The ruling states that the law — which amended the state constitution — violated the Establishment clause of the First Amendment by singling out one religion, Islam. In addition, the court noted that the proponents of the law, which passed November 2010 in a state referendum, could not identify one occasion in which Sharia was used in Oklahoma.

Too bad courts can’t comment on the stupidity of laws, too.

Oklahoma’s Islamophobic factions took the lead nationally in pressing for such a law, creating a nontroversy about “creeping Sharia” and Muslim infiltration of the USA. After the Sooner State’s successful ballot initiative, other states jumped on the bandwagon, fabricating Muslim threats from whole cloth.

The 10th Circuit got to the heart of the matter in its ruling: “Sharia? What Sharia?”

Appellants do not identify any actual problem the challenged amendment seeks to solve. Indeed, they admitted at the preliminary injunction hearing that they did not know of even a single instance where an Oklahoma court had applied Sharia law or used the legal precepts of other nations or cultures, let alone that such applications or uses had resulted in concrete problems in Oklahoma. See Awad, 754 F. Supp. 2d at 1308; Aplt. App. Vol. 1 at 67-68.

Given the lack of evidence of any concrete problem, any harm Appellants seek to remedy with the proposed amendment is speculative at best and cannot support a compelling interest.15 “To sacrifice First Amendment protections for so speculative a gain is not warranted . . . .” Columbia Broad. Sys., Inc. v. Democratic Nat’l Co., 412 U.S. 94, 127 (1973).

In other words, it’s a bit like locking the barn door to keep the horses from escaping before they are actually inside. Except in this case, there aren’t any horses, either. So, it’s both stupid and crazy.

Isn’t all bigotry like that?

First, the much-talked-about Navy kiss, from Dec. 21.

Fire Controlman 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, assigned to the USS Oak Hill, kisses her fiancée, Fire Controlman 3rd Class Citlalic Snell.

For some reason, that photo reminds me of this one.

The iconic V-J Day kiss in Times Square by Alfred Eisenstaedt

This couple (actually, two strangers in Times Square) were caught up in the moment following the surrender of Japan on Aug. 14, 1945. The sailor saw a cute nurse, and spontaneously kissed her. (Wiki entry) Eisenstaedt and another photog were lucky enough to capture the moment.

Granted, the circumstances were different, but both couples were celebrating a victory in some sense.

JISHOU, HUNAN –Chinese observers seem to draw two opposing conclusions from the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. The more common (state-approved) conclusion is: capitalism is bad, Marxism is good. The more thoughtful conclusion is: if the Chinese government doesn’t deal with widespread corruption, China might see similar protests in the not-too-distant future.

Recently, one of my friends asked me what Chinese reactions to OWS were. So, I’ve spent some time poring over Internet reports and blogs to get a sense how OWS is playing over here. Since my grasp of Mandarin is weak still, and my access to movers and shakers is limited, take my comments here with a grain of salt.

Official Chinese news coverage tends to characterize OWS as a confrontation between the very poor and homeless (the victims of heartless capitalism) and the rich and powerful (heartless capitalist dogs). The Communist Party is using OWS as an object lesson in the superiority of China’s Marxism.

Comments to an article about the clearing out of Zucotti Park in New York City are representative of netizen reactions. Several comments are rabidly anti-American and pro-Chinese, leading other commenters to accuse those writers of being paid pro-government trolls. (The Party reportedly pays people 5 mao, or 0.50 yuan, to post pro-government comments on the Internet.)

The more staid party publication, Global Times, predicts OWS will amount to nothing in the end and China should just wait and see what happens.

The Global Times, a widely read Chinese tabloid published by Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, noted in an editorial that “western countries can withstand street demonstrations better, since their governments are elected”.

“The conflicts may be minor or serious, but it will not bring significant change,” it added. “China needs to stay calm and observe how the street movements in the Western world develop and to make the rights choices for its own good.”

(From The Telegraph, Oct. 17.)

Lost in this state-approved presentation are several salient truths about OWS. It’s not just a poor people’s movement. OWS draws supporters from the middle class, too, including retired police chiefs, Iraqi war vets, housewives, grannies and working stiffs, as well as scruffy looking students. Chinese media ironically play up police roughly dealing with OWS protesters (subtly implying it’s a government crackdown), while obscuring the freedoms of assembly and free speech that permits OWS to be so widespread.

