NJCubScouter

I don't think the events of the past week will hurt Palin's chances in 2012 (or beyond) at all. Those who have a problem with the things she has said and done weren't going to vote for her anyway. Those who support her will probably support her more. Is there anybody who is undecided about her? What pains me about this whole thing, not just Palin but the whole aftermath of the Arizona massacre, is that instead of bringing people together and calming down the rhetoric, it seems to have made the partisan and ideological divide worse, more divided, and more bitter.

10th Amendment. Which states that if the Constitution doesn't specifically allow it, they may not do it. The most ignored provision of the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment does not use the word "specifically." What it says is that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So in other words, if authority to do something can be found in any provision of the Constitution (including the amendments), then the federal government has the power to do it, otherwise it does not. So the issue is how broadly or narrowly the courts should interpret various provisions of the Constitution that give powers to the federal government. There are some who seem to believe that there should be little or no interpretation -- that if the Constitution doesn't say "the United States government may issue identification cards and require everybody to carry one", then the federal government may not do so. (I suspect that if someone adds the word "specifically" in describing the Tenth Amendment, they are probably of this viewpoint.) The courts have generally taken a broader view, though I don't know whether there is any provision of the Constitution that would actually be interpreted to allow federal I.D. cards. (Some possibilities are discussed earlier in this thread.) Personally I think Congress should not pass such a law, and if they don't, the constitutional issue will not come up. The Constitution is not the first line of defense against bad legislation -- the first lines of defense are the Congress and state legislatures.

Packsaddle, it looks like this thread is becoming the usual mishmash of topics rather than just a discussion of candidates. Like most other threads, it will probably just ramble on a bit more and then fade away. Thankfully, it's probably a little early for a sustained discussion of the primary candidates.

drmbear, I agree with most of your post, but not your reference to the concerns over Thomas Jefferson's slaveholding as "his slave-holding legacy or some such nonsense." Personally I do not think that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and other Founding Fathers should be "de-honored" because they owned slaves. They were living according to the morality of their time and place, not ours. I doubt that many "historical icons" would stand up very well under today's standards -- the leaders of today have enough trouble doing so themselves (not that they own slaves, but you know what I mean.) But at the same time, it is not "nonsense" to believe that a mixed message is sent when we honor someone who owned slaves. The question is what we do about it now. Removing peoples' names (at least in the case of Washington, Jefferson etc.) is not the right action in my opinion, but let's not dismiss it as "nonsense."

I feel like I'm missing something. Was this a reaction to something in another thread? On the general subject of acronyms in this forum, we do tend to throw them around as if a forum-reader whose Scouting experience consists of being a den leader for six months, or a youth member with no adult experience at all, is going to know what a "DE", "DC" or "CSE" (etc.) is. It's probably not the case for most, and even for some with more experience than that. We should be more careful about explaining the "code" a little more often, and we should probably stay away completely from the more ambiguous or non-intuitive two-letter codes used by the BSA (such as an Assistant Cubmaster being "CA" instead of "AC", while a Crew Adviser is apparently "NL" instead of "CA.")

It's kind of disturbing how quickly the politics has begun swirling around the tragic shooting of Rep. Giffords and the others, including the deaths of the little girl, the judge and others. That is not to say that there aren't some statements (by politicians, local officials etc.) that I agree with. I just think that when something like this happens there should at least be some short time in which we just think about the victims and their families and hope for the recovery of the injured, instead of the back-and-forth starting within hours after the incident. This comment is prompted by John's comment about Rep. Giffords but not meant as criticism of his comment.

Eamonn, you were volunteered to be a hooker?? I have a feeling this is yet another example of "two peoples separated by a common language." I was pretty bad in sports as a youth. I tried. During my Little League-age years I was in a league for kids who couldn't make the little league. In what would now be called "middle school" I tried an after-school basketball league and it took awhile before I became convinced of what was obvious to everybody else, which is that I wasn't very good. By high school I had pretty much given up on the whole thing and stuck to the debating team. I did go to Philmont though. Go figure.

