What to do when constitutions conflict?

There are people who take Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring to task for declining to defend a Virginia state constitutional ban on gay marriage. I think he did the right thing if, and that's an important if, he truly believes that the Virginia provision is contrary to the United States Constitution.

Article VI of the U. S. Constitution states:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Thus in cases of conflicts between the U. S. Constitution and a state constitution, the state constitution is invalid. And if an attorney general of a state truly believes that a state constitutional provision conflicts with the U. S. Constitution, he has no duty to defend it. If Virginia's people ratified a Constitutional provision reinstituting slavery, or denying the vote to all but white males, would Mark Herring be duty-bound to defend it? I think not.

A constitional-law scholar like Curt Levey must know this — and in fact, though his post is entitled, “An attorney general's job is to defend the law — no exceptions,” if you read it, he clearly accepts at least one exception. For he says that an attorney general would not be required to defend “a law requiring the arrest and imprisonment of all members of the opposition party without trial.” So it is a matter of where one draws a line. And unless there is a clear Supreme Court decision, each attorney general, and in fact each citizen, has to interpret the U. S. Constitution as he sees fit.

Split up Ukraine!

It is clear to me that Ukraine ought to be two countries. The eastern and southern parts of the country are more oriented toward Russia, and now-ousted president Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych is popular there. People are agitating there for Yanukovych's restoration. In the western part of the country, the people are more European in their orientation, and it was from there that the calls to oust Yanukovych came. Both groups will not be happy, however this turns out. Unfortunately, it's like Czechoslovakia — there may be good reasons to keep the pieces together, but the people don't want the same things for their country's government to be doing.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President François Hollande, and other national leaders have issued calls to preserve Ukraine's territorial integrity. They are simply mistaken.

More on health care reform

Democrats have assailed Republicans for wanting to “repeal and replace” the so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” usually known as “Obamacare,” but not having any plan for the replacement: in other words, Republicans are accused of being willing to “repeal” but only giving lip service to “replace.” Well, a couple of weeks ago, I read of a plan by Republican Senators Richard Burr, Tom Coburn, and Orrin Hatch that would replace “Obamacare.” As described in that article (see my January 29, 2014 post entitled “Reforming health care”) the Burr/Coburn/Hatch plan had some flaws, but recently I saw an editorial in The Washington Post that gave a description that differed from the one I saw last month. (The Post did not like the Burr/Coburn/Hatch proposal; it called it “a starting point for a conversation, not a replacement”; but that's another matter — for one, the Post seems to think that mandates are a good idea!) The original article I saw last month said that Burr/Coburn/Hatch would not require insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, but only grant the companies incentives, while the plan described in the Post editorial would require this coverage; and there was no mention in the earlier posting of replacing the individual mandate by a plan similar to what Medicare Part D has — allowing the insurance companies to charge a higher premium to people eligible for coverage who chose not to buy insurance (which I think is the best way to sove the problem of people signing up only after they become sick), but the Post editorial says that Burr/Coburn/Hatch has such a provision. I don't know whether the first posting was in error, or the Senators involved modified their proposal, but if the Post editorial is correct about those two provisions, Burr/Coburn/Hatch becomes a plan I can support pretty much unreservedly.

It is going to be a major slog trying to get something like Burr/Coburn/Hatch passed, of course. The Senate is still dominated by Democrats, though in November an election is coming up that may — probably will — change that; and President Obama is on track to veto any bill that destroys his “masterpiece.” But this blog will favor the implementation of Burr/Coburn/Hatch or something like it, and you are likely to read more here in the future.

The Virginia gay-marriage decision

Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen issued an opinion voiding Virginia's ban on gay marriage. And while I approve of the decision, I wonder how ignorant a judge can be of our Constitution, as in her decision she stated that “Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal.” Surely it would be incumbent on a Federal judge to know that those words are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, but come from the Declaration of Independence, a document written by a prominent Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.

In fact, Judge Allen issued a revision of her opinion correcting this mistake afterward, but only after the error was pointed out to her by commentators. The basic idea of the opinion is right, of course. And it's fitting that the decision be made in Virginia, the state whose ban on interracial marriage was overridden by the Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia case. And in fact, Judge Allen began her decision with a quote from Mildred Loving, the wife in the marriage that was upheld in Loving v. Virginia. This, of course, is not a Supreme Court decision, but hopefully it will lead to one.

So, I view the decision favorably, but it gives me great pause that the judge that issued it could make such an egregious error as to the contents of our Constitution, which governs our laws.