No one in the current government would dare remind anyone here of the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests, which brought out thousands of students and intellectuals to rally for civil rights and resulted in a quick and brutal reaction by the Chinese police and military. Most of my students, in fact, know very little about that episode in Chinese history.

As an example of how the message of OWS has been skewed, we can look at a street protest in Zhengzhou by supporters of OWS. Some of them included cadres (important workers who are party members) who seemed to believe that OWS was a rally in support of Marxist ideals and against capitalism. Perhaps the protest was Party-sponsored.

Earlier this year, when the Jasmine Revolution was underway in North Africa and the Middle East, the government here quickly acted to foil any similar movements in China. The usual suspects (likely organizers) were rounded up and detained for several months, the Internet was “harmonized” — scrubbed of any rallying cries for a Jasmine Revolution in China — and official media portrayed the successful Arab Spring people’s movements, as yet more evidence for the superiority of the Chinese Way.

Ironies of ironies, you may be thinking, since China was after all founded as a people’s republic after a people’s revolution against a repressive government. That was before all those “peasants” ended up in power themselves, of course.

It’s that bitter irony that other Chinese recognize. The Party and its economic policies of the last 30 years have enabled China to become a major player in the world’s economy and allowed enterprising Chinese citizens to become rich beyond Mao’s imagination. Meanwhile, freedom of expression is tightly controlled, the Internet and media are closely monitored and censored (I had to use a network proxy to search for “Jasmine Revolution,” in fact), and government officials and business magnates help each other become fat cats.

To help grow the economy quickly, the State has given favored businesses considerable freedom to operate as they see fit (another irony, laissez-faire economic policy), sometimes at the expense of the common citizen, whose protests, when allowed, are ultimately pointless. We hear reports of entire city neighborhoods being evicted and razed for a new construction project, of a miner’s widow being denied access to her husband’s remains and being forced to accept a cash payment as compensation for his death, of bad food resulting from lax regulation, poor construction practices, and environmental disasters.

Many have resulted from the close personal and economic relationships that have developed between government officials, who look the other way, and the favored business leaders, who pay them to look the other way. Having given businessmen an inch, China’s political leaders have seen big business take a mile, and become a troublesome barrier to reform.

This is precisely the same message of OWS, which has not been lost on more thoughtful Chinese observers, who warn that China may yet have its own Occupy movement. As long as China can keep its growing middle class content and comfortable with material wealth, protest movements will gain no traction, however. China has largely been insulated from the economic crises of the USA and EU.

But, if the Chinese economy goes sour and middle class folks lose their jobs, homes and comfy lifestyle, China’s leaders will have an enormous problem that all the ‘Net harmonizing in the world will not solve.

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You might also check out this reports.

Stratfor Analysis

Bloomberg analysis

Ai WeiWei shows media his $2.4 million tax bill

Ai was arrested in April for “economic crimes” and held in an undisclosed location for more than two months. Authorities claim Ai owes $2.4 million in back taxes, an accusation he disputes but is paying with the help of his fans. Now, he says one of his associates is being investigated on child pornography charges. Technically, Ai and his wife are under house arrest; he cannot leave Beijing, cannot write anything critical of the government and cannot talk to the media.

But he did anyway. Newsweek magazine carries an essay by Ai in which he describes Beijing as a “prison,” without referring specifically to his own quasi-imprisonment. We know what he means, though.

Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper.

Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses. Each year they build a Beijing equal to the size of the city in 1949. They are Beijing’s slaves. They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts—and the restaurants and karaoke parlors and saunas are very rich as a result.

Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence.

It’s a bleak description of the reality that lies underneath Beijing’s many tourist attractions and showy attempts to be a world-class city. In fact, he expresses the kinds of thoughts (“open secrets”– 公开的秘密) that dwell in many Chinese citizens’ minds, but are rarely expressed to anyone but trusted friends and family. Although the horrors of the Cultural Revolution are long past, most people here choose to avoid any “imperial entanglements,” as it were.

Ai has a quixotic belief that the government should uphold the national constitution, which guarantees — in theory — that all citizens have civil rights. Despite the huge gap between theory and practice, Ai continues to fight authority. It’s hard to say if he do any better than the guy in the John Mellencamp song.

JISHOU, HUNAN — By way of Right Wing Watch, I came across this announcement, which encourages folks to host viewing “parties” for a televised “premiere event.”

Now on sale! Just $9.95 if you act before Sept. 30!

