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today, i learned something new about the united states constitution.

us representative tom delay, march 18, 2005, quoted in the march 19 globe and mail

The United States Constitution protects every citizen of America from having their life taken from them

can anyone show me where?

and while we’re in there, does article 1, section 9 (“No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”) still count?

oh, and why do i have to go to canadian media to find the quote?

that is, unless you’re one of the 18, 000 or so dead civilians or one of the 1696 dead soldiers.

doctor christopher g. hudson has explored the association between poverty and mental illness.

Socioeconomic Status and Mental Illness: Tests of the Social Causation and Selection Hypotheses [pdf – american journal of orthopsychiatry, 2005, v.75, n.1, 3–18]

This study tests several hypotheses about the underlying causal structure of the inverse correlation between socioeconomic status (SES) and mental illness. It does this through the analysis of a longitudinal statewide database on acute psychiatric hospitalization in Massachusetts for the fiscal years 1994–2000 as well as supplemental census data. The modeling strategy used techniques of structural equation modeling and found that SES impacted directly on rates of mental illness as well as indirectly through the impact of economic hardship on low and middle income groups.

i’m going to take it to the next level, with the well-known phenomenon of “starving artists” as a subset of persons with “low socioeconomic status.” now, i don’t want to draw any conclusions about which comes first, but i want to get this out there so someone else can.

a) everyone knows artists are starving
b) starving is evidence of low socioeconomic status
c) socioeconomic status is inversely correlated with mental illness
d) artists are mentally ill.

it’s circular reasoning. all you have to do is figure out where in this vicious cycle you want to jump in…

rfid isn’t just for princes and kids anymore. maybe it’s good for cadavers too.

UC Considers Using Barcodes for Cadavers [ap via abc news, feb 4, 2005]

Officials are also considering putting barcodes or radio frequency devices in cadavers that could be read by someone walking past the body with a handheld device. Radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already are used by cars passing through automated toll plazas. UC officials said that they are still working out the details but that any body parts that became separated from the corpse would probably be tagged, too.

someone (laurence britt) took some time to look at the fascist regimes of hitler, mussolini, franco, suharto, and pinochet and try to find a pattern

today, for your secure homeland bemusement, i link you to someone else who has taken that pattern and matched it to current events.

in case you had any concerns about exposed breasts in the post-ashcroft regime, fear not, my fellow americans. jailtime awaits for the corruptors of our moral high ground. it’s the signage laws that will protect us.

Muralist’s vision has jail staring him in face [detroit free press, feb 18, 2005]

He painted Eve as God created her: nude.

And when he finished including the bare-bosomed Biblical first woman, he inscribed the word “love” on the mural that covers the outside wall of his Roseville art studio.

…

[39A District Judge Marco] Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years’ probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve’s exposed chest is indecent.

Besides jail time and the fee, Stross is to tastefully cover Eve’s breasts before reporting to the Macomb County Jail on Monday morning, and to paint over “love” by May 1.

“Removing the work is the ultimate punishment. The jail time is nothing compared to removing what I painted,” Stross said Thursday.

follow-up from the free press is here