On the Supreme Court's Ruling in Dobbs

The headline today in legal matters will surely be that Roe v. Wade (1973) has been overruled, but the problem goes further. The reasoning employed by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) undermined the reasoning employed in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) under which Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) was overruled to end anti-sodomy statutes, which is the same line of reasoning ultimately used to prevent states from banning same-sex marriage (e.g., that the State had no legitimate interest to protect), and in fact the same line of reasoning used by the Supreme Court to strike down laws criminalizing birth control.

We have not seen the end of this.

Japanese Politician: Sex Slavery "Necessary" to War Effort

He may not actually represent the official position of the Japanese diplomatic corps, but the sitting Mayor of Osaka (Japan's third-largest city after Tokyo and Yokohama) says sex-slaves captured and systematically raped across the Pacific theater during the Second World War were a "necessary" result of the needs of Japanese soldiers who risked their lives for their country.

During the War, hundreds of thousand females were enslaved as "comfort women", a Japanese euphemism referring to military-governed sex slaves.  Japan's official support and funding for the maintenance of "comfort women" battalions was in direct opposition to the nation's purported position on slavery taken when it ratified the International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor in 1932. Unlike consumer protection statutes in Texas, which have teeth because they provide individuals with a civil remedy for damages upon proven violation, the Convention Concerning Forced Labor asked all signatories to enact criminal statutes – so that the government would protect rights enshrined in the Convention. Since Japan enacted no criminal statutes to punish violations of the Convention, the nation's officials were free not only to violate it with impunity, but to profit in human trafficking designed to fill the ranks of the "comfort women" battalions.

National leaders continue to take absurd positions on the records of their own countries.  The gulf between law and justice is vast.

Happy Independence Day!

This independence day I spent more time than was good for my mood thinking about what's been done since the Revolution to the Constitution so much blood was spilled to put ourselves in a position to ink. The important thing, I realized, isn't whether we've gotten lost in the last few centuries but whether we have a map back to civilization. And in a sense, we do: we still recall and at least pretend to endorse the motives behind that letter – signed in 1776, years before the Constitution was adopted – that staked the lives of everyone signing it on the principles it proclaimed.

My daughter asked today whether the Brits were still mad about the Revolutionary War. She listed to my (very brief) answer and asked: What's an ally? And that was a good one. An ally is your friend. An ally shows up with food when you are hungry, and when your ally is under threat of oblivion from a megalomaniacal dictator with the most advanced military technology on the planet, you stage the landing of Normandy. She nodded like she got it.

RIP Charlie Wilson

Charlie Wilson may be dead, but is not gone: he can be visited along with thousands of national heroes memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery. Wilson will be buried with full military honors, which befits his enormous contribution to the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Without Afghanistan, how much longer might the Soviet Union have lasted?

What the world owes to Charlie Wilson.

Golbal Cooling? Earth Apparently Once Rather Warmer

According to calculations made on the basis of an enormous monster snake fossil found near the equator in Columbia, the Earth where the fossil was found was once 10ºF warmer. All reptiles in the rain forest were apparently much larger than comparable current reptiles.

Without bothering to calculate how far from the equator the find was at the time its occupant was alive, and what impact that might have on the global temperature differences (if Columbia was then further from the equator, the global temperature might have been even more different), it seems the Earth's typical temperature might have been significantly warmer. According to Jonathan Bloch, "[t]he result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen...and hopefully ever will."

One question that comes to mind is whether the corals we currently have, which appear so sensitive to warming of their immediate environment, had not yet developed at the time the monster snake lived.

Interesting, no?

I wonder if the snakes picketed against global cooling ....

Thank God For Bad Rhetoric

I first encountered David Berlinski on Mr. Penick's blog Intelligent Design. In this YouTube video (given here under a different title with some editorialization), Berlinski begins arguing that evolution is criticized by different sorts of people (a join-the-bandwagon argument, humorously opposed by equally silly evidence collected by Project Steve) and then analogizes evolution of whales to the project of re-engineering an automobile into a submarine. Berlinski seems to invite evolution to be imagined as a process controlled by outside designers constrained to build new products out of existing products, a circumstance not in fact found either submarine design or in any articulation of scientifically-based evolutionary theory I have yet to encounter.

To truly appreciate the facetiousness of Berlinski's arguments, one does well to view him in the context of actual opposition -- in a debate on evolutionary theory and its proposed alternatives. Here, Berlinski offers fallacious argument in full view of cameras and onlookers and apparently gets away with it.

