Amongst my opponents in the May 5 GOP primary for United States House of Representatives in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District is Beth Henderson, a registered nurse from Tipton County who uses the moniker “Nurse Beth” for her campaign.
On her website she addresses several issues. Under the header “Protect the Constitution” she states: “We must stand against government overreach into our lives and protect the Second Amendment and the unborn.”
I infer she does not mean she believes fetuses have rights to firearms. After all: (1) how would the fetus get a firearm into the womb? (2) is there a limit on number of weapons? (3) child birth would be all the more painful, depending upon type(s) and size(s) of weapon(s).
Also, in a “stand your ground” State, at birth when the doctor smacks the newborn on the butt, would the newborn’s use of lethal force be defensible?
So let’s look at Nurse Beth’s issue statement “Protect the Constitution.” She does not identify (1) what government - Federal, State or local - overreaches into our lives; (2) specifics of any “overreach”; or (3) how the Constitution is attacked.
The Federal government is a favorite target of those who decry “overreach.” Those same people pine for the good old days - before the Civil War and the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment.
If Nurse Beth is amongst those who want the USA to return those days of old, and she is to remain consistent, she needs to keep her mouth shut. After all, women are not even mentioned in the Constitution as it was ratified after the 1787 Convention.
If Nurse Beth embraces the view that we should adhere to The Framers’ intent one could argue that, as a woman, Nurse Beth cannot even hold office.
She might point to Amend XIX: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex...” To which I say: (1) Yes, amendment was provided by the Framers in Art. V, but ...
(2) If Nurse Beth wants a strict construction of the Constitution, Amend XIX only secures women the right to vote - and no other rights. To be consistent, she needs to keep her mouth shut. For argument’s sake, let’s move on
The Fed supposedly “overreaches” through that bastion of usurpation of rights, the EPA. However: (1) States did not do a great job of keeping our air and waters clean - see “Lake Erie catches fire”;...
(2) Nurse Beth should be careful: EPA was a (proud) legacy of a GOP President, Richard Nixon; and (3) Amend XIV, sec 1 requires equal protection of the law and Art. I sec 8 cl 3 gives Congress the power to regulate commerce.
The Constitution does not require we “protect” it from an agency created under a GOP Prez. As a half-way measure, maybe we could require CEOs of corporations that pollute to live within one mile downstream and downwind from their operations.
Nurse Beth promises to “protect the Second Amendment.” Nearly 40,000, people die each year from guns. In 2017 approximately sixty percent (60%) of gun deaths were suicides (23,854). I think we need protection from people with a warped interpretation of the Second Amendment.
A GOP-nominated (and confirmed) Chief Justice Warren Burger did not view the Second Amendment as conferring a right to individuals to own guns. He was quoted in a 2002 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Judicial Circuit...
“one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word `fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I've ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies — the militia — would be maintained... for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.” Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052, 1063 (9th Cir. 2002).
The NRA is an organization fueled by money from a foreign dictatorship. In early 2018 the NRA said it had received one contribution from a Russian; shortly after, according to NPR. the NRA admitted it received over two dozen contributions from Russians.
The NRA wants people to have unfettered access to guns, no matter how many suicides or children’s corpses litter this country. Russia’s Putin pays out and he expects results, damn it!
Only relatively recently has the Court strayed from the “militia” analysis. In 1939 the Court upheld the constitutionality of a Federal law that prohibited the transport of sawed-off shotguns in interstate commerce. United States v. Miller,307 U.S. 174, 178, 59 S.Ct. 816, 83 L.Ed. 1206 (1939).
As far as Nurse Beth’s promise to protect the “unborn,” there are no such rights. She reads things into The Constitution that are not there. Until the mid-Nineteenth Century abortions before “quickening” were legal. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 110, 138 (1973).
If The Framers had wanted to make such a distinction, they could have. They did not. Justice Blackmun, nominated to the Court by a GOP President, wrote the opinion in Roe. I stand by the conservative reasoning in that case.
Our Constitution is under attack, but not from people who seek to end the gun-driven carnage of people already born. Our Constitution and our country are under attack from Russia. The current occupant of the Oval Office has aided and abetted that attack.
I am Mark Small, a candidate for U.S. House in Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. I am proud to be a progressive. We need to do the obvious and reign in several fiscal policies: tax cuts for the very rich and idiotic military spending. I approve of this blog. Hell, I wrote it.