The REAL effect of “Obamacare”

The Congressional Budget Office just came out with a report on the effects that “Obamacare” will have on the economy and on the health insurance status of the American people. As reported by John Podhoretz in the New York Post, it's not so good. On page 111, it says:

As a result of the ACA, between 6 million and 7 million fewer people will have employment-based insurance coverage each year from 2016 through 2024 than would be the case in the absence of the ACA.

That's fewer! So, people may say, “That's not so bad; people will pick up their insurance on the exchanges, and this will lead to more coverage altogether.” But the report also says:

About 31 million nonelderly residents of the United States are likely to be without health insurance in 2024, roughly one out of every nine such residents.

Now note that when President Obama was selling “Obamacare” to the American people in September 2009, he said:

[T]here are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.

So in 2024, we will have approximately the same number of uninsured Americans as we has in 2009! All this tampering with the health insurance of millions of Americans, merely to tread water?

Read Podhoretz's column. It's illuminating.

Not a good sign

A poll by CNN just showed the Republican leader to be… former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an extremist of the Religious Right. If I were faced with a choice in November 2016 between Huckabee and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, I'd have nowhere to go — I might even vote for Clinton, though more likely I'd vote for the Libertarian. Apparently the media's attacks on New Jersey governor Chris Christie have had some effect (though Christie was only 4 points below Huckabee, and all these candidates are below 20%) which shows that their indirect strategy (hurt the most qualified Republicans' chances, so they nominate someone who will be a pushover for Hillary) is working. However, it's still two years before 2016. We will see what happens in the interim.

Reforming health care

Of course, in his State of the Union address, President Obama touted his signature health care plan. And he even pointed to one of its successes: a woman who was uncovered until January 1, and shortly afterward was able to have a serious surgical procedure that was covered because of an “Obamacare”-based policy. He didn't mention its much larger failures: millions of people who had been covered, but lost their coverage because their plans were not in compliance with requirements put in place by “Obamacare” to cover this or that or the other thing. One person that often has been cited is retiring Senator Tom Coburn, of Oklakoma, who is retiring in part because of a cancer he has, and no longer has insurance that covers his cancer specialist — though, a physician himself, he is rich enough to continue to pay this doctor out of his own pocket!

Mentioning Sen. Coburn is particularly apropos, because he is one of three Senators (the others are Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina) who have come up with a plan they would like to see replace “Obamacare.” There is a column by Avik Roy on Forbes Magazine's site which advocates the Coburn/Burr/Hatch plan as the best alternative to replace “Obamacare,” and, while I'm not certain I approve of all its provisions, it deserves consideration.

I think that the CBH plan does not go far enough in keeping the “Obamacare” ban on denial of insurance for pre-existing conditions, for example — this is one of “Obamacare's” good points — but just because it's not exactly what I would propose would not make me turn it down entirely. However, I think that something like it might be the basis for a Republican alternative.

Trying to take down Chris Christie

Liberal Democrats seem to be as convinced as I am that Chris Christie is the best hope for the GOP to regain the Presidency. But while in my case, I believe it's a good thing, the liberal Dems are so fearful of it that they are doing their darnedest to keep alive all the things they think can derail Christie's move toward the White House. Case in point: an article by E. J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist. He purports to be reviewing Gov. Christie's “State of the State” speech, but it is clear that he wants to interject the old business about the George Washington Bridge jam-up and Dawn Zimmer's ridiculous charge of coercion:

The New Jersey governor gave the speech he would have given had there been no George Washington Bridge scandal and no allegations about the use of Hurricane Sandy relief money to pressure a local official on a development project.

Dionne can't really fault Christie's speech, so he simply brings up this old business. Nobody has as of yet proved that Christie inspired the closing of those bridge lanes, or even that he knew about it before the recent surfacing of the details. And nobody but Dawn Zimmer seems to have any evidence of the supposed coercion. But Dionne cannot wait until the New Jersey legislature does its investigation of the bridge closing — it might actually show that Christie is telling the truth! So Dionne needs to keep repeating the unproved allegations, so that they can have maximum impact.

But we all need to know about E. J. Dionne. He published a column last October which began with the words “Obamacare is working.” He unashamedly praises the President for all his wrecking of this country's health care system, and in general backs him to the hilt. So naturally, he would want to derail the hope of reversing this egregious blunder.