It's funny, the Google Ads on this site have recently become so view-specific that when I post in this thread, the three ads at the top are all for Identification Cards or systems such as "Customer identity verification for Patriot Act Section 326 compliance". If I go to a thread about camp stoves I have no doubt that I am going to see three ads for camp stoves. There has always been some of that on this site, I just don't remember it being so obtrusive before. But I understand that it costs money to maintain this site, so it's reasonable for the site owner to have the ads. If anybody knows too much about all of us these days, it's probably Google!

No way le Voyageur, I refuse to get a Facebook account! Seriously though, I understand the "Big Brother" concern, and mentioned it myself... but I just don't see the ID card thing as the end of the world. I already, as a practical matter, need to carry a government identification card (my driver's license) with me at all times -- not just to drive, but to do banking, to buy certain medications (like cold medication with real decongestant so the government can make sure I don't buy enough to set up a meth lab, apparently), and for other reasons. The identity of the government that issues the ID does not seem like that big a deal to me, especially when the federal government is already well aware of my existence and other facts about me. I'm concerned about privacy, but this does not seem like the top issue on the list.(This message has been edited by njcubscouter)

Seattle, I think Scouters can benefit in many of the ways you describe, but I don't think that necessarily makes it a program "for" adults. The boys are the intended beneficiaries of the program, and adults can benefit from it as well. The problem is that many of the parents who could probably benefit the most (especially in your points about parenting skills) are the ones who do not participate at all. Or to put it another way, some of those who have the most to learn choose not to learn.

ScoutNut said what I was going to say about the National PTA discouraging local PTA's from being CO's. This is not a new thing. I remember reading about it approximately 10 years ago, and it could go back further than that. The National PTA policy is that local PTA's take on too much liability by "owning" a unit that is running a program prescribed by another organization (the BSA.) Some in this forum have speculated that there may be another issue or two behind that policy, and they're not necessarily wrong, but we will leave that to "Issues & Politics." So I am surprised that the reaction from the state PTA to the local PTA wasn't "no use of the EIN, and by the way, you should really drop the charter." Interestingly, the pack my son was in was chartered to his school's Parent-Teacher Organization -- PTO, not PTA. Some people wonder what difference that one little letter makes. The answer, to my knowledge, is that with a PTO there is no national organization, meaning that (among other things) there is no national group charging dues to the local groups (as the National PTA does to local PTA's) and there is no national organization issuing recommendations like, "don't charter a BSA unit." Bottom line here is, you would probably be better off with a new CO, and from the sound of things it is unlikely that the local PTA will object to you taking your money (which presumably is STILL in an individual leader's checking account, not a good idea), equipment (if any) and unit number (they own that too) down the street to your local American Legion, Elks, religious institution, or whoever may be interested. Your District Exec can probably help you there.

I think the ID cards could be justified under the 14th Amendment provisions regarding citizenship and the rights of citizens. Of course that would probably only apply to citizens, but I'm pretty sure that non-citizens who are in this country legally need to be able to identify themselves anyway (i.e. green cards, visas, etc.) and I haven't heard anybody raising any constitutional issues about that. Noelsrule, the reference to the voting amendments (15th, 19th and 26th) is very creative, but would be a stretch. Presumably you think so as well, since you mention "weasel"ing. I think the problem there is that the federal government does not actually conduct elections, the states do. But I do not think the 14th amendment justification would be "weaseling." As for the Commerce Clause, I don't know. Presumably that is the justification for requiring everybody to have a Social Security number, or maybe that is under the 16th amendment taxing power. It doesn't seem too far a jump from requiring everybody to have an SSN to issuing the number on a card that is a photo ID. But do either of those parts of the Constitution justify the last step, which is requiring people to carry that card around? I don't know. I think the 14th Amendment is the better bet. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good idea, I think "Big Brother is watching" us too much already -- and I mean both governmental Big Brother and business Big Brother.

But really, weren't we talking about moderating in this thread? At some point, back in the distant past... 2010 I think it was...

