[AGL] One more time, Happy 14th Amendment Day! and 107 days left.

Fri Sep 15 00:12:36 EDT 2006

Dear Marilyn,
  Mike scolded me for mentioning any "other" list on this list, especially by way of recruitment. I can't even remember what YDD stands for right now. I feel sure one of the D's is for Democrats. Oh Yeah! Yellow Dog Democrats. Just came to me. Know that you are on it.
  I am still pulling for Chris Bell and he sure is closing in on Perry according to at least one poll, to a 5 point margin. Perry seems in steady decline so there is a chance for a Democrat this time aroound. Maybe some of the Ann Richards suporters will remember that they are Democrats and vote with us.
  I also appreciated Gerry's reminiscences of Ann. Memo to self--no martinis, ever again. I will never forget Ann in performance at her house in Westlake Hills that I witnessed shortly after the Watergate tapes were published in paperback. She and Dave had a party at that time and she and several others used the tape transcripts to put on a little play for the guests. It was priceless. I also made a video tape of her at Mary Holman's retirement party, doing a skit masquerading as Nurse Nancy Feelgood, with a bottle of vodka rigged to drip as an IV. I couldn't quite determine if she was really acting or really drunk. Mary Holman was known to go on bodacious benders whenever possible, usually at campouts, of which there were many, and she is who Ann was spoofing at Mary's retirement roast.
  Best,
  Frances

Marilyn Wheless <mwheless at airmail.net> wrote:
      Frances, Please include my name on the YDD list!! Have been off the computer most of this summer and am sure I missed some good "stuff".....all the best marilyn w

  ps my computer will download whatever you send me,. BUT Outlook Express puts it directly into some secret folder....or maybe Homeland Security and Dub W are on to me!!!! 
  West Texas Headquarters
    ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Frances Morey 
  To: John Avant ; Winston Bode ; Winston Bode ; Angela Butterfield ; Connie Clark ; Ann Daughety ; thorne dreyer ; Alice Embree ; susi Gilbert ; Corky Hilliard ; Dwayne Holman ; Michael Scott Holman ; T.J. Pat Holman ; Scout Hook ; Ann Huddleston ; Nick Huestis ; Aralyn Hughes ; Austin Jernigan ; Gwen King ; Anne Kohler ; Don Laird ; Austin List ; daniel llanes ; Cynthia Lyons ; Fontaine Maverick ; Glen Maxey ; Anne McAfee ; Mary Anne Notzon ; Ed Penak ; Maurine Pendleton ; Mary Jane Perry ; Rodney ; Bill Smith ; David Smith ; Walter Timberlake ; Arthur Vance ; Beverly Veltman ; Mariann Vizard ; Carolyn Westergren ; Michael Westergren ; Betsey Wright 
  Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2006 12:05 PM
  Subject: Fwd: [AGL] One more time, Happy 14th Amendment Day! and 107 days left.

  Dear Friends,
  I just created a YDD list to send stuff l find interesting or inspiring, like this article. Forgive me if you receive it twice since I am new to list-making and list-using. 
  If, for any reason, you wish to be removed from this list please advise--if pleased to be in the loop, l appreciate all commentary from real people who I know and who use the Internet. I would also like to get stuff you find compelling and would appreciate your sharing it, too. 
  Best,
  Frances Morey

  Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:12:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: Frances Morey <frances_morey at yahoo.com>
To: Austin List <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
CC: Nick Huestis <nhuestis at bajb.com>, Austin Jernigan <ajernigan at austin.rr.com>,
Anne Kohler <annetk at austin.rr.com>, Anne McAfee <AMcAfee at austin.rr.com>,
Sharon Majors <sharonsmajors at sbcglobal.net>,
Ann Daughety <anndaughety at yahoo.com>,
Dwayne Holman <dwayneholman at sbcglobal.net>,
Mark Tucker <progdawg at hotmail.com>, Michael Westergren <mikewest at trip.net>,
Fontaine Maverick <fmaverick at austin.rr.com>,
Catherine Woolsey Dwyer <neolith at swbell.net>,
Jeaneen McMaster <jmcmaster2 at austin.rr.com>,
Winston Bode <stephanie at quorumreport.com>,
Mariann Vizard <quinctilis at aol.com>,
Carolyn Westergren <crapemyrtle17 at yahoo.com>,
Frieda Werden <peacecasts at yahoo.com>, Carmen Austin <caus at aol.com>,
Betsey Wright <betseyw at specent.com>, Lisa Rogers <hisissy at aol.com>,
Winston Bode <kronberg at quorumreport.com>,
Cathryn Pierce <ccathrynpierce at aol.com>,
Alice Embree <Alice at nuevoanden.com>, David Rubinson <rubinson at kab.com>
Subject: [AGL] Fwd: [FedUp] Article: Happy 14th Amendment Day!