Kim Guadagno and Dawn Zimmer

Lately we have been seeing an exchange of charges by New Jersey lieutenant governor Kim Guadagno and the mayor of Hoboken, Dawn Zimmer, with each implying that the other is lying about a meeting that they had, and in Zimmer's case, implying that Governor Chris Christie was pressuring her to approve a real estate development in Hoboken by withholding some of the relief money for Hurricane Sandy. Reading both sets of claims, it looks like “Alice in Wonderland.” And yet, I think I can figure out what happened, that could lead each of the two to say what she has on this subject.

Guadagno has recused herself from all matters involving Hurricane Sandy, because she herself owns a property that was damaged by the storm. However, Zimmer was probably unaware of this, and headed into the meeting in question, with her mind mainly on the Hurricane Sandy relief, assuming that this was what she would be discussing with Guadagno. I assume that Zimmer brought up the Sandy relief question immediately, and was told by Guadagno that this was not the place to discuss it, that she should talk to someone else. And Zimmer immediately assumed that she was being told that the Sandy relief money was being conditioned on her going along with whatever Guadagno was advocating — namely, the redevelopment plan. Guadagno probably did say, as Zimmer says she did, that the message was to be considered as coming from Governor Christie, but the message was not that the Sandy relief funds were being held up until Zimmer approved the redevelopment plan; simply that this plan was something the Governor wanted to see approved. Yes, Governor Christie was pushing hard for the redevelopment plan, but the idea that the money for Sandy was being conditioned on this was in Zimmer's head. In short, Dawn Zimmer went into the meeting with Sandy on her mind, Kim Guadagno tried to tell her that Sandy was not to be discussed, and Zimmer read it incorrectly as a signal that the Sandy relief was conditioned on her going along with Christie's demands.

Martin Luther King

Tomorrow is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, and it got me thinking. It seems that (although nobody wants it to happen to them) getting yourself assassinated is a sure road to becoming a hero in many people's eyes. John F. Kennedy would, on the basis of his accomplishments, be considered a rather inconsequential president — it was Lyndon Johnson who actually pushed through the civil rights legislation that Kennedy had proposed — if it hadn't been for the shooting in Dallas in 1963. And Martin Luther King was only one of many civil rights leaders — Thurgood Marshall certainly accomplished more, for example — and he tarnished his own record by taking a near-treasonous attitude on the Vietnam war. Yet some people idolized both, to the extent of a song having been written about “Abraham, Martin, and John.” (To me this is profaning the memory of Abraham Lincoln, who was one of our greatest Presidents, perhaps our greatest, shepherding our nation through its only civil war.)

John F. Kennedy was one of our nonentity Presidents — the country would have been better served if Richard M. Nixon had won in 1960 — and Martin Luther King was one of our less important civil rights leaders, yet both are honored far beyond what they deserve. And far beyond what would have been the case if neither had been shot. It seems that Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, by prematurely ending Kennedy's and King's lives, caused both to be more important than they would have otherwise been. Another case of “unintended consequences”?

Overzealous underlings

It seems that one of the problems that a good leader has is subordinates who are so loyal to him, they will do anything to ensure he stays in office, including illegal actions and others that may be technically legal, but unacceptable to the American public.

I am old enough to remember the 1972 Presidential election. Living in New York City at the time, perhaps I even thought that George McGovern had a chance at the Presidency; in retrospect, it is obvious that he did not. But apparently some staffers in the Richard Nixon campaign thought McGovern had a chance, too, and feared — as I did myself — that a McGovern Presidency would be disastrous for the Free World, so they went about trying to ensure Nixon's re-election by means that were frankly illegal. There is no evidence that Nixon wanted these illegal activities to take place, much less ordered them, but out of loyalty to the men who had tried so hard to help him, President Nixon tried to cover up the evidence, and this brought about his downfall, ending up with a resignation by one of the most productive Presidents in United States history — certainly, the best President, I believe, in the last third of the Twentieth Century. It is a big shame — and only because people under Nixon were trying to help him.

Forty-one years after that 1972 Presidential election was a gubernatorial election in New Jersey. The Governor, Chris Christie, was seeking re-election after a very productive first term, and apparently some of his subordinates thought they were working on his behalf by trying to embarrass the Mayor of Ft. Lee, a Democrat who they thought should have endorsed Christie (as did a number of other Democratic officeholders in New Jersey), but who did not. What they did, tying up traffic on the George Washington Bridge, was not strictly illegal, but certainly unethical. And again, political opponents — particularly national Democratic politicians — are trying to put the blame on Governor Christie, as they did on President Nixon, though the fault is clearly further down the chain of command.