The lineup of speakers* includes two guys running for the Republican presidential nomination (only one of whom has a ghost of chance of winning the nomination), a former congressman, a man who lies about American history, and the former head of an influential conservative Christian media empire.

[*Speakers have been invited, but are not yet confirmed. -- Footnote at the bottom of the webpage.]]

Three hours of talking heads telling us that the USA is a Christian Nation™, that the USA is going down the tubes because of the liberals, the gays, the atheists, the Muslims and (by the way) President Barack Obama, and that viewers need to bring God back into America where He belongs, instead of taking care of the whole universe like He’s supposed to.

Gripping TV at its best.

For a special price of $9.95, you can buy a home party hosting kit. The church hosting kit is $49.95. (Both prices are only good until Sept. 30, so order now! Operators are standing by.)

If the viewing kits included coupons for a keg or two, and suggestions for drinking games (chug a mug when you hear the word “Jesus”), these “parties” might be mildly entertaining. As it is, three hours of listening to these guys rehash the same old arguments and diatribes against the Bill of Rights would seem, even for a believer in such nonsense, excruciatingly painful.

I’m betting this media event of the century will tank. Just a hunch.

The party's over: Duan Linxi may be the last Hunan Super Girl

“We received notification from the administration that we cannot make selective TV trials with mass involvement of individuals in the year 2012″, Li Hao, deputy editor-in-chief and spokesman of the channel, diplomatically told the China Daily.

In other words, viewers can no longer call in and vote for their favorite performers. That might be too democratic.

“Hunan Satellite Television will obey the State regulator’s decision and will not hold similar talent shows next year. Instead, the channel will air programs that promote moral ethics and public safety and provide practical information for housework,” Li said.

In other words, we were told to produce the same old, mind-numbingly boring crap that China Central TV (CCTV) broadcasts already, in between patriotic movies about the Revolution and the Japanese Occupation.

Hunan TV has a reputation in China of being more “edgy” and contemporary than CCTV. It has successfully adapted game shows from Japan and programs from America (like Ugly Betty and American Idol) for Chinese audiences. The Super Girl/Super Boy competitions have been aired on HSTV in one form or another 2004. As with Idol winners and runners-up, their Chinese counterparts have gone on to clinch record deals, movie and TV gigs, and an active fan base.

HSTV milks the Super-person shows for every last bit of pathos and suspense. This year’s Super Girl contest started with 500 performers (all singers of some sort), who competed in provincial and regional contests for four months before a whittled-down core group landed on the first national broadcast in July.

The first program was supposed to run for a mandated 92-minute limit. Instead, it ran 90 minutes over the cap imposed by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Later episodes also ran over, but not to such a great extent. Despite their length (and the tedium of listening to scores of not-very-talented performers), it attracted millions of viewers away from more “wholesome” programming, which is probably why the SARFT clamped down.

From the China Daily article:

In 2007, SARFT took several moves to regulate talent shows, including banning TV talent shows in prime time (7:30 pm to 10:30 pm) and limiting the duration of each episode to no more than 90 minutes.

[An] anonymous staff member also said that the ratings for the contest this year “kept being higher than other TV programs of its kind”.

“For me, exceeding the time limit is just an excuse to shut down the TV program, and there would have been other excuses even if the TV station did not make the shows that long,” said Jin Yong, a researcher at the Communication University of China.

“I believe the reason that forced the administration to ‘regulate’ this program is that some television hosts in the program made inappropriate comments and some did not dress properly,” Jin said.

“The style might have offended some older viewers, so that the authority warned the TV station with the suspension order to make their program classier.”

Short version: Simon Cowell would have been deported within a day if he had been one of the judges.

Super Boy performers were also advised to sing only “healthy and ethically inspiring” songs (as in, boooorrrring) and producers were to avoid showing screaming fans and teary-eyed losers.

Li Yu Chun, a "Super Girl" winner from 2005

[True confession: I like Lǐ's style a lot. Her English name is Chris Lee. Naturally she has both Facebook and MySpace pages. Check 'em out.]

This year’s surprise winner, Duàn Línxī 段林希, from Yunnan, also does not fit the mold of the “ideal Chinese female singer.” If Lǐ was too punky, Duan is too reserved and un-star-like. With enormous black-framed glasses, an acoustic guitar and low-key songs, she was more like a cross between Scooby-doo’s Vera and Judy Collins than a Sheryl Crow rocker, but her fanbase helped her net first prize.