Beavah, on the "sexual abuse" cases, I think you're correct. I don't think that site ever had anything about those cases at all, or any other "personal injury"-type cases. As I said above, my suspicion is that this is/was a site maintained by the BSA's main law firm, meaning the firm that handled the "membership"-type issues, so the site discussed the cases they were dealing with. "Personal injury" cases (including the sexual abuse cases) are probably dealt with by other firms.

It's odd, the same "Sorry" message appears on the "back" pages of the site as well, but the page headings are still there. In other words if you click on a menu item such as "Litigation" at the left and then the sub-item "Duty to God", you get to a page that has the heading "Duty to God" -- not just in the window frame but on the page itself -- and then the "Sorry" message below that. I've never seen that before -- usually if a page is "down", there is nothing there at all. I always had the impression that this was not a site put up or maintained by the BSA itself, but either by the BSA's main law firm or a public relations firm. I have never been very impressed by it either, mainly because it had several statements that the BSA always seemed careful NOT to make. For example (and not to start a discussion about this), I never saw an official BSA publication or web site that said that "agnostics" were barred from membership, but the legal site did. Other than that page, the BSA's official phrasing seemed to be that a Scout must believe in God or a "higher power", without using the words "atheist" or "agnostic", at least that I ever saw.

I don't see how federal ID cards would violate anything in the U.S. Constitution either. And it's nice that I get to agree with Ed on a political issue, it only happens about once a year or so. I'll even count this as our 2010 agreement, since that's when the thread started, in hopes that we will agree about something else in the next 12 months.

Gary, regardless of what may or may not have been said or intended at the Constitutional Convention about why Senators were originally elected by the state legislatures, the fact is that the Congress and the state legislatures, using the amending process prescribed by the Constitution, changed the selection procedure so the the people elect their Senators directly. I never really focused on the reasons for this change before, but I found a couple of sources that discuss it. (See http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17th_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) I guess I had always assumed and/or learned that the 17th Amendment was passed simply to make the election of Senators "more democratic" (small "d" there) and I am sure that was part of it, but according to these articles there were other (and somewhat more practical) considerations as well. Interestingly, in light of Gern's opinion that going back to the original system would reduce the influence of $pecial interests on Senatorial elections, one of the objections to the original system was that it was controlled by special interests! (I'll get back to that subject momentarily.) I also found it interesting, and never knew before, that some states had already started holding direct elections for the Senate even before the amendment was passed and some even before it was proposed. In light of Gary's concern that the states have lost too much power due to direct election of Senators, another interesting point (and also new to me) is that the change back in the 1910's was pushed by the state legislatures, rather than the federal government, and especially rather than the Senate. Senators who had been elected by their state legislatures did not want to open the elections to the public. (Something which would probably be repeated in reverse, if the "movement" to repeal the 17th Amendment ever showed signs of possibly succeeding, which it really hasn't up to this point.) The state legislatures starting passing calls for a new constitutional convention, and when it seemed like this might actually happen, the Senate backed down, approved the 17th Amendment, and it was sent to the state legislatures where it was ratified fairly quickly. Now, almost 100 years later, it is difficult for me to imagine many people seriously wanting to change back to a system of indirect election. I don't see how elections by the state legislatures would improve anything... which brings me to Gern's comments. With her first post on the subject of Senate elections, I thought this might be another of her satirical posts. In fact, I have to admit that sometimes I am not sure whether Gern is serious or not, and this is one of those times. However Gern, with your second post, you seem to be serious, so I am going to respond. If you actually were satirizing again, I guess you can have a laugh at my gullibility. I do not think elections of Senators by the legislatures would get the "money out of politics" or reduce the impact of the special interests at all, in fact it would probably be just the opposite. The special interests would simply shift their attention (and their money) to state legislative elections, so as to indirectly influence the election of U.S. Senators. And there are thousands of state legislative seats, as opposed to 100 Senators, so that is a lot more elections to influence -- although the bulk of the money would go to a smaller number of "swing" districts, just as it does now for Congressional districts. The goal of the parties and the special interests would be to take majority control of enough state legislative houses to produce a majority in the Senate. So I think the special interests would be at least as influential as they are now, and the money would continue to flow. Once the state legislatures are elected, the election of Senators would become fairly simple: the legislatures would vote along party lines, and whichever party controls a legislature would pick up that Senate seat. (Where there is split control (in the 49 states that have two-house legislatures) there might be a problem getting anyone elected, which according to the articles I cited above, was a major problem in the 19th century and into the 20th, where Senate seats sometimes went vacant because the parties were deadlocked in the state legislature.) I think this would result in an increase in partisanship, which I think we already have enough of. Right now, in many states, independent voters often decide who wins a Senate seat, but with indirect election their influence would be limited to the individual state legislators who in turn would elect the Senators. I definitely agree with the idea of limiting the ability to filibuster, on both legislation and appointments. Today I read that the Senate will be voting on new rules limiting filibusters when their session opens on Wednesday. It probably will not go completely back to the old way of one Senator holding the floor for days on end (as in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), but the new proposed rules (see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03mon1.html) would eliminate a lot of the abuses that have developed fairly recently, which impose a requirement of 60 percent to pass any legislation rather than a majority. It looks like it would also eliminate anonymous holds. These would at least be steps in the right direction.