Both of these unfortunate attempts were really unnecessary, as it happened — Nixon certaingy would have beaten McGovern by a big margin even if the Watergate actions had never taken place, and certainly, Chris Christie won re-election by a heroic margin without getting the support of Ft. Lee's mayor.

Governor Christie, certainly, is aware of the history I cited earlier in this post. And he is not going to handle it the same way President Nixon did, because he knows what happened to Nixon. So he is firing those people who directly worked under him, apologized to the Mayor of Ft. Lee, and is engaged in damage control every way he can. It is a shame that he has to do this, but the history of what happened to President Nixon is on the books.

Hopefully, Governor Christie will succeed at damage control. I think he's been a great governor of New Jersey, and I think he will be a great President of the United States. It will be a tremendous shame if overzealous underlings derail him from the path to the Presidency. Fortunately, he has two years before the Iowa caucuses, and so time for people to forget about this scandal and concentrate on the bigger issues, like the disaster known as “Obamacare.” My support for Christie has not been diminished, and one person I've spoken to actually said she was favorably impressed by Christie's handling of the situation. It must have been painful to him to fire people who had been personal friends and close political allies, but he saw it as necessary.

A chance to set back Big Labor

Although the case has been pending for some time (the Supreme Court granted certiorari some months ago) I just today was reading about it: there is a case before the Supreme Court called Harris v. Quinn which has some possibilities that look good for setting back Big Labor. It involves home care workers who have been classified as state workers under Illinois law, apparently just in order to put them under a collective bargaining agreement which has set up an “agency shop,” a contract where even if a person does not want to join a union, he is forced to pay the union dues. This is one of the most evil things ever worked into a contract — you must pay someone, allegedly for providing a service, but the service is one you never asked for nor want. And the money, of course, goes in part to political candidates you might oppose.

Of course, the unions are upset that anyone would challenge these “agency shop” provisions; they say that the unions have to negotiate for all the workers and so even the non-members benefit, so they should help support the union. In fact, the union often negotiates contracts with provisions that are directly against the interests of these non-members, but union apologists refuse to see this, and that is why many people do not want to be a part of the union.

But a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in this case would not actually kill “agency shops,” as all it would do is to say that they are not in fact state employees. It would be nice if it did, of course, but that is not what this specific case is all about. It will not release unwilling people who are state employees from these burdensome “agency shop” contracts. Yet some columnists have claimed it would provide a “right-to-work” law for all public employees. Would that this were so!

Still, it's a move in the right direction. The only thing that would really provide equity in this issue of “right-to-work” laws would be a national “right-to-work” law that would apply to everyone. Nobody should be forced to pay dues to an organization he perceives as working against his interest. But let us hope that Harris prevails in this case, and others follow to push the issue a little farther in the future.

A big surprise

It does not surprise me that courts are issuing injunctions against enforcement of the “Obamacare” requirement that religious organizations violate their own religious scruples and provide coverage for things that they deem immoral. But that one of the injunctions was issued by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor does. For she is an appointee of President Obama, and a known liberal.

It seems that even someone like Justice Sotomayor understands the importance of the First Amendment issue at stake — and that bodes well for people who are raising this issue.

The new year

This will be about the only time, for a while, that you will see a post that is neither about Chris Christie nor about “Obamacare.” But I got to thinking about how New Year's Eve and New Year's Day have changed over the years for me, and I thought I'd share my memories and recollections with my readers.

In the family in which I grew up, we had a New Year's tradition which might seem very calm and subdued to most of you, but year after year we did the same thing. We gathered around the radio, with potato chips and/or other snack foods, and listened to Guy Lombardo, who every year did a New Year's program from some hotel, I think always in midtown Manhattan. The Big Band era was over — this was the early 1950s — but Lombardo still had his band, and its theme was “Auld Lang Syne” (which raises a chicken/egg question: did Lombardo choose “Auld Lang Syne” because he liked to play New Year's Eve parties? Or had he adopted “Auld Lang Syne” as his theme, and because of that he was popular as a New Year's act?). There was always some station that carried Lombardo, and we'd listen to him. The before-midnight part of the show featured a song from each year (Starting when? I don't recall.) ending up with a prediction of a likely big hit for the coming year (which never came true — I never recall hearing his predicted big hit of the coming year again after that night!) Always, of course, there was a countdown to the new year at midnight, with “Auld Lang Syne” the first song played after everyone shouted “Happy New Year!” Every year it was the same. It wasn't always the same hotel, but it was the same program. Eventually, Lombardo migrated to television, and the midnight countdown was not in his hotel, but at Times Square, where the famous ball drop took place on camera. (For a while, he did a simulcast, and we continued listening on the radio.) At home, we had champagne — for all except my father, who was a recovering alcoholic, but yes, including me and my brother, as it was not considered criminal to offer wine to kids in a family setting! Glasses were clinked together, and “Happy New Year!” was shouted by us in synchrony with the radio.

