Hank Kalet

Today we celebrate the constitutional amendment that makes our conception of ourself as a nation possible.

While the First is always first in my heart, the 14th, made a part of the Constitution 138 years ago today, maybe the most significant.

Here is Garret Epps on Salon:

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.

That’s something worth remembering now. Epps reminds us that the immigrant groups of the time — primarily the Germans and the Irish — were viewed as vile and dangerous. They were unlike us, unwilling to assimilate (sound familiar?).

But the authors of the 14th Amendment had a vision, one that should determine the fate of today’s debate over immigration. A strong America, a free America requires that all people be treated with the same respect and dignity, that all people have the same rights — regardless of their color, of their country of origin, of their legal status.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The crisis in Lebanon gets worse and more terrifying. “Troops massing at the border,” real war imminent and the specter of something wider, something drawing in the rest of the
Arab world — possibly drawing in the United State, Europe. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, anxiety rising as I watch the news.

This photos from Reuters — which was posted on MSNBC — seems to sum up this dangerous conflict: the praying soldier (in this case, Israeli) in the shadow of a tank.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

The governor appears ready to turn over every rock in an effort to fix the state’s decrepit tax system. In yesterday’s Star-Ledger, he floated a plan to borrow about $7 billion to create an aid fund designed to encourage towns to consolidate some or all of their services. It’s a bold move fund, certainly, though it raises questions about the state’s debt load.

State Sen. Leonard Lance (R-Hunterdon) was quoted in opposition, both on fiscal and constitutional grounds:

“I honestly don’t understand what he means,” Lance said of the governor’s remarks. “I do not favor borrowing to provide a stream of funding for property tax relief. It violates every principle of sound fiscal policy that I know. It’s how we’ve gotten into trouble in the first place. Here we go again.”

But this may not be as fiscally questionable as Sen. Lance says — provided the money is used to pay off local debt (think of it as a refinancing). Local debt is one of the biggest impediments to municipal and school district consolidation — when consolidation of the Monroe and Jamesburg school districts was raised as a possibility by the state about 10 years ago, Monroe balked because it would have seen a tax hike tied to new debt payments. If those debt payments were off the table or somehow neutralized, it would allow the discussion to occur on a different plane. Would consolidation happen? Probably not, though, I can’t be sure. What I do know, however, is that a discussion of this sort probably would benefit both towns, possibly resulting in consolidation of libraries, senior services and/or other functions that could broaden services and save money.

The governor also apparently is prepared to rewrite the state school formula to shift some money to middle class districts, make some painful budget cuts, reform pensions and raise some taxes while toying with the state’s income tax brackets.

The effort, as Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran points out, is likely to make just about everyone angry about something. He has the best quote I’ve seen regarding reform: “anyone who pretends this can be solved without real pain is smoking crack.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

This week’s Dispatches — on home, change and memory — is up on the site.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

A true testament to our political discourse. From WaPo: “The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war.”

If the GOP is turning then….

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press