment camps such as those to which earlier American citizens were exiled?

In the earlier dangerous days of the Forties, we shipped 120,000 citizens of Japanese ancestry to what amounted to internal deportation, snatching their homes and much of their property in the process. It took 50 years but the American people finally apologized for this atrocity and even paid $20,000 in reparations to each of the 60,000 survivors. This was not liberal gamesmanship.

“Here, we admit a wrong, here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under law,” President Reagan said as he signed that reparation measure into law in 1988.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

By Jeffrey Page

It’s a different time with different concerns and different people, but the words ring as true now as they did in 1954.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Joseph C. Welch said, sounding the beginning of the end of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Nowadays, those questions are justifiably addressed to Rep. Duncan Duane Hunter, a Republican from Southern California, who would tackle the problem of illegal immigration to the United States by deporting the native-born children of illegal immigrants.

In other words, Hunter would trash the Bill of Rights and deport American citizens. This Orwellian solution would be a first for America, a place where we have always prided ourselves for granting rights, not eliminating them.

The shameless Hunter is not the only person who must be asked about a sense of decency. The question also should be put to the nativists in our midst who talk up the matter of “family values” and yet have no problem with the idea of separating families. Certain families, anyway. Can you guess which ones? More on this in a moment.

In order for Hunter to get what he wants, America would have to suspend the 14th Amendment, whose first sentence is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Changing the Constitution is something not to be taken lightly. To amend it would require approval in the Congress by two-thirds majorities plus subsequent approval by three-quarters of the states, or by a Constitutional convention.

As it stands, if you were born here you belong here. You’re a citizen. You could be president or a judge or even a member of the House of Representatives from southern California, and no yahoo back-bencher like Duncan Duane Hunter can change that.

The question of Hunter’s easy one-syllable immigration fix came up at a recent Tea Party gathering in Ramona, Calif., about halfway between San Diego and Escondido. Hunter was asked if he supports such deportations. “I would have to, yes,” he said.

Here’s why Duncan Duane Hunter isn’t the only person who needs to be questioned about a willingness to divide families and about his monumental ignorance of the framers’ desire “to promote the general welfare and [to] secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Hunter’s remarks in Ramona were before a Tea Party. Did they scoff at his suggestion to send children back? (Back to where, by the way?) They did no such thing.

Did the tea partiers, whose fondness for family values is evident on many of the signs they carry whenever they gather, greet him with jeers and thumbs-down gestures? They did not.

In fact, they burst into applause and cheers. To cheer Hunter’s idea is to declare that only Anglo values can count as family values.

“We’re not being mean,” Hunter said. Whoa! As long as he brought up the subjective question of meanness, let’s at least be honest. His idea is among the meanest imaginable.

He continued: “We’re just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s within our souls.”

Duncan Duane Hunter doesn’t know what he’s talking about. First of all, no one thinks that to become a U.S. citizen, you simply walk across a border. And second, no one – not even Duncan Duane Hunter – should ever presume to know what is in the souls of others.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com.

By Jeffrey Page

So here’s Chris Christie, the pugnacious new governor of New Jersey, basically announcing that the state’s teachers, and many other public workers, are the chief cause of high taxes in the Garden State.

So he wants to freeze teachers’ pay. You can imagine what the teachers think of this.

Though teacher contracts are worked out by the New Jersey Education Association and the local districts, Christie has a lot to say about teacher pay because he decides the extent of state aid to the school districts.

This is a man that any intelligent person would want to deal with very carefully. But the NJEA has stepped into a bucket and can‘t get its foot out. Here‘s Joe Coppola and several other officials of the NJEA pulling a stupid stunt that makes the union look like a bunch of out-of-control jackasses, gains sympathy for Christie, and creates an atmosphere in which an aide to the governor can ask the legitimate question: “How [does the union] explain themselves to the children?”

At issue of course is the infamous NJEA memo about how the union will slug it out with Christie, but winds up with a prayer that Christie calls dangerous, the union calls a joke, and most everybody else calls idiotic. As reported by The Record of Hackensack, it goes like this: “Dear Lord: This year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze; my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett; my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that my favorite governor is Chris Christie.”

The joke got out to the public, and the union was left stammering that it was a joke, that it was never meant to be made public, that it was inappropriate, that union officials would never wish anybody dead, and blah blah blah. The union could be using its time to better advantage than explaining the jest.

By the way, NJEA couldn‘t even get the joke right. The Lord didn‘t take Swayze, Fawcett, Jackson and Mays this year. They all died in 2009, but the union never thought to update the list.

Why do otherwise intelligent people forget that words have meaning and that many in the public take those meanings at face value?

Here‘s another moronic joke told recently, this one by a Qatari diplomat. As Mohammed el-Madadi was leaving the bathroom on a Washington-Denver flight, an attendant smelled smoke and confronted Madadi who said he had not smoked but had been trying to set fire to his shoe.

Madadi said it was a joke. I wonder what the other passengers thought as they recalled Richard Reid, the original would-be shoe bomber. I wonder what the Air Force thought as it scrambled some jet fighters to intercept Madadi‘s flight. I wonder what the FBI thought as it entered the case.

Here‘s another. The Times Herald-Record reported this week that Sullivan County Judge Frank LaBuda ordered a lawyer to perform 100 hours of community service. Why? Because the attorney, William Brenner, had told LaBuda that there had been no plea deal talks for his client.

“In fact there had been several,” the Record noted dryly and went on to present a great quote from LaBuda to Brenner. Community service would be a reminder “to put your mind in action before your mouth.”

I‘m reminded of the never-ending battle between New Jersey environmental officials and people who love bears. The bear population is growing and the state has on occasion sanctioned a bear hunt. At a demonstration in Vernon, few years ago, one of the anti-hunt people carried a sign that said: “DROP McGREEVEY, NOT BEARS.”

McGreevey was the governor. You know what “drop” means.

The leader of the bear defenders was outraged when the wording on her protest sign appeared in the newspaper the next day. It was a joke, she said. Not to be taken literally, she said. She would never wish anybody dead, she said.

The most intelligent perspective on how to deal with political foes came from Bob Dole when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1996. Dole said he was shocked at Clinton’s personal conduct and went on to predict that the House would impeach him.

And Dole left it at that, saying of Clinton: “He‘s my opponent. He‘s not my enemy.”

But that of course was before politics became a blood sport.

Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com