A little departure from discussions of New Year's party tradition is in order. In the 1960s I got into a certain circle of friends. One was a fellow I'd actually known since we were both in high school in the late 1950s (and still count as a friend); the others were people who shared some common interests with both of us. One of the others had put on, at his home, a summer party (a Fourth of July party? I can't recall for certain) which I attended, (and discovered that another friend, though nine years younger than I was, knew my favorite music and liked it, which made a strong bond between us). Apparently someone liked the format of the party, which included a prepared tape with an eclectic variety of songs on it, and my circle of friends started a tradition of New Year's parties structured after this summer party; I could not, at first, attend those, because I felt loyalty to my own family tradition.

But my father passed away in 1966, and my brother moved to California, and a New Year's party that consisted of just my mother and me didn't seem right; eventually I got to join my friends' party. The group developed its own traditions: eventually the audiotapes were replaced by videotapes, but since an audiotape held less material than a videotape, pauses were built into the videotape, corresponding to the interval when the audiotape had to be changed on the machine in previous parties! I moved out of New York to the Washington, D. C. area, but tried to make it back “home” to New York around New Year's Day so I could attend the party.

This ceased for me about 15 years ago — I had a life crisis that made coming to New York impossible. Shortly afterward, the man who had become the music selector for the parties (the same nine-years-younger-than-me person I'd mentioned earlier) died at a premature age of 49. And various other people, for different reasons, dropped out of the circle of friends, so the New Year's parties ceased, and even if I had been able to get up to New York, there would have been no party to go to.

In recent years, I have not done anything special at the turn of the year — staying up to midnight was something I did only because that was when the action was, so now, with no party to go to, I'm normally fast asleep in bed at “the moment.” But I still have happy memories of past New Years.

It's crazy!

On the one hand, there are online posts like Lanhee Chen's on the Bloomberg site, entitled “If 2013 Was Hard on Obamacare, Just Wait for 2014,” giving us the news that “Obamacare” is on its way down the tubes, and giving us some hope that this colossal mistake will be repealed soon. On the other hand, there are also posts like Jonathan Cohn's, on the New Republic site, entitled “We Don't Know if Obamacare Is Working Well. But We Know It's Working.” This post seems to imply that things are back on track with it, that we just have to let it work out some rough spots. They can't be looking at the same facts.

I wish I had all the facts. But what I've seen mostly confirms the first position. “Obamacare” is a disaster, and needs to be put out of its misery — quickly. But how to do so, with Obama in the White House? I do have to admit, I don't really know. Until President Obama is replaced by a competent chief executive, like Chris Christie, it looks like “Obamacare” will limp along, with temporary postponements of its worst features. And the United States will limp along too, with nobody knowing what will be the rules in a month. A shame, but too many people were dazzled into electing this total incompetent — people said Sarah Palin was inexperienced in 2008, but she was a seasoned veteran in gevernment executive experience compared with Barack Obama!

All one can do is hope that a Republican Senate will be elected in the coming year to go along with John Boehner's Republican House, and between them, as much of President Obama's agenda as possible will be frustrated.

As the year approaches its end...

…there has been good and bad news.

For people who believe that anyone should be allowed to marry whoever they want to, it has been very good. There are now 18 states and the District of Columbia where marriage equality is the law — and who would have thought Utah would be in such a short list? — up from 10 at the start of the year. That is certainly good news.

The start of “Obamacare” is mixed news: it is certainly unfortunate that so many people are finding they can't keep the insurance they like, despite President Obama's promise, but the good thing is that even Democratic poluticians are having second thoughts about the law, and there might be enough delaying of its provisions that by the time they are ready to take effect, President Christie might be able to sign a repealing act.

Speaking of Chris Christie, more good news is that his re-election by a landslide, in a very blue state, shows that a Republican can win Democrats' votes while governing according to his own values.

