When crafting laws..

Should laws reflect our values, facts or both? If they reflect only our values, we may share some, but not others. If they reflect facts, we have to agree on what those are. It might even be necessary to have a conversation about it and that's typically when the you-know-what hits the fan. We don't always discuss issues respectfully in this country.

I've been watching in horror as our reproductive rights are being stripped from us in conservative states. Constitutional protection be damned I guess. These legislators evidently are believers in a more patriarchal style of government than we currently have, and are doing whatever they can to bring that about. I thought we were a democracy, but they have a different idea about that. I live in Oregon where I think we have resolved this issue. But then, with the possibility of insane legislators in the most unlikely of places, who knows? What I do know is we need to leave religion out of this discussion..and no, right to life protesters at Planned Parenthood clinics aren't pregnancy coaches. They're interfering with and harassing women. I've seen what they do and it's disgusting.

Separation between church and state was necessary to prevent the federal government from establishing a national religion. It essentially preserved religious freedom, which also implies freedom from the religion of others. Governing by vested interest doesn't respect the diversity that our country represents. In spite of this, according to an article I read in Slate, although ruled unconstitutional, creationism is taught in various public schools around the country. I don't understand how this could even happen. It's interesting, considering they're funded by our tax dollars. Our religious beliefs, or lack thereof, may seem absolute to each of us, but to expect someone else to embrace and live by those views, let alone pay for them, seems ridiculously narrow minded. Religious views should be personal and govern individual behavior..and not be presented as fact in public school. 

Cannabis laws were created based upon the lie that it was dangerous to our health. At least that's what everyone was told..reefer madness and all. Cannabis treats so many diseases and conditions that to ban it makes no sense. Of course it was all about profits, and not our health, but that's way it always seems to go. It doesn't matter how many people are incarcerated, or how many families are destroyed as long as the pot smoking derelicts are locked away so that we are safe. Right. Doesn't matter that people, when high, are typically peaceful and happy. Hippies are scary; therefore, we must imprison them. The thing is, it's not only hippies anymore who use cannabis. A whole bunch of us use cannabis because we know it's safe...anathema, I know..

The stand your ground laws seem to reflect values over facts or sense. And I don't understand that. How can anyone believe that Florida's version doesn't result in horrible consequences? Seems to me that Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were killed as a result. This is unacceptable. It gives too much leeway for interpretation. But then how people interpret our right to bear arms varies. I interpret it far more narrowly than others do so of course I think we need our gun control laws reformed. That's why I never supported the ending of the Assault Weapon's Ban. We've become an outlaw country and our children aren't safe here anymore. If our values truly reflected concern over safety, we would gladly give up our military style weapons in service of that value. But we don't. Instead, we live in fear and somehow believe we're safe if we have just one more gun. But we're not. Action often beats reaction and there's always going to be someone quicker on the draw. Just ask the families of the children who have died at their schools, where they should have been safe. I'm a gun owner and I believe we should have constitutional protections in place to defend ourselves. I just differ on what those should be. Guns don't make us safe in the long run..intelligent decisions, however, may.

To live in harmony, we have to understand that to do so involves possibly giving up something for the greater good. Most of us learn that concept in childhood. Sometimes it's disguised as sharing, but it's the same thing. There's nothing wrong with having freedom as long as it doesn't encroach on others in a negative way, but even the term "negative" needs an agreed upon definition. Some people don't understand that, so that's where laws come in. But they need to protect us when we need protecting..not when we don't. 

We don't, for example, need protection from cannabis. It's safe and we actually have receptors in our bodies just waiting to connect with cannabis molecules so that our bodies can heal. We also don't need religion taught in public schools. It's too personal and no one can agree on anything. So it makes sense to get that education from somewhere else. We don't need stand your ground laws because we already have the right to defend ourselves. Standing one's ground isn't always appropriate and when you throw in ego, people die.

Our civil liberties and our constitutionally protected rights need to be left alone unless it's to expand them. Blood was spilled fighting for and protecting our voting rights..and the penalties for violating or circumventing them should be severe. Legal medical cannabis dispensaries are another example of local areas circumventing state law by banning them. And the state/federal conflict puts all patients at risk for simply following their state laws. Surely everyone can understand the problem with this type of circumvention. It's cheating to get around the law at the expense of the people the law was enacted to protect.