The Chinese government closely regulates the media here, and Hunan TV has had run-ins with SARFT before. Clearly, the message from the “feds” is to present a more uniform, “harmonious” form of entertainment, with little spontaneity and counter-cultural role models — the very reasons that viewers (like me) tune into to such otherwise mindless entertainment.

This time the mind in question belongs to John David Dyche, a Republican lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky. He wrote an opinion piece for the Courier-Journal entitled “Property rights crucial to voting rights.”

He begins with another dubious analogy — doctors this time, not second-story men.

Some bemoan Kentucky’s 10 percent voter turnout in recent primaries. But quantity hardly assures quality in making important choices.

If you had a serious disease would you open your treatment to everyone or confine it to a few specialists? A free society’s biggest decision is how it shall be governed. The Founders therefore placed prudent limits on participation in it.

After offhandedly suggesting that it was probably a good idea to let blacks and women vote, Dyche then takes us to the good old days when only the landed gentry could participate in politics or governance. You know, the situation that encouraged some demented landed gentry types to create an entirely new nation sometime around 1776.

Unlike Vadum, who draws his arguments from paranoia-scented thin air, Dyche dresses up his anti-democratic broadside with lots of quotes from historical figures — none of whom lived after the 1850s — with whom he happily agrees. Must be that law school training.

First he quotes a figure from the Puritan Revolution in England, Commissary General Henry Ireton (1611-1651), who advised that the men participating in government should be free from dependence on others. In other words, only rich guys should run the government. That didn’t work all that well at the time.

(The leader of that revolution was Oliver Cromwell, and it should be noted here that Ireton was Cromwell’s son-in-law, which benefited his political career greatly. But he was independent. Really. After the monarchy was restored in 1660, King Charles II had Ireton and Cromwell’s bodies exhumed and mutilated in a symbolic execution. Ouch.)

Now that Dyche has introduced us to one of the shortest lived political philosophers of the 17th century, he dismissively mentions the efforts of those left-wing radicals, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, to expand suffrage to the “common man.” Then he quotes more great conservative minds.

James Kent (1763-1847) was a lawyer, judge and legal scholar in the State of New York. During the 1821 state constitutional convention, he argued against universal suffrage. Dyche quotes just a bit of Kent’s passionate speech. Here’s a longer quote:

The apprehended danger from the experiment of universal suffrage applied to the whole legislative department, is no dream of the imagination. It is too mighty an excitement for the moral constitution of men to endure. The tendency of universal suffrage, is to jeopardize the rights of property, and the principles of liberty. There is a constant tendency in human society, and the history of every age proves it; there is a tendency in the poor to covet and to share the plunder of the rich; in the debtor to relax or avoid the obligation of contracts; in the majority to tyrannize over the minority, and trample down their rights; in the indolent and the profligate, to cast the whole burthens of society upon the industrious and the virtuous; and there is a tendency in ambitious and wicked men, to inflame these combustible materials. [Dyche's quotation is in boldface here.]

Short version: The rabble will take over government, and civilization as we know it will crumble into dust. Demagogues will whip them into a frenzy, and we rich guys will be in big trouble. Remember what happened to Louis and Marie Antoinette?

Now we hear from Daniel Webster (1782-1852), a somewhat better known figure in US History. Dyche quotes Webster as saying:

Those who have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it grows clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at all times, for violence and revolution.

Sounds like Webster also had the French Revolution in mind. Like Ireton and Kent, he unequivocally opposed universal suffrage, and lobbied against it (unsuccessfully) during the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1820.

A more extensive quote from Webster will help put his argument in context. These remarks Dyche quotes come from a commemorative address at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 200 years after the Pilgrims landed. Webster expounded on the American political system, noting that it depended on laws regulating government, the military and the “descent and transmission of property.”

The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case, the popular power would be likely to break limit and control the exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property. The holders of estates would be obliged, in such case, in some way to restrain the right of suffrage, or else such right of suffrage would, before, long, divide the property. In the nature of things, those who have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it glows clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at all times, for violence and revolution.

The qualifying words, which Dyche omits, I have put in boldface. Webster was in fact saying, if property laws allowed a small minority of landowners to control most of the property, the “outs” would eventually rise up in revolution. (Like France, 1789, for example). We could therefore also use Webster’s address as an argument against letting the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but Dyche appears not to consider that possibility. Nor have most of our Congressional leaders, for that matter.

Next, Dyche pulls out another “modern” political theorist, John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), whose words could have come from the mouth of anyone of the current Republican presidential candidates.