Gary Miller says: Also the appeal of the 17th Amendment would help get the states powers back as afforded by the Tenth Amendment. I assume you mean "repeal", not "appeal." I'm not picking on you, I just want to make sure. If so, you want to repeal the direct election of U.S. Senators, and give that power back to the state legislatures? Really? Personally I'd rather keep that power (or at least, the tiny little bit of that power that each voter has) for myself and the rest of us, than give it to someone else. I elect my state legislators to decide state issues, not to decide who should represent me in the federal government. This is not the first time I have heard this idea in the past few months, and... and... I have typed about five different things to try to complete that sentence, and every single one of them would have sounded like a personal criticism of you, Gary. I don't mean to. I just don't know what to say when people want to give up their rights to elect holders of a particular office, which we have had for about 100 years. (Well, I personally haven't since I'm not that old, but you know what I mean.) I'll also say, just in general, that the federal government certainly has no monopoly on violating peoples' rights. The history of state governments violating peoples' rights is long and varied, and to some extent it led to the federal courts and government agencies asserting more power, or using more of the power they already had, or however you wish to view it. You mention the Fourth Amendment (to which the states are subject under the 14th Amendment and applicable case law), before the 1960's the states basically ignored it and allowed police to do whatever they wanted. The federal courts had to step in and say the police could not knock down your door or tap your phone except under specific circumstances -- and in no circumstances could they beat a confession out of you -- regardless of whether they are local or state police (both of which are officers of the state) or federal police. On another note, it was not federal officials who stood in the schoolhouse door so little black children couldn't get in. It was federal officials who made the governors and mayors and police chiefs stand aside so those kids could go to school. I don't mean to over-dramatize this, but when I hear all the hand-wringing about federal government power I have to wonder whether people are looking at the whole historical picture here. Has the balance of power tipped too far in the direction of the federal government? Maybe. I'm not necessarily convinced of it. What I am convinced of is that there needs to be a balance. The unrelenting attacks on the federal government from certain political circles recently do not advance the cause of balance.

How did this thread deteriorate into matters of race? Stosh started it. But I wouldn't say "deteriorate." Nobody has started calling anybody any names.

I had a fairly long post written in response to Stosh's but I decided that it would just inflame the discussion, and at this point I'd rather just see this thread start drifting its way down into archive-land. But when you say "Your mileage may vary" on this subject, you're certainly right about that. Our mileage varies. Use of terms like "uniform Nazi", "soup Nazi" etc. are offensive to some (including me) -- not because I think the user of such term is calling someone a Nazi, but because terms like this trivialize what the Nazis really were about. The Nazis were not simply overly strict, like people who obsess on where other people wear patches on their uniforms, or who deny people soup. They murdered people and committed war crimes on a massive scale, among other things. It's just not a good analogy to everyday life. That's my "mileage" on the subject. On some of your other points, I think it's a matter of perspective. There may also be some factual issues here. The term "red man" is, thankfully, considered unacceptable these days, but I am not sure "black man" is in the same category. Despite the efforts of some over the years to have "African American" to replace "black", I don't think it ever really happened. The two terms exist side-by-side today, and to most people, both are acceptable. Of course that may just be my perspective, as I am a "white man." If I keep going, I will re-create the post that I deleted. You'll just have to trust me, you wouldn't have wanted to read it.

