Fun with the Constitution

As if the country weren't going to Hell in a handbasket fast enough, H.R. 3920 is the latest attempt by House Republicans to get us there via the Express Lane. The so-called "Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004" seeks to grant Congress the power to reverse Supreme Court Decisions so as to limit the 'damage' done by 'activist judges' - you know, the ones who have the nerve to rule that x people (where x equals "dark skinned", "gay", or "female") have rights even if a majority of ignorant fucks disagree.

Never mind that the primary reason for the existence of the Supreme Court is to keep Congress from going off into the deep end - passing this bill into law would be akin to giving a child the ability to overrule his parents. Though I have to admit, it sure would have come in handy in December of 2000...

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, the Boston Globe is reporting that the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (or MBTA, or simply "The T") will begin conducting random identity checks on its trains, buses, and subway cars in the interest of improving security. I don't know whether this is a response to the Madrid rail bombings as they claim or a feel-good measure in anticipation of the upcoming Democratic Convention, but either way it's a frightening development.

Now while our Bill of Rights doesn't expressly guarantee freedom of movement, it is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations adopted in 1948. Moreover it's just been generally assumed that you don't need to show "your papers" when you're travelling around in the U.S. (although the airlines have been mucking around with this assumption ever since 9/11), as immortalized in the following exchange between Sam Neill and Sean Connery from The Hunt for Red October:

Vasily: Then I will live in Montana, and I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck, or a possibly even a recreational vehicle, and drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Ramius: Oh, yes.
Vasily: No papers?
Ramius: No papers. State to state.
Vasily: Well, then, in winter I will live in Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Ramius: Oh, at least.

What's happened to us? Fifty years of Cold War and, Roy Cohn and Red Scares aside, we manage to pull back from the brink of nuclear annihilation with our Constitution and our way of life more or less intact; but fly a couple of planes into a Manhattan skyscraper and the Pentagon and suddenly two hundred years of governing with a respect for checks and balances and inalienable human rights is snuffed out as if it never really mattered.

It does matter, however. We are Americans. Freedom is an integral part of our identity, or at least it used to be. It is sobering to see how quickly my fellow citizens are willing to surrender their civil rights in exchange for a vague and nebulous guarantee of safety that is in fact nothing of the sort, but I guess fear will do that to some people. As for me, I'd rather live in a nation that I know will protect me from the invisible and unaccountable machinations of a police state, not one that asks me to sacrifice my freedoms in the name of freedom - as if such a paradox were actually possible.