He does it beautifully.

This is, of course, why I think it's worth examining: his pitch is attractive to consumers of educational policy argument, and we should give the pitch a review, better to appreciate what it does and does not offer.

When evolutionary proponents held forth certain recorded fossil observations as strong evidence of descent with modification by virtue of their apparent completeness, David Berlinski argued they were insufficient in light of gaps elsewhere in observed fossil specimens:

Barry Lynn: Mr. Berlinski, you're never going to be satisfied.
David Berlinski: You're right.
Lynn: Every time we find 16 new things, new fossils, to fill in the so-called fossil record that was missing, you just say, "Find 16 more."
Berlinski: I'll tell you exactly. Here is what Darwinian theory requires: for every significant morphological or physiological feature in a modern species we should have a panoply of intermediate forms that explains how they arrived. We don't have them for some good reasons, but we have nothing like an explanation ...

This thesis regarding what one should expect evolution to predict in the fossil record underpins Berlinski's argument against evolution as an acceptable explanation for the observable evidence of speciation. When given an opportunity to interrogate opponents in a live debate, he offered this question as an intended show-stopper:

Berlinski: Would you agree, as almost everyone else affirms, that the overwhelming pattern of the fossil record is sharply discontinuous?

While invoking the authority of the crowd he postulates agrees with him, he asks whether phenotypes observed among surviving fossils show the continuity he urges is required to support the theory he doubts. Why, however, should be urge phenotypic continuity as a necessary result of evolution?

Even assuming every fossil could or would be observed and recorded, why should anyone imagine phenotypic continuity in the fossil record? Lamarckian inheritance of acquired traits is not the theory under discussion. If one accepts that the mechanism by which ancestors pass traits to offspring is the transfer of genetic material, one would not expect continuity at all. One would expect discrete changes in phenotype to be acquired, associated with discrete changes in genetics. There are, after all, but four nucleic acids. Changes in a creature's inherited genetic structure must represent a discrete change, because the genetic mechanism affords only discrete changes and admits no half-measure: a point on a certain gene is either identical to that in its ancestor, or it is not. And there are only four molecules to fit in the spot in question.[1] Given a mutation, though, the story isn't yet told to mere observers of form: the genetic change may manifest in a phenotypic change, or it may not.

Just to clarify a bit: Brown-haired parents who produce blonde descendants do not do so only by making several successive generations of progeny with increasingly lighter hair. They either have brown-haired children, or they have children who inherit recessive light-hair-encoding genes from both parents -- in which case the offspring's hair will appear sharply discontinuous from that of immediate ancestors. No one is ever surprised that Berlinski's continuous parade of intermediate forms do not appear when unexpected-looking children are born, even if traits cause one to doubt the identity of a child's father (spotting the mother at the time of birth is ordinarily trivial). The same is true if one child is tall and the other short: some kids are just thought to take after one parent's parent, or the like. What of it? Is anyone really surprised all visible changes between do not occur in the context of a continuous progression?

Yet, David Berlinski urges his audience to accept as a test of whether genetic evolution could explain observed speciation whether observed morphological changes among observed fossils are marked by continuity. This is absurd. In light of the discrete nature of the inheritance mechanism, it is in fact contrary to expectation. One would not expect continuity. One would expect isolated points of data -- where specimens were preserved for observation -- and one would expect these isolated points to be different.

And the phenotypic change -- the visible manifestation, if any, of a genetic change -- cannot be continuous if its mechanism is necessarily discrete.

However, discontinuity isn't the only argument Berlinski makes; he tries to make a pitch for unlikeliness, but instead reveals himself not to understand the basic mechanism by which inherited traits are thought to be passed to descendants. Later in the same debate, Berlinski has this exchange:

