Tag: Books, Mags, Newspapers, Comics

Sick With Constitution

Home sick for another day, I am reading a book called On Reading the Constitution by Lawrence Tribe, an author recommended to me by a NYC lawyer recommended to me by a now blogging former-classmate of his as well as a collection of essays on the founding of the USA called To Begin The World Anew by Bernard Bailyn. With the concurrent debate on same-sex marriage as well as my recent spate of trips south, I thought it was time to get some sense of the difference between the US and Canadian constitution and I already am very surprised by a few:

  • The inordinate respect given to the USA’s Founding Fathers and what they must have meant when they penning this or that clause in this or that sentence. In Canada, it is sometimes said that the 1981 patriation of the constitution and the Charter moved us to an American style “written constitution” but this is incorrect as we have a constitution of hundreds of documents from 1700s governor’s letters of instruction to recent agreements on off-shore oil revenue. What we do not have is an uber-text and any care for those who wrote it. The words have to live and die on their own.
  • The misrepresentation of the original intention for separation of church and state seems to contradict the interest in understanding the Founding Fathers. From the outset, ministers of the faith were barred from sitting in a legislature as the rules of the faith had no place in the civic law. Nowadays, there is this idea that the morality and perception of Christianity in the late-eighteenth century was exactly as red staters would wish were the case today. Nothing could be further from the truth and is factually demonstrable. If such an analysis were imported in the Canadian discourse, we would think Sir John A. was a T-totaller.
  • There are no constitutional lawyers in the USA in the same sense as in Canada as the Constitution down south serves as almost an everyday interpretive tool for all law. In Canada, you default to constitutional interpretation when other analyses fail to provide an answer and when applied it is a special case often handled by specializing counsel.
  • That the phenomena of the USA was as much or more in its recreation of the state as it is in its identification of the rights of humans. It was envisaged by fairly ordinary folk like Roger Sherman as much as Thomas Jeffersons and George Washingtons. The concurrent divided jurisdiction of federal and state government being one example of this rethinking of government. The idealism is almost embarassing if it were not actually effective. It makes me wonder that if Napoleon had not emerged in France at the same time as the early USA was trying to get a start whether the War of 1812 may have had a different outcome and we would now, throughout the greater British North America, all have thought what a nutty idea those fellers had way back then.

In Canada our law and history is not a morality play, a battle of good over the void. It is a bargain, an agreement to get along peacefully. The USA is a very different place.

Watertown Daily Times

While over in the States on the weekend, I picked up a copy of the Watertown Daily Times the excellent paper that is published out of our smaller neighbouring city in Jefferson Co., NY. As an artifact, it is especially interesting to read the “Northern New York” section on issues that are important to the community that is so close geographically across the river but so subtly different in so many ways and unknown in so many others…and not just why grown men wear red Dale Earnhardt NASCAR jackets in public?

  • The strong interest in US high school sports never ceases to amaze me. You can watch the local Watertown TV and get the local footage, interviews and scores before the pros – you can also follow it on the webs news service of the competing TV station. You can listen to a high school or junior college basketball game on 620 WHEN. In the WDT and you can read pages of articles right now on the local northern New York school championships in wrestling, basketball and volleyball trying to figure out where all these small school are located and how the sectional and divisional structure works. What it helps foster is that legitimacy in the local as well as that thing you can only describe in somewhat cloying terms, a positive image for (or at least of) teens. We could do with more of that local coverage here.
  • You find out about similar initiatives. We have some interest in wind power here in Kingston and so I was surprised to learn from page B4 that a $380 million (USD of course) 190 turbine wind farm is being built and finished this year on Tug Hill, called the Flat Rock Wind Project, in Lewis County about 75 miles to the SSE of here. I may be able to see it from the roof on a clear day. Such a project on PEI would provide 200% of local needs and create an exportable resource yet the local goals in PEI have been puny and plans are for less than 10% of the imaginations of our local US neighbours.
  • I also read about a copyright law suit involving a blog and St. Lawrence University in St. Lawrence Co. I can’t comment on US copyright law and the WDT gives only passing mention at the bottom of B6 to the case in a larger article on university issues:

    The change allows SLU’s Information Technology office to review and monitor files transmitted or stored on the university’s computers. The change was made in the wake of a copyright infringement suit SLU has brought against Interet Web log Take Back Our Campus. SLU is suing to stop the administrators of the Web log, or blog, from using university photos. The suit could reveal who is running the blog, which ridicules SLU administrators, staff and students.

    But for a smaller-town paper, the sussinct characterization of blogging and the related issues is quite neatly done, though I think the days of the capitalization of “Internet” and “Web” are long gone. The case potentially covers any number of interesting concepts including free speech, copyright, education law and technology law so I hope to figure out how to follow it.

I wish the WDT had free web service but, given the real reporting that it is doing on a local basis, someone has to pay the piper and I can’t really justify about $100 CND for a year’s subscription for this hobby interest. But what a great way to get to know a community.

Buy This Book


Walter the Farting Dog

This book, by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, is the apex of a certain type of subversive kid’s book that busts up our four and six year old. At the heart of its subversion, it makes Mom or Dad say “fart” about twenty-seven times before the light in the kids’ room goes off. It is perhaps the sort of book that creates two classes of people and, in a better world, would be a generally accepted gift for all occassions and a coffee table regular.

Ship’s Blog

My interest in canals has been stoked this week with the delivery of Carol Sheriff’s book The Artificial River, about the socio-economic effects of the building and rebuilding Erie Canal from 1817 to 1862. Under a search for “canal blog” I found this wonderful site, Ship’s Blog.

There is something quite heartening knowing I can walk out the door here, get on a boat and sail to Ithaca or Burlington, Vt. I think I am going to have to undertake some canal based explorations of western New York next summer…all, of course, a blatant fraud, a front for the hunting out of micro brewers in the company of the little people but these are the skills that keep you going.

The Sound of Clinton

So Bill has a book coming out next week that runs 1,000 pages. The

full audio release — running 41 CDs — will be released with actor Michael Beck doing the reading and Clinton providing the prologue and epilogue, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

41 CDs! I hope it come with a forehead shaped sticker with the word “nerd” on it.

Sledging

fun until your boots fill with snow
Crazy Carpets matting down the rough

When Rupert the Bear or Oor Wullie slid down hills in the hardcover cartoon annuals sent from Scotland when I was a kid it was “sledging” not “sledding”. Whatever it is called, for those of you worried that we sold the farm when we…sold the farm and moved to the city, this is the view from the from window of the family sleddging.

Earlier: I saw a Northern Harrier – a medium sized hawk identifiable by a white patch above its tail and its habit of flying slowly a few feet above the ground – tracking over ice next door at Elevator Bay this morning. I don’t know if this means the ice mice have moved south or if it had a hankering for fish.