  When there seems to be so little on this planet to celebrate, a point of light appears on the history horizon to illuminate our present constitutional crisis. There are 107 days left until we have an opportunity to roust the Authoritarian-Party-with-the-steal-grip out of power, from the courthouse to Congress. Entrench now, get together, power up--all we need to fear is the fear of terrorism inspired by the Republican Party itself, paraphrasing Democratic President FDR. 
  Best,
  Frances

Sam Ritter <samphire at earthlink.net> wrote:
  To: Sam Ritter <shockwavewriter at gmail.com>
From: Sam Ritter <samphire at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:31:56 -0500
Subject: [FedUp] Article: Happy 14th Amendment Day!

        A day deserving of a national holiday....

-S

  Happy 14th Amendment Day!Thanks to the visionary constitutional reformers of 1868, America enjoys equal rights for all. Today's anti-immigration zealots want to destroy their legacy.   By Garrett Epps
  Jul. 21, 2006 | What's better than a patriotic holiday in July? Pop a brew tonight, then, and let's celebrate our heritage of democracy and equal rights. We owe these freedoms not so much to the events commemorated every July 4, but to those of July 21. 
  On this day in 1868, after a bruising ratification struggle, Congress passed a resolution proclaiming that the 14th Amendment was part of the Constitution. More than the Declaration of Independence, more than the original Constitution, more than even the Bill of Rights, it is the 14th Amendment that makes America a democratic country. 
  But, as the beer commercials say, celebrate responsibly: Our current toxic immigration debate shows that, more than a century later, genuine democracy has powerful enemies. In 2006, the anti-immigrant movement is attacking the amendment's central meaning of equal protection of the law for all. 
  Please don't feel bad if the words "14th Amendment" don't immediately call to mind a list of rights. Most literate citizens -- and even many lawyers -- have trouble focusing on the radical changes this massive post-Civil War reform made in the original Constitution. The 14th Amendment is such a giant presence in our lives today that it's hard to see it as a single thing. 
  But consider this. Until the 14th Amendment, the idea of human equality, extolled in the Declaration of Independence, appeared nowhere in the Constitution. The word "equal," when written in the original document, referred mostly to voting privileges for the states. In addition, the Constitution contained no definition of American citizenship, seemingly leaving the matter to the states. 
  Even the Bill of Rights itself only covered the federal government -- overreaching state governments could, and did, restrict free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law and other basic rights. In short, the Framers of 1787 set up a flawed confederation of insular states, each of which was free to oppress, and even enslave, some or all of its population. 
  No matter what we've been taught in civics class, that original system was a failure. Its flaws led directly to the bloodiest war in American history. After nearly a million deaths, the anti-slavery leaders of Congress set out in 1865 to re-create the United States as a nation, with a powerful central government, democratic institutions at every level and a list of rights no government, state or federal, could violate. Far more than the Framers of 1787, John Bingham, Thaddeus Stevens, William P. Fessenden and the other authors of the 14th Amendment designed the America we live in today. It was, in their vision, to be a unified nation. Local majorities in states were to be barred by federal power from oppressing religious, political or racial minorities. And immigrants were to be a part of the nation as fully as those native-born, considered equal before the courts. 
  The concerns that motivated them seem, even 140 years later, remarkably contemporary. The first section of the amendment begins by guaranteeing that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." At one stroke, the framers eliminated the racist Dred Scott doctrine that "we the people" did not mean African-Americans; and they included as citizens every child born here, no matter where their parents were born or how they got here. After that, they required every state to observe the "privileges [and] immunities of citizens of the United States," and to afford due process and equal protection of the laws to "any person" within their borders. 