Berlinski: Let's turn to the question I so vainly tried to pump an answer from Dr. Scott ... How many morphological changes do think are required to effect the transition those charts of yours [depicting a series of fossils described as ancestors of modern whales] were said to document?
Miller: I will give you a straight answer. And the straight answer is that when you look at two species that are separated by five million years --
Berlinski: Okay.
Miller: -- of geological time the number of changes must be very, very large. However --
Berlinski: Give us a number.
Miller: -- However, recent studies of speciation -- and I'm sorry to pick this specific species, but it's relevant to your question -- in sunflowers have shown conclusively that a new species can be established in terms of a speciation-like isolation mechanism, with as few as ten genetic changes. That's your answer.
Berlinski: I've read the same Science papers you have but those are very close; a dog-like mammal and a whale are very far!
Miller: That's right! And the other end of the room is very far away, and it should not surprise you that I get there with one step at a time, and that's what we're talking.
Berlinski: No matter the number I give you, you will neither assent nor disagree with the number? If I say there are 100,00 morphological changes required to take a dog-like mammal living on the land to a whale --
Miller: Oh, sorry, yes, I will answer that. That's way too high .... The good genetic evidence is that there are about 100,000 genes in a human being. I would best guess there's somewhat fewer in whales. What you're telling me is that to change from one similar organism, an organism that looks more like a whale than any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, to a whale that looks more like a terrestrial animal than any whale has ever lived, would require every gene to change, and sir I --
Berlinski: No! I never talked about genes!
Miller: -- Sir, you asked me for a number and I said, on that basis, a hundred thousand is too high. [2]

Berlinski's idea that one should ask questions about morphological changes rather than genetic changes is also silly, unless he seeks to propose a different mechanism than genetics to explain the transmission of traits from ancestors to descendants. This, of course, hits on the fundamental weakness of David Berlinski's argument: he proposes nothing. He merely shrugs at whatever evidence is offered, and says "yes, but I'm not convinced."

What kind of test is that? He can keep saying he's unconvinced as long as doing so keeps him in speaking engagements.

And that's the beauty of his pitch. Calm and composed, Berlinski recites his demand for more evidence, only to shrug at whatever is produced. Faced with a fossil record documenting the transition from reptile ancestors to their mammal descendants -- so detailed the controversy is not whether it's the right lineage but where to decide observed fossils should start being labeled mammals -- he sidesteps by asking about the present state of knowledge of spiders' ancestors' fossils. Given an argument about genetics, he insists he never asked about genetics but is interested only in the evolution of phenotypic (he says "morphological") change. So long as he keeps his cool, his interrogators must perforce look like buffoons as they lose their composure in exasperation. Doesn't he know what he's talking about?

Well, apparently not -- but he'll look damned good while he does it. And he need neither propose a theory nor test one to do it.

Testing theories is, in fact, the real way to falsify (and thus correctly reject) them. To be sure, one might test theories in many ways; we are creative creatures and some interesting discoveries have been made using experiments composed of little more than logic. However, the applause-o-meter isn't the kind of test likely to produce consistent results of the sort on which one would want to base public policy. Trying to embarrass, confuse, exasperate, or misrepresent the views of opponents may be a good way to achieve notoriety and get appearance requests on entertainment programs, but it's not worthy of the name science.

If it weren't so easy to spot David Berlinski's rhetorical flaws, just imagine what his argument might support. So, thank God for bad rhetoric. It's a fantastic tip-off to the sort of reasoning that should be immediately discarded in the search for genuine data on which to base one's conclusions.

The most interesting thing about the debate over evolution is the fact that both sides accuse the other of politicizing the debate, and using power rather than evidence to "win" through policy implementation. The primacy of political power over actual data-supported research results isn't confined to evolution, either. We see this also in ecological policy, energy policy, health policy, liability policy -- the problems facing the quest to get good policy (in education, public health, trade, you name it) are beset by folks who care more about being thought right than actually making sure they're right -- people who care more about getting their intended result than getting the right result.

I strongly believe that a lively debate over scientific matters improves the likelihood that bad ideas will be weeded out before they become established as the basis for policies that will only consume resources without useful or intended results. Unfortunately, the sort of public spectacle Berlinski encourages with arguments about people's credentials, about the number of adherents to their point of view, about the number of papers that contain or don't contain the word "evolution" -- these are pure entertainment. They are vacuous of the reasoning one needed to inquire into the evidence about any theory about the world one might hope to test.

This is a serious problem, unfortunately. These entertainment-oriented "rhetorical" tools (argument ad hominem, appeal to authority, etc.) abound in political debates. Debates about scientific matters impacting public policy -- regarding the environment, public health, liability issues -- impact so many aspects of our lives that we should not stand still for analytical incompetence as the matters are deliberated (and supposedly reasoned). The result is that we -- consumers of policy produced by legislatures, employers, benefit plans, and judicial systems -- suffer from policy developed without the benefit of rational consideration.

