Three Identical People

Above are a legal immigrant, an illegal immigrant, and a U. S. Citizen, all of whom appear nearly identical.

Question. According to South Carolina Law (temporarily blocked): Which is which?

National Defense Authorization Act: Indefinite detention? Ho hum!

There's been a great deal of tongue-wagging about the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, and how it, "authorizes the military to detain citizens indefinitely".

Shocking, isn't it? My response is, "Ho hum!"

In fact, the act does not a single thing, because the government already has this authority as section 412 of the Patriot Act. That Act caused a great deal of consternation even in Congress because it permitted indefinite detention of "enemy combatants", a category that apparently neglected to exclude U. S. Citizens.

The Universal Privacy Denial

Companies have traditionally used data they collect about the customer, any way they please to do so. By custom, it is their data.

"Wait a minute," you say, "it's my data." No, it isn't. Here in the United States, by ''legal custom'', any data that a company learns about you, in the course of doing business with you, belongs to the company, not to you. When you assert that the company cannot use your data any way they wish, it annoys them, because they know better.

The Supreme Court: Profoundly American

There is a lot of nonsense passed around about how "un-American" it is that the Supreme Court can overrule laws made by our Congress (or the President).  For example, very recently,  Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said:

[...] the fact is the Congress can pass a law and can limit the Court’s jurisdiction. There is no Supreme Court in the American Constitution. There’s the court which is the Supreme of the judicial branch, but it’s not supreme over the legislative and executive branch. We now have this entire national elite that wants us to believe that any five lawyers are a Constitutional convention.

(Now I don't mean to pick on Newt Gingrich here: What he said is commonly said, with variations, by many other people. His statement is just a handy example and not extraordinary.)

Do Democrats Matter?

Just like the donkey at Donkey Point (right), the Democrats daily tilt against the Right Wing Express...and lose.

It's disappointing. I'm a Democrat and, frankly, have to wonder if I'm not wasting my money and loyalty on a political party that no longer has relevance.

Rape Law

Suppose a car owner parked his car on a street in a dodgy neighborhood, with the doors unlocked and keys in the ignition. Suppose that the car is stolen.

Now, most people would agree somewhat with the statement that, "The car owner deserved it." This has to do with protecting yourself; with the idea that you are—must be—responsible for protection of your property and protection of yourself.

Studied Innocence

(Originally published 1/11/2011)

The slogans on the signs in the comics are not direct quotes but naturally follow from the original statements. Each of the comic signs above is listed in the article, with a source.

The Essential Secrecy

(Originally published 1/9/2011)

What to say? Whether you agree with WikiLeaks or not, they have done a service by revealing just how often government secrecy is misapplied: Not only just as a matter of habit, but to conceal embarrassing truths and outright malfeasance (small and large).

Nested Nightmares

(An earlier version was originally published 1/9/2011)

A Democrat has a nightmare about a Republican having a nightmare about the ultra-rich having a nightmare about never being rich enough.

Another title for this might be, "How the Rich Control Our Country".

Hazardous Assets Symbol

(Originally published 12/1/2010)

A while back, the banks created worthless mortgages and then bundled them into "valuable" securities, selling them as "sound investments". When the housing bubble popped, those same mortgages and securities became so worthless that they were dubbed "toxic assets" (akin to "toxic waste").

Moreover, the effects of those bad securities have spread like a plague, dragging down firm after firm and requiring governments to commit trillions of dollars to keeping the world financial system afloat.

An investor shouldn't have to guess whether they're buying a sound investment or some fraudster's snake oil. It seems to me that we need a mandatory hazard label to be placed on any asset proven to be as unreliable as the ones the banks threw together in the 2005-2006 timeframe.

That 'Other' Method

(Originally published 12/1/2010)

Suppose a terrorist were concealing something under clothing: The backscatter X-ray would not be a problem if the terrorist could bypass the X-ray by simply declining to pass through.

Therefore, the "brutality" of the searches performed by the Transportation Services Administration (TSA), when travelers refuse to go through the back-scatter X-ray machines, is an inevitable security requirement.

Tightening Them-There Belts

(Originally published 12/1/2010)

Since the late 1960's, the incomes of the middle and lower classes, approximating the bottom 98% of all earners, have declined steadily (in real dollars). The ultra-rich, especially the top 0.1% that have gained enormously during the same period, have now concluded that for any recovery to succeed, "everyone" must sacrifice; demonstrating their ignorance of the long-term sacrifices already made by all but them

About this comic

This was my very first attempt at doing a political comic. I sketched it in pencil (with many erasures) on standard lined note paper, and was surprised that I could make it look like anything (much less as it looks above).