The fact that we operate this way in this country shows that we're not ready to respect individual differences enough to find real solutions. Sometimes the answer is to respect the law. Basic, I know. The Senate Judiciary Committee just passed the Smarter Sentencing Act, which overhauls federal drug sentencing. We'll see if this goes anywhere, but it's certainly a positive start. Some US Attorneys aren't supportive of it, but that's not surprising. Several tend to ignore state medical cannabis laws all the time, despite being told to leave patients alone. This drives all of us crazy because all we want to do is to continue healing. We're not addicts or criminals, we're just ill and we don't want to be. Imagine that.. If Congress would legalize cannabis federally, and then release all the political prisoners imprisoned for cannabis, we'd actually get somewhere. I'm still hopeful that sanity will return..I mean if CVS Pharmacies can choose to stop selling cigarettes, then anything can happen!

Laws should be based upon facts. We need to fully understand the issue and then be honest about it so that laws enacted actually reflect that understanding, rather than what we have now. It would be nice if they also reflected our values, but that doesn't always happen, so in lieu of that, I would settle for laws based on facts or truth. I might not like them, but at least I would know that no one is doing an end run around my civil rights. And that's more than we can say now..

Thoughts on the President's remarks today..

I love it when President Obama has an unexpected conversation with the nation. Even the White House Press Corp. had no idea he would pay them and us a visit today, and his remarks continued for seventeen minutes. It felt unscripted. It was clear that he wanted to offer a perspective on the murder of Trayvon Martin in the broader context of how African American males still experience profiling in this country on a daily basis.

He shared with all of us what it's still like to be a young black man in this country. He talked about being watched in stores, hearing locks activated in cars as he walked down the street, and how entering an elevator could cause worry if a white woman was already in there, alone. Guilt is assumed..never the other way around.

Toward the end of his comments, President Obama asked if Trayvon had been of age and had a weapon, could he have used the stand your ground law to defend himself from someone who had been following him? Because that's what this really comes down to. Would he have been allowed to go home that night had the situation been reversed? Or would he have been arrested immediately? Does stand your ground only apply to white people? Or does it only apply to white men? It certainly didn't apply in the case of a black woman, Marissa Alexander, who fired shots into the air to stop her husband from abusing her. She was convicted and will serve twenty years unless the appeal is successful or someone intervenes and commutes her sentence. How did the law not apply to her? Why was she punished for defending herself? 

The President suggested that stand your ground laws may be too ambiguous and may need review. I agree. I realize that technically, stand your ground was not part of the Zimmerman trial. Still, it is at the heart of this issue. It feels like the law applies only to certain people. If the woman who received twenty years had been white, would she be in prison now? 

The American experiment is an interesting one. We're supposed to be united, but instead of a reality, it's more of a goal. At least it is for some of us. Too much nonsense keeps getting in the way. Sooner or later though, we have to figure out how to live together. Racism is still alive and well in this country. It's far too easy to be suspicious of others. Zimmerman decided all kinds of things about Trayvon and then got out of his car, instigated the altercation, and killed that precious boy. And he got away with it. He didn't care that Trayvon was someone's child. Zimmerman was so full of himself that he saw danger where there was none. A child is dead and his parents are heartbroken.

It feels different in this country now. Dealing with what happened on 9/11 was bad enough. The Bush administration used fear to take away our civil liberties. No one could speak out against Bush's response to the attack without being branded as unpatriotic or worse, a traitor. We finally elect an African American as President, and somehow conservatives think he needs their permission to actually do that job. So it should come as no surprise that conservative men also seem hell bent on living solitary lives because eventually even their women will leave them. Hint: women don't like being controlled and we actually think they're pretty stupid for trying and it's going to get really messy if they keep crap this up. And I guess, even though we have the Voting Rights Act, SCOTUS threw out Section 4, so our oh so popular and responsible Congress will have to fix that before 2014. Otherwise, I fear that voter suppression will win the day and ruin our lives all over again. And I'm not so sure that we can take anymore. And as far as Texas goes, Google Lewis Black's rant. He says it better than anyone else.

