I'm King of the World!

As always, if you want to follow along, the full text of the US Constitution is available here, from the National Archives

A huge part of Article II is hyperlinked in the NARA transcript, which means it was amended later. Which is good, because having the runner-up be Vice President was not the wisest plan the founders ever had. Imagine a Bush/Gore administration. (Also, can I just say that I love that "choose" used to be spelled "chuse"? Because I do, it cracks me up).

So, to be president, you have to be a) at least 35, and b) born in the US (or be a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, but if people think McCain's old...) The youngest man ever to serve as president was Teddy Roosevelt, who became president at the age of 42, after the death of President McKinely. The youngest man ever elected president was JFK, who was 43 when he took his oath of office. (Fewer than 10 presidents total have been under 50: the aforementioned Roosevelt and Kennedy; Bill Clinton and US Grant were both 46; Grover Cleveland 47; Franklin Pierce 48; James K. Polk and James Garfield both 49. No one under 40 has ever served as president of the USA. I'll stop now before I make a spreadsheet and do graphs and statistical distributions)
There's no other requirement, other than that you have to live here (and have lived here for 14 years). As long as you get enough votes, you can be a Rhodes Scholar or a high-school dropout and serve. Oh, and you have to say this:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." (So, President Bush, how're you at upholding your vows?)

And if you die, your Vice President takes over. If there is no VP, the 25th Amendment kicks in (as fans of The West Wing may recall). Originally, Congress got to decide who took over if the VP wasn't an option, but they decided to formalize it. Good call.

So, now, what is it that the President does, other than kiss babies, host the World Series champs and start stupid wars (or serve hot dogs to the King and Queen of England)? Well, Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces, for one. And he has the power to make treaties, with the consent of the Senate. He also appoints ambassadors, judges and suchlike government officials, again with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. And, "from time to time", he gives the State of the Union address. Sounds like a pretty cushy job, actually. Article II's a lot shorter than Article I, but there are a lot fewer people in the White House than the Capitol, and it's a pretty broad job. And since, the President is both Head of Government and Head of State, there's a lot of ceremonial duties too. (And I'm suddenly seeing a mental replay of the episode where President Bartlett has to practice throwing a ball in his bullet-proof vest.) But I gotta hand it to the founders, it's pretty concise description for such a big job.

I'm just a Bill

(As always, if you want to follow along, the full text of the US Constitution is available here, from the National Archives)

Today, we take a crack at Article I, which is the article of the Constitution that sets up the legislative branch of the government.
Let's start with the whole "separation of powers" concept. Very clever. Checks and balances and other staples of civics class. The founders were really worried that someone was going to get too powerful, and having just fought a revolution I'm sure they weren't too eager to fight another. Anyway, onto the text.
The basics of Article I are as follows:
There's a Congress, which consists of a House of Representatives and a Senate (lower and upper houses, hooray bicameral legislature!). In order to serve in the House, you've got to be 25 (hmm, wonder if I could get elected...); 30 to be a Senator. And you have to be a US citizen and live in the state that elects you. Representatives serve for two-year terms, Senators six, with one-third of the Senate standing for election every two years.

And then we start to get technical. First we start with how things are divided. Part of why we have a bicameral legislature is because all states were not created equal. Some are big, some are small, some rural, some urban, some heavily populated, some kinda lonely. So, the states with the smaller populations wanted everyone to have the same number of legislators. The states with big populations thought we should have proportional representation, so that smaller populations wouldn't have a disproportionate voice. Thus, a compromise. The Senate has two senators per state. The House has one representative for every 30,000 people, but at least one per state (so if you only have 15,000, you still get a vote in the House). But! Despite the Declaration of Independence saying that all men are created equal, great inequality existed during the early days of our Republic (and, to be honest, still does). So, the Southern states were torn. On the one hand, they want as many representatives as they're entitled to. But if they insist on counting slaves as people for purposes of government representation, then shouldn't said slaves be treated like people? Thus, another compromise: slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of Congressional representation. Good times (NB, the constitution doesn't actually say "slaves". It says "free persons" and "all other persons". Classy)
And, next time you cast your ballot for Senate, you should know that you couldn't always do that (even if you were a white, land-owning man who could vote at all). Originally, Senators weren't chosen by the people. They were chosen by the State legislatures of each state (which were elected by the "people"). Can't have the riff-raff having too much say in who makes the laws!
Then we start to get into what powers, specifically, Congress as a whole and its different branches have. This is the reason most Social Studies teachers don't make you read the whole thing. It's a long list. One of the things I love are all the bits about what happens immediately- how many Representatives each State gets, the staggering of elections for Senate, a bunch of other things. Including: "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person." (I:9) In other words, they left the thorny question of the slave trade to Future!Congress, rather than dealing with it themselves. 1808 was 21 years away when that paragraph was written, plenty of time for the slave trade to die a natural death, if that's what it was going to do. Which of course, is what they hoped, and what didn't happen. No one could figure out how to deal with this problem, because slavery was a driving force of the US economy but a horribly immoral practice. And the inability of these privileged white men to deal with it carries forward to our contemporary issues of racism and people not wanting to talk about it or deal with it (especially privileged white men).

One of the parts that affects me personally is this: "To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings". (I:8) Also this: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;" (I:8) So right there we have my Taxation without Representation. Course, the Founders never thought that anyone would actually live in the District. And if that thought that Philadelphia summer that they spent drafting the Constitution was bad, they should see DC in August (or maybe that's why they didn't think anyone would live here).

