Bob Marshall knows absolutely nothing about the United States Constitution.

Bob Marshall, wannabe 2012 Senate candidate, is proposing a bill that would ban homosexuals from serving in the National Guard. How does he plan on doing this? He claims that the United States Constitution ensues that the states are responsible for disciplining the “militia” (the National Guard).

Except for, you know, that provision that states the exact opposite:

Congress shall have power […] To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. (United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1 and 16).

What is the “discipline prescribed by Congress”? That would be the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), containing, or not containing, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ provision.

And what did the founders have to say about this? Well, let’s turn to the Federalist Papers:

One Government can collect and avail itself of the talents and experience of the ablest men, in whatever part of the Union they may be found. It can move on uniform principles of policy. It can harmonize, assimilate, and protect the several parts and members, and extend the benefit of its foresight and precautions to each. In the formation of treaties it will regard the interest of the whole, and the particular interests of the parts as connected with that of the whole. It can apply the resources and power of the whole to the defence of any particular part, and that more easily and expeditiously than State Governments, or separate confederacies can possibly do, for want of concert and unity of system. It can place the militia under one plan of discipline, and, by putting their officers in a proper line of subordination to the Chief Magistrate, will, as it were, consolidate them into one corps, and thereby render them more efficient than if divided into thirteen or into three or four distinct independent bodies.

[…]

But whatever may be our situation, whether firmly united under one national Government, or split into a number of confederacies, certain it is, that foreign nations will know and view it exactly as it is; and they will act towards us accordingly. If they see that our national Government is efficient and well administered — our trade prudently regulated — our militia properly organized and disciplined — our resources and finances discreetly managed — our credit re-established — our people free, contented, and united, they will be much more disposed to cultivate our friendship than provoke our resentment. If, on the other hand, they find us either destitute of an effectual Government, (each State doing right or wrong, as to its rulers may seem convenient,) or split into three or four independent and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become not only to their contempt, but to their outrage; and how soon would dear-bought experience proclaim that when a people or family so divide, it never fails to be against themselves. (John Jay, Federalist No. 4.)

It requires no skill in the science of war to discern, that uniformity in the organization and discipline of the militia would be attended with the most beneficial effects, whenever they were called into service for the public defence. It would enable them to discharge the duties of the camp and of the field, with mutual intelligence and concert — an advantage of peculiar moment in the operations of an army: and it would fit them much sooner to acquire the degree of proficiency in military functions, which would be essential to their usefulness. This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the National authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the Convention proposes to empower the Union “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.” [emphasis in italics in original] (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 29.)

That being said, Congress, under the UCMJ, has left it up to the states on how National Guard troops will be disciplined when not under federal active duty (UCMJ, Title 32), but that is a purely statutory arrangement, and Congress would be more than in its right to change. Furthermore, Virginia fully incorporates the provisions of the UCMJ to apply to National Guard troops (Va. Code § 44-40).

Maybe Bob Marshall should dust off his copy of the United States Constitution and Federalist Papers and take a turn rereading them, that’s if he has ever bothered reading them in the first place.

Maybe he can take time off from gay-bashing and do that.

Cross-posted at Virginia Virtucon.

Let’s see how many neo-Confederates and Confederate apologists I can annoy…

Today is the 150th anniversary of the secession of South Carolina from the United States of America.

There is a simple reason that South Carolina, a state where you had to be a wealthy land-owning white male to hold elected office, choose to secede: slavery.

Do not believe me? Read the South Carolina Declaration of the Causes of Secession (December 24, 1860):

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.”

They further solemnly declared that whenever any “form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies “are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments– Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article “that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”

Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: “ARTICLE 1– His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”

Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.

In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.

The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.

If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were– separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that 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. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. `Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860 [Committee signatures]

The Confederacy rebelled and fought to retain their ability to hold human beings as chattel. Anyone that disputes this is ignorant of history and is doing nothing more than romanticizing one of the most disgusting acts in this country’s history.

And the sad thing is for the next five years, that is exactly what anyone that has a brain will be forced to put up with: People talking about how great the South was for fighting for “states’ rights” (“states’ rights” meaning the ability for states to allow people to be held as slaves).

More Reading:

Delegate Chris Peace is an embarrasment to Caroline County and Virginia.

Delegate Chris Peace (R-97th), who represents the southern portions of Caroline County, including Ladysmith, has a brilliant idea: he’s going to run those damn Hispanics illegals out of state colleges and universities.

When did he turn to promote his bill to keep Hispanics illegals out of college? “World Net Daily” (WND).

What is “World Net Daily”, you may be asking? Well, it is the clearing house of hundreds of different crazy conspiracy theories, including being one of the main sites responsible for the “Birthers” who allege, despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary, that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In all, it is a bunch of crazies that write a bunch of nonsensical drivel.

