Destroying Obamacare, the American Way

I happened to be on the road this past Tuesday--all day in a compact car filled with all my earthly treasures--and managed, from time to time, to pick up bits of NPR and conservative talk radio, depending on what city I was passing through. It happened that in the Metroplex I tuned in to the Ben Ferguson show, only the regular host was out for the holiday. Faux-Ferguson, unsurprisingly, was in a tizzy about the much discussed recent Supreme Court decision regarding health care. The overwhelming boredom of a long road trip compelled me to listen.

Faux-Ferguson was of the opinion that, once Mitt Romney is elected president, he needs to sign an executive order voiding the decision of the court. He seemed to understand the unprecedented and unfounded nature of this action, suggesting that what America really needed was a "constitutional crisis." After all, in his opinion, the action of the court had been unprecedented and unfounded. He was of the opinion that anyone who read the Constitution would understand that judicial review as it is now practiced is beyond the scope and power of the judiciary.

What he could not do, is point out where the Constitution contravenes what I learned in kindergarten: that two wrongs don't make a right. Thankfully, a caller phoned in and suggested that very fact to him, implying that just as the Constitution didn't envision a tyrannical court, it didn't intend for an imperial presidency. The caller insisted that what Republicans needed to focus on now, to get rid of Obamacare, is electing a majority in both houses of Congress and a Republican president.

Faux-Ferguson pointed out that even with the legislative repeal of Obamacare, the legal precedent of taxing inactivity has been set and will need to be overturned. And he's right, but there is a perfectly legitimate constitutional mechanism for achieving this without falling into the blatant hypocrisy of a so-called "consistent constitutionalist" suggesting that the actions of a single man can unilaterally overturn the actions of an entirely equal branch of government.

If the talk jockey would spend less time shouting at his dissenting listeners "have you read what the Constitution says about the court" and move on to the history of the court, he might make some headway and realize that the court's size is not fixed. It has changed at least a half a dozen times over the course of history, both expanding and shrinking. No less a revered Democratic figure than Franklin Roosevelt made a valiant attempt to stack the court with justices in order to ensure his legislative achievements would stand. With a little determination, modern Republicans might succeed where he failed.

Certainly the eradication of Obamacare requires the election of Republican majorities in Congress and a Republican president. From there, the constitutional course is for the new Congress to pass legislation expanding the size of the court from nine to eleven justices, for the new president to nominate two strict constructionists to the bench, for the new Congress to speed there approval, and for Republican states to find new grounds on which to bring suit once again.

Sure, it's an arduous process, but Faux-Ferguson and other Republicans need to understand that this is precisely the beauty of the Constitution. With all the whining about how slowly the wheels of progress turn in Washington, it is important to realize that the USA was founded with deliberate safeguards to insulate government from the hot will of the masses. It is just as dangerous to have a president who is willing and able to sign unilateral orders on the basis of public opinion as it would be elect justices by popular vote for short terms or to directly elect Senators (oops). The point is that each branch of government always has recourse to correct the errors of the other, but these correction require, and ought to require, a tremendous exertion of political effort. It is this political inertia that actually prevents the government standstill that would inevitably result from conflicting branches of government entering a cycle of political power-brokering and one-upsmanship.

Imagine if all the branches of government thought like Faux-Ferguson's president. Romney would sign an executive order voiding the courts decision, then the court would unanimously strike down this move, then the legislature would move to impeach the court, but the court would have itself acquitted. Ad infinitum. What a wonderful world that would be. At least for talk show hosts.

As always, the preceding were my thoughts as a politlcal observer and not a political participant.  They were not intended to endorse a particular course of action, whether that be the repeal or the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.  It was simply an attempt to bring historical observations to bear on the present situation and to encourage an internal consistency by the parties as they discuss the way forward.  The Kingdom will come in its own time and in its appointed way whether the government penalizes citizens for not buying health care or not.