Look at that ragged fellow staggering from the whiskey shop, and see that slattern who has gone there to reclaim him; where are their children? Running about, ragged, idle, ignorant, fit candidates for the penitentiary. Why is all this so? Ask the man and he will tell you, ‘Oh, the Government has undertaken to educate our children for us. It has given us a premium for idleness.

We don’t need public education. We don’t need a social safety net. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Randolph made these remarks in 1830, during the Virginia state constitutional convention. Like a lot of modern day Tea Party members, he favored “small government” and the self-sufficiency of the population. As you can see, he did not favor public education, unlike his fellow Virginian, Tom Jefferson.

Randolph, a wealthy plantation owner with many slaves, was also fervently against rule by the masses — “King Numbers,” he called them. He believed that men were not created equal, and some should by right of birth be in positions of power. He lost those arguments in his own time, as did Kent and Webster, which Dyche and others seem to forget. There are after all certain reasons why old political ideals are no longer currently in fashion. Like the divine right of kings, they were discarded long ago, and should stay in the trash heap.

But nevermind, the definition of the conservative mind is hold onto the old — or dig it out of the trash heap — and reject the new (until it later becomes old). Now that Dyche has built up this bulwark of “modern” conservative political theory, he now comes to the crux of the matter.

Roosevelt and his New Deal, Johnson and his Great Society, President Obama, and the Congressional Democrats — all bad, bad socialists. Doom approaches. Revolution! Blood in the streets! Run for your lives!

Dyche continues:

These misguided liberals seem oblivious to the reality of America’s current fiscal crises and cultural decline. Their excessive generosity with other people’s money has bankrupted the country and helped rot its moral core.

Let’s review some basic facts here. When Bill Clinton (a Democrat) left office, the USA had a budget SURPLUS. When George W. Bush (a Republican) left office, the USA had a ginormous budget DEFICIT. Why? For a start, he cut taxes, mostly for the wealthy few at the top and the big corporations, a trend which continues even under Obama’s administration. He escalated one war, and started another, at the same time. He cut revenues and increased spending. The Dems in Congress were complicit in this financial mismanagement, but for Dyche to pin the current economic crisis on liberals misses the culprits by a country mile.

I won’t even go on about lax regulation of the banking, mortgage and investing industries, which trampled the property law system that Webster extolled in 1821. If we still had property ownership as a requirement for voting, there would be hundreds of thousands of people without homes and the right to vote. But remember, it was the liberals’ fault.

Nor will I gloss on the “cultural decline” and the rotting “moral core” that Dyche refers to. I can only guess what he means.

Dyche invokes fear as a reason for clamping down on suffrage. “King Numbers may take to the streets in violence choreographed by social media (referring to the Arab spring, I suppose) and encouraged by thuggish labor leaders (referring to Teamsters boss James Hoffa, who told union members to ‘kill’ those guys at the polls). It is a recipe for despotism, the Founders’ foremost fear (referring obliquely to the Nazis — no political column nowadays can omit some allusion to Hitler).”

And he concludes with these terrifying words:

That dread day draws nigh. We have forgotten the Founders’ carefully considered conclusion that broader voter participation (especially from the half of American households paying no federal income tax) could hasten it.

And how much tax did General Electric pay last year? Zero. Cry me a fucking river.

What is the point of bring all this up now, anyway? What do Dyche and the paranoid Trotsky-doppelganger Vadum propose, seriously? Tell one-third of the voting population they can’t vote anymore? (I’m extrapolating from census data. The home ownership rate in the USA in 2009 was 67.4%.) That will go over well, I’m sure. Renters, the unemployed, retirees, college students, as well as welfare recipients, would have no vote and no chance to run for office. It would mean I could not vote either.

Maybe counselor Dyche might re-read Webster’s remarks at Plymouth again. If we allow the rich and powerful to get more rich and more powerful, and increase the number of the people in the lower classes, then the USA will be in big trouble — a larger version of a banana republic, without the bananas. Rather than seeing universal suffrage as a threat, Dyche should see it for what it is — one of the principal strengths of the American Republic. Blacks, women, non-property owners did not seize political rights by force; they acquired them after long years of an evolving democratic political process. And the Nation still stands.

Time moves on, counselor. Kent, Webster, Randolph and their unlucky English predecessor Ireton were in the minority, even in their own time. Maybe you need to propose some new ideas.