The other gubernatorial race, in Virginia, has to be considered bad news, though Ken Cuccinelli is hardly the one I would have liked to see win. His nomination, of course, was really bad news, because it gave the GOP another candidate in the Todd Akin/Richard Mourdock/Christine O'Donnell mold, someone who drove away a lot of voters that a more moderate Republican could have won over. But the fact that Cuccinelli came as close as he did goes to show how poisonous “Obamacare” is. If the Republicans had nominated a Bill Bolling, they would certainly have won this election.

We will have to see what 2014 brings. I think we have to prepare for anything.

The biggest reason to nominate Chris Christie in 2016

There are a number of recent polls that show that in a race with Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie would win, and every other likely Republican nominee would lose.

Please, let us keep that fact in mind. We need to have a new President who would turn this government away from the direction which Barack Obama has chosen. If this is so, we need to have a GOP nominee who can win in 2016, not one who will lose to Hillary. We need to be sure that the GOP nominates a proven winner: Chris Christie.

The right to marry advances

Six days ago, a Federal court forced the state of Utah to legalize same-sex marriage, a day after another court decidid the same issue for New Mexico. There are now eighteen states, more than a third of the fifty total, with legal same-sex marriage.

Utah is a major surprise. It is a very conservative state, heavily Mormon, and the Mormon church has strongly opposed the right to marry for same-sex couples. A poll in 2011 found Utah citizens strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. If a judge can legalize same-sex marriage in Utah, it may well be the case that nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage will follow sooner than I would have thought.

The division among the people will still persist, and this may well become as divisive an issue as abortion has become since Roe v. Wade. Yet there is really less reason for that. In the case of Roe, I can really understand some people's conviction that a fetus is a person and abortion is murder — I can understand it, though I think they are totally wrong! But I do not understand how allowing John and Joe (or Jane and Joan) to marry affects anyone else's marriage. No clergyman is forced to perform a same-sex marriage, any more than a rabbi who will not perform an interreligious one is forced to, and if a florist or a baker is made to provide his product for use at such a marriage, he is not being called to recognize such a marriage as a marriage,: he is only selling a bouquet or a cake to some people having a party. I can't see how his religious freedom is being impacted, as some conservative columnists have intimated.

But things are moving faster than 'd expected!

A note to Christians reading this blog

While I am on many points in agreement with those on the political Right, there is one point on which I find us at serious odds. I recall having read Rush Limbaugh complaining about an “assault on Christmas,” and as far as I'm concerned, I'm proud to join that assault.

Now get my point correctly. I have no problem with your celebrating the birth of the founder of your religion privately, at home, or in your churches. Where I object is your attempting to make those of us who do not share your religion take part in that observance. I don't want to be wished a Merry Christmas — how would you appreciate being given some other religion's equivalent? I don't mind the idea of you having a Merry Christmas, or wishing it to each other — but can you take the trouble to find out whether someone celebrates Christmas before wishing someone a Merry Christmas?

Christmas is a time of sadness for me. I think of the time I was, at age 10, suddenly ostracized by a music teacher who had liked me enough to teach me songs to sing outside of class, simply because I refused to sing carols with words like “O come let us adore him, Christ the lord,” as contrary to my own religion. I think of the time, many years later, when in graduate school in Charlottesville, Virginia, I could eat, on one December 25, only what I could get in vending machines because not a single restaurant in that city was open. (At least, here in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D. C., I know of some places that will remain open; I think I'll be eating Chinese food this year.)

So please let alone those of us who are not Christians. Let me try to make this just a plain old Wednesday, not a festive day at all. We have our rights too.

A bad year for President Obama?

People are saying that this is a bad year for President Obama, with the botched rollout of Obamacare, various setbacks abroad, and such. But (unfortunately for the American people) it's not bad enough, and will not become bad enough. He is protected by the provisions of our Constitution that fix the term of office of the President. He has a sympathetic Senate, so he will not be removed by impeachment, despite the unconstitutionality of the way he's run his office. So he will serve until January 2017, more than three years from now.

I love our Constitution. It's survived longer than any other written constitution in history, and generally served us well. But once in a while, it leads to unfortunate consequences. And right now, we're in such a time. A president who, whether through incompetence or sheer malice, is wrecking the country, but who cannot be restrained. And three years more remaining in his term. It may have been a bad year for President Obama, but it's also a bad era — not just one year, but eight, of which we're only in the middle — for the American public.