Did he solicit an interview from WND or did they contact him? In any case, why did he agree to have an interview with them? Is he a Birther? If I was a politician and WND contacted me to do a story about a bill that I had sponsored, it was force me to do a little rethinking about my position. But for Chris Peace? He is more than glad to do an interview with a bunch of nuts.

Illegal aliens are already not eligible for in-state tuition (see Va. Code § 23-7.4), but now Chris Peace wants colleges and universities to conduct full background checks on applicants to see if they are in the country legally.

How about we just call this the “Bureaucrat Full Employment Act”? I thought Republicans were supposed to be for limited government or something?

Here is to hoping that someone runs against him this year. Chris Peace should not be in any position of elected office in this state.

What the hell is wrong with The Caroline Progress?

They had front-page coverage of the Clyde Davenport case and they actually gave the name of his stepson, the victim of sexual abuse? What the hell is wrong with that paper? Are they the only newspaper in the United States that still names the victims of sexual abuse in articles? Every newspaper that I know of has a policy that prohibits doing exactly that.

Testifying in front of a jury and other people in a courtroom is traumatic enough, but then to have some rag of a newspaper give your identity to the whole world? Worst newspaper in Virginia.

Apparently Jim DeMint (R-SC) missed that memo about needing to emulate Ronald Reagan.

Because this type of junk is coming out of his mouth:

Sen. Jim DeMint told a crowd of supporters Friday evening that he will continue to recruit like-minded Conservatives across the nation to run for Congress and pastors to join the fight to “take our country back.”

(…)

DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.

And what’s the problem with gay teachers? Are these people afraid that having their kids around someone that is gay is going to turn their kids gay?

And here’s what Ronald Reagan, then the former Governor of California, said in 1978 when Proposition 6 (aka the Briggs Initiative) was on ballot, which would have prohibited gays from serving as teachers in California:

Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.

And that was back in 1978.

And why is it wrong for a woman to engage in premarital sex, but it’s okay for a man to do so? And isn’t there something in that pesky United States Constitution about “equal protection of the laws” or something?

The sad thing about this is that I am about as conservative as you can be when it comes to abortion, but people like this make me make snarky, nasty comments about social conservatives. And I have come to the conclusion that there are social conservatives out there that think they every gay man is out to molest their kids, and apparently Jim DeMint is one of them.

Cross-posted at Virginia Virtucon.

BREAKING HARD: DONNA BLANTON’S APPEAL DENIED, CONVICTION AFFIRMED.

From the Supreme Court of Virginia’s website:

091878 Blanton v. Commonwealth 09/16/2010 In an appeal arising from a prosecution for murder and felonious use of a firearm, defendant’s failure to make a timely motion for a cautionary instruction or mistrial concerning the prosecutor’s comment about the defense evidence failing to show that the defendant was not guilty precludes consideration of the merits of her assignments of error regarding this comment. With respect to the prosecutor’s subsequent comment about the defendant being in jail several days after the events, it cannot be said that the circuit court erred as a matter of law in denying defendant’s mistrial motion. Considering the innocuous nature of this comment under all the circumstances of the case, the circuit court’s cautionary instruction to the jury, and the prosecutor’s corrective statement, the defendant’s rights were clearly not so indelibly prejudiced as to necessitate a new trial. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Will update when I have a chance to read through the opinion.

A couple of people at Virginia Commonwealth University need to be fired.

Ah, the joys of incompetence at VCU.

Let’s say that someone, say a handsome young blogger, submits his Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on February 9, 2010.

How long does it take for this application to be processed by his public university? Over six months. And then only after two e-mails and a phone call.

He finally gets the financial aid request processed and is awarded a respectful amount of money for his schooling. However, a large portion of the financial aid awards are now not being credited to his outstanding account balance.

Then, on August 24th, he purchases a parking pass at the expense of $170 for VCU’s parking garage on W. Broad Street. On August 26th, the first day of classes, he drops by the Monroe Park Parking Office to pick up the permit.

What is he told? That they won’t have the parking permit available until 3:00 p.m.

Uh, what now? This is the parking office, where do you usually keep the parking permits? Are they kept in a secret depository at Mount Weather or something?

This university needs a massive purging of its incompetent employees.

The Virgil Goodification of the Republican Party?

How else can you describe what has happened to the Republican Party this year? The Republican Party had a simple route to a landslide election this year: Cut government. But, like the Republican Party so often does, they could not not screw it up.

Instead of focusing on actually cutting government, and coming for plans on how to do that, they have decided to focus on a community center containing a mosque being built on private property in New York City in an attempt to violate a particular religious group’s First Amendment rights. In doing so, they have turned into Virgil Goode:

And people wonder why I will not be voting for a Republican this year.