For those of us who have not (yet?) entered Facebook-world, is there any mention on there of when the Robotics MB requirements are coming out? Usscouts.org says "early 2011" but I don't know if that is up to date, and I also don't know whether "early" means sometime in January or sometime before June 30. Seems like its been awhile since they first announced that badge was on the way; when I first heard about it my son was still of "advancement age" and he's now 19-and-a-few-months. Oh well, he's doing robotics in engineering school, I guess I'll settle for him getting a job out of it rather than a merit badge.

Let's remember though, that simply making a poor argument, or employing some of the general "mild" nastiness that tends to creep into the Issues and Politics discussions, does not generally result in a thread being shut down. (When it descends to, "You're stupid", "No, YOU'RE stupid", "Well you're stupid ten times", etc. etc., eventually a line is crossed and the thread may closed, but I think there have been very few closures of that type. From what I have seen, the moderators usually try to deal directly with the "combatants" in that case, with mixed success.) Using "Nazi" or "Hitler" analogies, however, goes beyond just demonstrating the weakness of an argument, and goes way past general nastiness. It "rings the bell", so to speak. It tends to stop a discussion of an issue dead in its tracks and converts the discussion into one about the appropriateness of the analogy, basically ending the discussion of the topic at hand. I think this is part of the reason why many Internet forums follow the "tradition" (which dates from the early 90's, when "Internet forums" consisted of Usenet and mailing lists) that invoking Nazis, Hitler, etc. is a thread-closer.

Just to pick out two of BSA24's issues: Uniforms: I don't think changing the uniform is going to help, and the direction you suggest is not going to happen anyway. If a boy does not join Scouting, or quits, mainly because of the uniform, I really don't think changing the uniform is going to make a difference. If they don't want to wear a uniform, they don't want to wear a uniform. Eliminating the uniform MIGHT attract or retain more boys, but I don't think the number would be that great and I don't think it would make up for the loss of cohesiveness and "belonging" that the uniform helps encourage. As for the specific uniform change you support, it sounds like you are suggesting an essentially "paramilitary" uniform. It's not going to happen. The BSA is already concerned enough about people perceiving the program as being "paramilitary". They are not going to suddenly adopt a military-style uniform just because some boys (or more likely, adults) may think it looks "cooler." Outdoor program: BSA has lost its outdoorsy-ness. I keep seeing people make statements like this in this forum, and I don't get it. How has the BSA lost its outdoorsy-ness? I really don't see any less of a focus on outdoor activities than when I was a Scout in the 60's and 70's. There seems to be just as much enthusiasm among the boys for camping, hiking, backpacking etc. as there ever was, and just as much opportunity to do so as there ever was, if not more. So I don't see the problem. Some people in this forum (not necessarily you BSA24) seem to think the BSA is forever scarred just because for about five years, ending more than 30 years ago, it was theoretically possible to make Eagle without ever going on a camping trip or a hike. That experiment ended long ago, years before any of the current Scouts were even born. In the present day, the outdoor program still seems to be there.(This message has been edited by njcubscouter)

Eagledad, I am a little confused about what you think you are disagreeing with me about - to the point where you have decided that a particular word "scares" me. I don't recognize anything I said in what you are disagreeing with.

Thanks Trevorum, happy solstice to all. I think some religions, like Wicca, actually celebrate that. I remember actually getting a Winter Solstice card from somebody once. As for the lunar eclipse, I love watching those, but this one was too far past my bedtime.