Music for Life

The motivation behind the debut album of Matt Hammitt is gut wrenching to say the least. The lead singer of the well known Christian band Sanctus Real decided to pursue his first solo effort after receiving some terrible news about his unborn son. He and his wife were devastated to learn that their baby boy had hypoplastic left heart syndrome. In layman's terms, he would be born with only half his heart. His chance of survival, even with multiple surgeries, was negligible. Hammitt turned to music as a vehicle for the overwhelming emotions he and his wife were coping with. The baby, Bowen Matthew Hammitt, was born on Sept. 9, 2010. Within a week, he would undergo open heart surgery, suffer cardiac arrest, be resuscitated, and finally be hooked to life support. As the weeks past, he would also endure a stroke.

What began for Matt as a means of working through his emotions became something more. According to an AP story, while Bowen was still confined to the hospital in his early days,

the couple played demos of the songs Hammitt had written "so Bowen could hear his dad's voice," his wife said. Night-shift nurses often turned up the music when most families would leave for the evening.

"They felt it was good for all the babies to be soothed," Sarah said. "We'd come back in the morning and it'd be really loud."

Hammitt recorded the songs for the album soon after the family brought Bowen home to suburban Toledo. His only unease was that they might be critiqued like any other work.

"Originally I just wanted them recorded for us at the hospital," he said. "I realized they're meant to comfort other people too."

So far, the response has been what he hoped for. They've even received notes from parents who've played the songs at their children's funerals.

Now, the Hammitts want to take their work a step further by starting the Whole Hearts Foundation, a source of financial, emotional and spiritual help for families with children suffering from congenital heart defects. They see the foundation becoming their life's work.

The now one year old Bowen has more trouble ahead. There are still more surgeries planned for next year, and, even in the best scenario, he will likely need an entirely new heart once he reaches adulthood. For those who are interested in keeping track of the Hammitt family as Bowen continues to struggle and grow, the family is keeping the world updated. The album, Every Falling Tear, was released in September.

The Perilous Life of Southpaws

Most, I assume, are familiar with the statistic that floats around out there in the popular consciousness that (depending on who you hear it from) 2,500 left-handed people die every year from using products designed specifically for right-handed people. Whether you choose to believe that or not, the travails of the left-handed are real and serious, moreso than I ever realized. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that left-handed people are more susceptible to dyslexia, schizophrenia, and ADHD, and that is only the short list:

Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies.

What is scarier still, especially for me, is that those of us who are cross-dominant, what the article calls "mixed-handed," represent only 1% of the population but a disproportionately high percentage of those suffering from serious psychological disorders. (Please, no one tell Occupiers that I am part of the 1%.)

Setting aside, reluctantly, the impulse of every left-handed or cross-dominant person to read this article and go on a paranoid journey of self-diagnosis, the studies cited in the Wall Street Journal offer a number of interesting areas for further thought. The first is in the suggestion that handedness may actually have more to do with environment (particularly the pre-natal environment) than genetics. This undermines the default excuse, fed to me as a child, that some people are just born left-handed or that it makes someone "special." In fact, only about 25% of the matter of handedness is decided by genetics. In reality, left-handedness is more likely to be the result of a hostile pre-natal environment. "Babies born to older mothers or at a lower birth weight are more likely to be lefties, for example. And mothers who were exposed to unusually high levels of stress during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to a left-handed child." Far from being "special," a more honest rhetoric might describe southpaws as "defective" (not that "special" hasn't already become societies euphemism for that anyway). Being left-handed is less a pleasant genetic rarity like being born with hazel eyes and more like being born with a lazy eye (or, in the case of us poor, unfortunate cross-dominants, being born cross-eyed).

Related to this, and more nearly related to my earlier point about personality theories, the relationship between handedness and mental disorders speaks to the actual relevance of brain lateralization. As has long been suspected, left-handed people show a greater tendency toward right-brain dominance, with some 30% of left-handed people being either right-brain dominant or "distributed." It is this deviation from the standard pattern of lateralization which many scientists believe may contribute to higher incidences of schizophrenia and other disorders, in addition to more mundane problems like difficulty in school (which may explain why left-handed people are paid 10% less than their right-handed colleagues).

This is obviously not intended to endorse some kind of fatalism about left-handedness or mixed-handedness. The article points out that many highly successful people have been left-handed, including six of the last twelve United States presidents. These facts should, however, affect the way that we understand handedness and, as the article specifically suggests, should make parents of left-handed or cross-dominant children more aware of potential risk factors associated with being left-handed.