  Ohio Rep. John Bingham, the principal architect of Section 1, had spent most of his career campaigning for the rights of slaves and immigrants. Even before the Civil War, he had laid out a vision of "one people, one Constitution, and one country!" States had no "rights" to interfere with their citizens' constitutional rights: "The equality of the right to live; the right to know; to argue and to utter, according to conscience; to work and enjoy the product of their toil, is the rock on which [the] Constitution rests, its sure foundation and defense." Immigrants enjoyed those rights as fully as natives, he insisted, because the Constitution obeyed "that higher law given by a voice out of heaven: 'Ye shall have the same law for the stranger as for one of your own country.'" 
  The bedrock values of birthright citizenship and equal protection for all immigrants came directly out of the debates over immigration of the 1850s -- debates that sound remarkably like the one going on in Congress today. By 1860, German-born immigrants to the United States totaled 1.2 million out of about 30 million total, and thousands of Irish immigrants were arriving yearly. Prophets of the "Know Nothing" movement warned that these new immigrants were not like previous ones. They did not assimilate; they owed allegiance to the pope; they insisted on speaking their own languages; they would subvert American institutions and destroy American identity. 
  Even worse, they drank beer. 
  Many proposals were floated to restrict their rights, requiring 21 years for citizenship or withholding the vote entirely. But anti-slavery Republicans like Bingham insisted that a free republic did not deal in hierarchies of rights. 
  Today's Know-Nothings are attempting to avoid this central tenet of American democracy by deliberately distorting the meaning of the 14th Amendment. On its Web site, the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform dismisses the Citizenship Clause by saying it "was intended to exclude from automatic citizenship American-born persons whose allegiance to the United States was not complete" -- including illegal immigrants. 
  But there is no shred of evidence in the record to support this strained interpretation. The wording of the clause was designed to exclude from citizenship chiefly the children of diplomats living in the United States under the protection of their countries of origin. And the proponents were utterly clear that birthright citizenship would reach American-born Chinese (whose parents were barred from naturalization) and Mexicans in the Southwest. And while there were no "illegal immigrants" in 1866, anti-immigrant congressmen did warn that the 14th Amendment would extend citizenship to one group that they described very similarly. Democratic Rep. Edgar Cowan warned that the U.S. had been invaded by aliens "who owe to [the U.S. government] no allegiance; who pretend to owe none; who recognize no authority in her government; who have a distinct, independent government of their own -- an imperium in imperio; who pay no taxes; who never perform military service; who do nothing,
 in fact, which becomes the citizen, and perform none of the duties which devolve upon him." 
  These terrifying intruders were the Roma, or Gypsy people. 
  Sponsors of the amendment predicted that the United States would survive Gypsy citizenship; and so it has, just as it survived German, Irish, Italian, Jewish and other immigrants, and as it will survive immigration by Spanish-speaking people from Mexico and elsewhere. History shows that new waves of immigration pose far less danger to America than do new efforts to cut back on democracy, or to institute new classes of citizens with, as the Supreme Court said in Dred Scott, "no rights a white man [is] bound to respect." 
  Sometime between 1860 and today, beer stopped being an alien danger and became an American institution. So today, if you or your parents came to this country from another and gained citizenship; if your family moved from one state to another and received equal treatment in your new home; if you benefit from laws forbidding racial discrimination by government; if you are glad that your local cops can't arrest you without a warrant and torture you until you "confess" to a crime; if you don't think censorship of the news by state and local government is a good idea; if you don't want Jim Sensenbrenner and Tom Tancredo deciding whether your American-born children "deserve" citizenship -- then lift a stein to the 14th Amendment and the far-seeing legislators who wrote it. 
  Fireworks are appropriate on national holidays. But those who would dismantle our basic constitutional guarantees are playing with real fire. The history they want to repeat -- the imposition of a hereditary, lifelong, racial caste system -- was tragic, and a new system of permanent aliens would be no less so. Our best weapon against this evil is knowledge of our own history and values. 
  -- By Garrett Epps 

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