Despite my strong conviction that ID offers no helpful thesis (if you teach kids "it's magic" it offers them no tool for understanding how to work with the forces -- still operating and yet remaining subject to discovery -- that operate upon and govern the world, and offers no opportunity to improve understanding and interaction with the world -- which in my view one of the fundamental reasons to acquire education), I would rather see legitimate efforts to hone good theories about speciation than merely see destruction by political force of folks whose principal crime is a crackpot theory. We have, on this planet, come to respect some crackpot theories over time (Galileo's theory of the orbit of the Earth about the Sun; Newton's theory that all matter tends to continue in motion until acted upon -- an idea that flew in the face of millennia of observation that things tend to come to a halt when no longer pushed; atomic theory; germ theory; the theory of sterile surgical technique; the dietary theory of the origin of pellagra; it's endless, isn't it?) and it's hard to know from the great sea of crackpot theories which ones will turn out to be supported by evidence once observer can be troubled to collect it. The ecological debate is like this much more than the ID debate, of course, as the ID debate plainly offers a naked theological proposition not subject to test, but my point is that we have to think about the standards by which we will regard theories (regardless of origin) when designing policy potentially impacted by the theories. At present we have in my view a simple political fight, and may be tolerable in the case in which the prevailing theory happens by blind chance to be more correct than its critics, but it's a poor model for consistently developing good policy, and worthless for developing ideal policy.

The most interesting thing about the debate over evolution is the fact that both sides accuse the other of politicizing the debate, and using power rather than evidence to "win" through policy implementation. The primacy of political power over actual data-supported research results isn't confined to evolution, either. In ecological policy, energy policy, health policy, liability policy -- the quest to get good policy (in education, public health, trade, liability, you name it) is beset by folks who care more about being thought right than they do about any activity designed to increase the chance of actually being right -- that is, people who care more about getting their intended result than getting the best available result.

What we need, perhaps, is to develop a general rule for deciding when a theory has sufficient evidence to support expending public resources on it. Any takers for this project?


[1] It's also possible, due to molecular folding issues, that single changes might alter molecular structure in such a way as to prohibit affected sections from being accessed by the molecular mechanisms that enable the creation of proteins that have significant impact in a developing organism. Assuming the mutation isn't fatal, code thus obsoleted might have a substantial and discontinuous impact on the phenotype of those expressing the traits involved. Obsoleted code might thereafter be subject to change or elimination in future generations without much observable impact -- except, of course, that the eliminated code might change macromolecular shapes by folding or other mechanisms in such a way as to alter the likelihood of other segments of the DNA will participate in the kinds of chemical interactions that lead to protein manufacture.
Thus, the right point change might create a folding issue that would have an enormous impact on the genetic material likely to be active in a developing organism. The expected result might be a big change, though it's highly likely such a change would be fatal if it resulted in phenotypic expression. If not, however, the possibility exists that the resultant change would be significant.

[2] In point of fact, since it's possible to have more than one point mutation in a gene, and that particular genes might be subject to repeated mutation over millions of years, I would tend to disagree with Miller that 100,000 is necessarily too high a number of mutations given his assumptions about the number of genes in the creatures at issue.

Modeling the number of mutations one would expect to be associated with a large speciation project spanning millions of years probably requires more considerable analysis than is plausible off the cuff during a live debate. Whether the number is enormous or not enormous doesn't really address the question of the possibility of descent with modification, it merely invites questions about the likelihood of a particular occurrence and the mechanisms by which different sorts of mutations might be possible.

There are some non-point-mutation sources of genetic alteration, like the so-called "jumping genes", that might be interesting to understand more about before trying to calculate the probability of speciation by descent with modification, or trying to use descent with modification to predict likely future fossil discovery patterns. For an entertaining (and scary) evening, read Doglas Preston's and Lincoln Child's purely-fictional horror-thriller Relic, the bogeyman of which originates with such a modification. While the monster is fictional, the discovery of "jumping genes" is not. A mechanism like the jumping gene might enable in one event to impart the accumulated effect of a whole geological age of mutation through the transposition, intact, of a proven gene from a different species with an evolutionary history as long as a gene's new host. Once isolated from its source species, the new gene would of course be subject to divergent evolution through the (slower and less radical) mechanism of random mutation.

The Meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation

Due to the miracle of Blogger's featured blog list, I saw John David Hoptak's blog, The 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry/ Civil War Musings, and much liked what he offered. Of course, lots of other folks saw his blog that day, to his considerable surprise. (And to his considerable subsequent link spam ...)