President Obama spoke about listening to his daughters interact with their friends. He made the observation that with each new generation of children, things seemed to get better. That with them, we have a chance for positive change. He's right. And I love that we have a President who gets that.

Can't we all agree that we've come too far to lose our way like this? It'd be nice if we could just care about each other. It'd be nice if kids could walk home from the store and not die along the way. It'd be nice if they could go to school and come home alive and well. And it'd be nice if women didn't feel that we need to fight battles that should have never been fought in the first place. 

Misunderstanding results in fear. The world is a scary place, so it makes sense that we react this way. But at some point, we have to stop trying to control everything and everyone around us. We have to stop viewing others as the enemy and then use that belief to justify our behavior. Nothing good comes of it. Nothing. 

Just ask Trayvon's parents..

UPDATE: While watching Melissa Harris-Perry's show, I learned that Marissa Alexander was given a choice between 20 years and 3. But if she had chosen three years, she would have lost her child. Her husband admitted he abused her. There was a restraining order mentioned by Melissa's guest. Marissa Alexander has a master's degree. What has the state of Florida done to this woman? And Angela Corey was involved. She was too gleeful at the verdict in the Zimmerman case. In her case, Madeleine Albright's words apply..you know, that special place in hell for women who don't help other women. 

There are no words adequate...

Oh my God. Where do I even start? First of all, I didn't watch this trial. Instead I read accounts. I couldn't watch because I had a bad feeling from the start about it. When I heard the judge had included manslaughter in the jury instructions, I knew then that this might not go well. 

George Zimmerman got away with murdering Trayvon Martin. The jurors were women. Were they mothers? This baby boy could have been anything he wanted to be. The defense attorneys made Trayvon appear as if he was the murderer. That somehow, he tried to kill Zimmerman with the sidewalk. The sidewalk was his weapon. How could they say this in front of Trayvon's parents? Did they really need to make that boy into a criminal when he wasn't? 

I read that a woman got twenty years for shooting a gun into the air to keep her abusive husband from attacking her. Same judge in both cases apparently. When a woman who is a victim of domestic violence can shoot a gun in the air - not even at her stupid husband - and then get twenty years for only trying to save her own life, and George Zimmerman can go free, who are we? 

Florida's stand your ground law is disgusting. This idiot stalked this child. He was told to stay in his vehicle. He ignored that because he was arrogant. He got out and killed Trayvon. He ended a life that had so much promise. He destroyed two parents who loved their boy more than life itself. Trayvon did nothing wrong. He was only walking home. He is not the guilty one here. Zimmerman is. Except that he's not. The jury has spoken. They returned a verdict of not guilty. So I guess it's still open season on our children, particularly if they have brown skin.

I read that the NRA is involved in the enactment of these stand your ground laws. Doesn't surprise me. Listening to Joy Reid on MSNBC, it appears that Florida may not repeal this law because everyone seems to like it. I hope she's wrong about that. I would hope that Floridians would reconsider and repeal it, because obviously, it's not so clear cut. Except the jurors evidently thought that it was. Some pundits are saying the the prosecution didn't prove their case. Maybe that's true. If so, shame on them. Did they even try? Sure seems like the consensus of opinion is that the prosecution didn't explain what happened well and really didn't rise to the occasion until their final summation. They failed Trayvon, his family, and the rest of us. Simple as that.

Why are we so afraid of enacting gun control laws? Doing so doesn't violate the 2nd amendment. Too many children have died in the last year alone. How can we continue to allow laws to exist that result in the murder of our children? Does only a guy with a gun have rights? Because that's what it looks like to me. And now Zimmerman can carry that gun around any time he wants. 

Stand your ground laws are too much of a free-for-all and are too subjective to exist. Zimmerman gets to go home tonight. Trayvon is dead. I don't know how anyone can feel good about this one. The system is broken. For Trayvon's parents, the pain will be never ending because this did NOT need to happen.