Letter

Dear Justice Roberts,
 
My first inclination was to call you a traitor to the Constitution. After all, you just sold America down the river. But, upon reflection, that may have been a bit hasty.

Because I see what you did: you struck down the Commerce Clause and labeled the penalty a tax. Good on ya. We no longer have to worry about the government using the general welfare as an excuse to tell us what to eat, what to buy, where to live, and what to say. And, despite Baracula's disingenuous arguments to the contrary, a tax is a tax. And I, like you, believe a country gets the government it deserves and if we were stupid enough to elect this Marxist, it ain't the Supreme Court's job to protect us from our own stupidity.

But...

You did not have to go through all the strenuous effort to make Obamacare constitutional. Given their arguments, and your response, you should have let the whole thing collapse. Instead, you went out of your way, in an absolutely uncalled for manner, to justify upholding it. That was far beyond the call of duty, and shows you to be in somewhat of a snit. The problem is, when judges get into a snit, innocent people suffer. Comrade Obama and the Monarchist Party got this thing through by perpetuating a fraud, and you, in a snit, aided and abetted it.

You did not act like a judge. You did not protect the innocent.

See, in order for this whole law thing to work, we schlubs have to believe that wise and impartial judges will fill the gap between the schlubs' ignorance of the law's millions of conflicting and nonsensical nuances, and ongoing criminal efforts by Monarchists and Frauds to use those conflicts as means for cleaning out the schlubs' wallets. But if judges get into snits and make rulings they and their buddies can discuss and admire over brie and champagne in country clubs we schlubs can't afford to join, then you have abandoned your responsibility to us. And if judges are more interested in their own snits than the schlubs' need for protection, then the law is just words on paper.

Words on paper can be burned.

So, based on your ruling, the government can now tax us for a state of being. Today, it's lack of health care insurance. Tomorrow, lack of a college degree? How 'bout being white? Oh that'll never happen, you snort.

Uh huh.

You do realize you have devolved the Supreme Court into just one more body part of Leviathan, right? That the Court is uncaring of me and the rest of the schlubs, your "let them eat cake" attitude quite apparent? Okay, good, as long as you realize that.

And I do realize that you have kicked it back to us, saying, "If you don't like decisions like this, then stop voting for Democrats, Monarchists, and other Tory parties." Okay, wid you, bro, and I never have voted for groups like that. But murder isn't supposed to happen, either, and aren't you judges responsible for meting out proper justice to murderers?

Perhaps you should have considered that, instead of the snit.  

So, it could very well be that you are not a traitor. But, I'll bet you could play one on TV.

Your friend,

Schlub

R.I.P., RB

Ray Bradbury died the other day. For those of a certain age and geekiness, it’s like the passing of Elvis, or Jackie Onassis. An era fades.

Ray Bradbury was the guy who lit the spark. Marvel Comics taught me to read, but Ray Bradbury taught me to love it. Sure, Robert Heinlein and Alex Key and Sheila Moon and Madeline L’Engle did, too, but it was Bradbury who formed the core.

I can’t remember the first time I read one of his stories. I think it was somewhere around 1967. I used to spend my afternoons in the Ft. Rucker library while Mom went to the Commissary, and I would check out about 10-15 books when she came to get me. One of his was in that pile, probably The Martian Chronicles, dunno, but, by the summer of 1968, he was absolutely my favorite author and I had read…everything. R is for Rocket was his best anthology, neck-and-neck with The October Country and S is for Space. My favorite novel was Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was made into not-a-half-bad movie with Jason Robards (although, overall, RB didn’t translate well into film. Remember the Rock Hudson Martian Chronicles? Ugh).

There was something about his style, sentences careened across theme and event and crashed back into themselves, evoking an incredible sense of place and atmosphere. It felt like RB got it, that he knew the essence of growing up and the ephemeral moments of play and sunset and the smells of newly mown grass and how…fleeting…it is.  All Summer in a Day, wow.  I read Dandelion Wine back then, too, and didn’t really get the stories but the sense of it, the passing of things that make up memory, I got that.

I stopped reading him sometime in the late 70’s. Was into Tolkien and Herbert and Hesse then. A few years ago, I picked up some  stuff he had written recently but stopped about halfway through the first story because something was missing.

I think it was me.

Anyways, salud, mazeltov, mud in your eye, RB. You were the best. The Man’s out there. Go find Him.