The entry that inspires treatment by the Jaded Consumer is "I Just Don't Get It . . .", expressing puzzlement about freedom-loving Americans (just ask 'em) who seem to have something against the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. Naturally, my own take is a bit orthogonal. As a consumer of government interventions, I'm interested in what government has done to ensure genuine emancipation and the circuitous path it's taken, with emphasis on the fact that the route has been so fraught with internal conflict as to have been often ineffective, and so overwhelmed with salesmanship and grandstanding that the history of the path has been overshadowed by recent myth.

The story as I've received it from my elders and from the general media and from authorities on Constitutional law is that the Post-Civil War Amendments to the United States Constitution served to prevent state action to discriminate racially to perpetuate the badges and burdens of slavery. (Incidentally, the literal "slave badge", now collectible, seems to have been a license to work on a slave's own account during idle time, though owners were entitled to a share in proceeds. As regulations varied with location and time, I haven't specifics, but one can read an overview or buy books on it.) The mainstreamed view is that the post-bellum Amendments, being insufficient to halt racially-motivated evil conducted through private rather than government action, were too weak to have the impact of establishing racial equality. The evil flourished until in the wake of the Switch In Time That Saved Nine (given more treatment here, and has some discussion on a government web site here), after which Congress was permitted in effect a general police power under the guise of regulating interstate commerce.[1] Then, the story goes, we got good things like nationally uniform minimum wage laws and weekly hours limits and so forth.

In fact, the Supreme Court upheld a strange smattering of weekly hours caps and wage controls for some industries and not others even before the threat of the court-packing plan. And at least some Southern states really did have enforceable civil rights laws before 1900. And it was illegal for Lopez to bring firearms to school before he was charged with violations of federal laws.

But let's get on to the main event, which is the rights of Ms. DeCuir in the 1800s when she wanted to ride on a riverboat's topmost cabin. She was in Louisiana after the Civil War, and her riverboat operator refused to rent her his "white cabin". She didn't want to ride in the lower cabin he offered her, and she stood willing to pay the extra fee the upper cabin commanded.

But, it's the 1870s; she's S.O.L., right?

Not in Louisiana.

Louisiana's law derives from Napoleonic Code, and is different in a number of particulars from the Common Law one finds in the civil courts of other United States jurisdictions. The Common Law enables courts to craft law that expresses the policy of the State. Thus, the Texas Supreme Court can decide that the Texas Constitutional requirement that every driver be insured against motor vehicle liability means that insurers' spousal exclusions are void and unenforceable as between an insured and the insured's tort-victim spouse. There need be no statute specifying this result for Texas to achieve it, and no-one is shocked that Texas law should develop this way. It is how common-law courts do their work.

In Louisiana, the heritage of the Napoleonic Code achieves the opposite result. The legal presumption that the Code is complete prevents courts from lightly proclaiming new law. Louisiana's post-Civil War Constitution, therefore, despite being replete with proclamations of the Equality of Man, can't be expected to be interpreted creatively in diverse cases to ensure that equality is really protected. The cynic predicts that research will show Lousiana's legislature sat back, giggling when Northerners required Louisiana to write equal protection language into the new Constitution, knowing no court in the state would interpret it to mean a damned thing. Yet ... that was not the result at all.

At the time Ms. DeCuir suffered discrimination at the hand of steam-boat operator Mr. Benson, Louisiana had on the books a transportation-specific statute spelling out that no common carrier could refuse service or otherwise discriminate against prospective on the basis of (among other things) color. Moreover, the statute provided for the award of exemplary damages upon proof of violation. The jury hearing Ms. DeCuir's case upheld her claim and awarded her $1,000.00 under the statute. The award was preserved on appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Louisiana apparently took equal protection seriously enough to give its statute teeth, and it actually enforced the statute.

Ms. Hall (the steamboat operator's administratrix) appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Her complaint was essentially that as the holder of a federal navigation license, her steamboat operator shouldn't have been subject to state regulation of his business on the Mississippi River. The case offers no evidence the dead Mr. Benson had been aggrieved by anything other than a thwarted desire to discriminate against Ms. DeCuir, and offers no support for the theory that other states' regulation created an environment in which Mr. Benson's business had been endangered by inconsistent regulation between states having ports on the Mississippi. However, the United States Supreme Court came to his aid. Having just announced that the Fourteenth Amendment, and statutes passed by Congress under its authority, had no power to regulate private actors who might discriminate, the United States Supreme Court announced that Louisiana was not entitled to regulate private actors to prevent Mr. Benson's discrimination, either. The Supreme Court, in order to reach this decision, hypothesized that a different state might lawfully make it a felony offense to mix races in the same cabin, which in turn would place operators like Mr. Benson in a nasty bind: to travel between the different ports, he would have to choose whether to violate the law of his origin, or the law of his destination, and his business would be impossible.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, it must have shone like a ray of sunshine upon inveterate discriminators when the United States Supreme Court invited Southern states to pass laws making it illegal to mix races in similar accommodations, vehicles, etc. What racist would have imagined that salvation from having to apply equal treatment to all comers would come from the very federal government that stuffed "equal protection" down their throats at gunpoint?

Had the United States Supreme Court not overturned Louisiana's equal protection statute, imagine the possible result. Might minority confidence in the rule of law have grown sixty years ahead of its ultimate schedule? Might a few whole generations have been saved from institutionalized, legally-mandated segregation? Might Black civil rights lawyers have thrived a hundred years ago in an environment that allowed them to protect their communities with valuable legal rights? Might the relationship between the police and minorities have developed differently across the twentieth century?

Had Louisiana's statute awarding punitive damages not been reversed in 1877, who would imagine that Rosa Parks would have suffered indignity on state-regulated public transit?

Instead, in 1877 the high court of the United States issued a blueprint for official oppression. This instruction was not ignored: in an absolute about-face, Louisiana in 1890 required separate cars for African Americans. The Supreme Court blessed this statute in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which originated in the very same New Orleans courts that had previously upheld Ms. DeCuir's right to equality and awarded her exemplary damages on proof her equal rights had been violated.

So, what does this teach us about emancipation? First, the federal government was wildly inconsistent with its effort to ensure equal protection. The Emancipation Proclamation lacked the power to transfer title from masters to their slaves, and Congress never appropriated funding for a mass taking of property. The Thirteenth Amendment overcame that obstacle, by declaring slavery abolished without reference to compensation. However, the various branches of the federal government failed to work to achieve equality -- or worked at cross-purposes over the subject -- and state-level efforts to ensure equality were thwarted by federal courts. The result was an inability of slave-descended persons to acquire full emancipation due to pervasive and systematic efforts to oppress and marginalize them -- efforts that in some cases trace directly to federal interference on Commerce Clause grounds with genuine efforts to protect civil rights, the violation of which was vastly more deleterious to interstate commerce than the hypothetical risks on which basis the state laws were abolished.

There were other problems with federal efforts to achieve equality immediately. The Emancipation Proclamation, by its own terms, did not apply to any slave located within the states not in rebellion. News of the Proclamation didn't reach slaves for some time, a fact that has given rise to an entirely different celebration, Juneteenth, the celebration of the news of the Emancipation Proclamation, received on June 19, 1865 upon the pronouncement of General Order No. 3 by General Granger upon his arrival to Galveston, Texas. The practical effect of the Proclamation was brought about by force of arms, not words, and the legal effect was begun with amendments to the United States Constitution required to deprive former owners of what had been legally recognized property without the inconvenience of paying them.

The Emancipation Proclamation touched off litigation over slave-financing contracts between slave-dealers and dispossessed owners, of course, and the exact date of emancipation was left for courts to decide. The truth is, however, that until Americans all believe in the justice of Emancipation, and believe in the equality of folks who look different, the nation will be doomed to suffer the expense and inconvenience of inequality and injustice, however maintained, in as many aspects of life as they shall continue to be perpetuated.

I imagine a small child in the back seat: "Are we free, yet?"

Well, we're getting there. We're getting there.

[1] An example of "interstate commerce" being used to achieve non-commercial general police objectives is the Armed Career Criminal Act, a federal law that in some interpretations requires a fifteen year minimum sentence be imposed on a criminal who never crosses a state line or leaves his home county, if he commits several serious crimes. The fact there is federal firearms law at all outside of the District of Columbia, United States possessions, or the like is rather interesting in light of Congress' express authority to define and punish piracy and felonies committed upon the high seas, which under the doctrine Expressio unius est exclusio alterius implies that the right to define and punish other crimes, or felonies committed other than on the high seas, was not granted by the United States to its Congress. Discussion of this here and here.