Ironically, in the same section where the slave trade is allowed to continue until 1808, the Writ of Habeas Corpus is enshrined. This is one of the rights that got into the first draft, rather than waiting until the Bill of Rights. Additionally, we are told that no "Title of Nobility" (I:9) shall be granted, nor shall there be kings or anything of the sort. Nor is Congress allowed to just take money out of the Treasury willy-nilly, they have to do it via an appropriations bill. Which doesn't really seem to stop them.

So that's Article I. A perfect encapsulation of the various compromises and conflicts that the founders were wrestling with. Were we a rural nation or an urban one? How much power should go directly into the hands of the people? How do we make sure everyone gets a voice? How do we make many into one? (by forbidding the states to make their own money and treaties, see section 10) And what do we do about slavery?
These questions and more to be answered in the next three centuries of: The United States of America.

We the People...

Inspired by David Plotz’s Blogging the Bible series on Slate, I thought it would be interesting to see what happens when a person goes back and re-reads (or reads for the first time) other foundational documents of the civilization in which we live. I could have tackled the New Testament, but I’d already read pretty much all of it for a great class called “Birth of the Christian Tradition” and Paul tends to make me a little-heavy handed with the snarkiness (and I have the margin notes to prove it). Not to mention that I figured it was a task better left to an actual Christian, since I wasn’t actually raised on the Bible.

But I was raised with the Constitution. The first time I actually read the Constitution and could understand it I was 16 and in AP US History. Which is also the last time I took a class in American History. Yes, it had been in the back of every American History textbook I’d ever had, but no one had ever made us read more than the preamble. But, after the AP exam was over, as we prepped for the US History and Government Regents Exam (thanks New York!), our teacher thought it would be good for us to be familiar with the contents of this revered document. So she assigned us the task of mind-mapping each of the articles. And it worked, at least enough to give me an appreciation of the elegance of the document and some idea of how it was structured.

But then, for Constitution Day in 2007, I thought, “hey, it’s been a while since I read it, so I’ll retype the Constitution in my blog in honor of the day.” Which I did. It took hours. The Constitution is a lot longer than I remember it being, a lot longer than it looks in those fancy cases at the National Archives. When I told my best friend that I’d typed the whole thing, he asked “couldn’t you just have copied and pasted it?” Which, of course, I could have, and ctrl-C, ctrl-V certainly would have been a lot fewer keystrokes. But I wouldn’t have read the whole thing, and since I am sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution, I figured it would be good for me to know what it actually says, especially in a time where it would seem that certain members of the administration prefer that I not.

Reading the Constitution gives one an appreciation of the hard work done by those fabulous gentlemen back in the day (I have a bit of a collective crush on the Founding Fathers). The attention to detail is remarkable, as is their willingness to accept that the country and thus, the document, wouldn’t stay the same forever. There’s stuff in there you never learned in civics class.

So, for the next few months, I'll be reading part of the Constitution every week and responding to it here. It starts with the Preamble today, May 14, the day the Framers met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, and ends September 17, now celebrated as Constitution Day. To read the Constitution yourself, the full text is available via the National Archives (where you can also see it live and person).

The Preamble

This is the part we all learn in school. "We the People" and all that jazz. In fact, it's actually a beautiful statement:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

That's a great way to start a document. Who's writing it, and why. What is it. And what hope those men in that hot Philadelphia summer had for the future! Justice, peace, liberty, for everyone, down the generations. The foundational rules of a government, written down by the people from whom that government derives its power. The Constitution wasn't handed down on a mountain, it wasn't revealed in visions, it wasn't handed down by the ruling classes. Well, ok, on that last one, it kinda was. The men who wrote our Constitution weren't average Joes, but they were creating a document that would rule even the most ambitious of them, rather than declaring themselves to be a new noble class. Which, considering that it was 1787 and no one had ever done this before, was pretty darn impressive.

And don't forget that this wasn't our first constitution. The Articles of Confederation hadn't succeeded in making one nation out of many states, since the weak central government had had little power. So now we were trying again, and this time, all that hard work brought forth something that lasted well into a future that those great men could never have imagined, both for good and for ill.

Most of you are probably aware that I am something of a Google fangirl. I have a Google homepage with links to everything, use gmail for my email (and have all my email sent to one central address, and it's a beautiful thing), I read RSS feeds on Google Reader (and you can see my shared feed right in the sidebar of this blog!), organize my life with Google Calendar (which is a pretty, shiny thing), I have a website created with Google page creator, and right now I'm writing this entry in Google Docs which will then post to Blogger, which is owned by Google. I also love Google's various search features, particularly the Book Search (which you can get to by clicking the "more" option at the top of the page)- it lets you search books, and depending on the publication details, you can even see the book online (this has come in handy when I needed to refind a quote from a book I already returned to the library).

And so, while I'm not normally a fan of pranks- at least not mean-spirited ones- I giggled with girlish glee when I saw the many little April Fools jokes Google rolled out yesterday. The one that particularly amused me was the fact that YouTube (owned by Google) was rickrolling people. And I think partly the reason this entertained me so much was that it was such a nod to Internet culture. But it's also the hardest to explain, I think. Even if you don't know how to turn on a computer, the "custom time" feature announced yesterday on Gmail (which allowed you to send emails back in time) was obviously a joke, and it does seem unlikely that the "Google Wake Up Kit" would work, because it involved making your bed shake. I was quite pleased with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" addition to Calendar, where you would end up with random events- my first was a date with George W. Bush, which was distressing (unless we're meeting for a party at the White House to which all July 6 birthdays are invited, because that would include the Dali Lama and be awesome); but then I got two dates with Johnny Depp in a row, and who wouldn't be stoked about that? But the YouTube rickrolling was the one I loved the most and I didn't even see it first hand. I rarely use YouTube, because- well, I just don't. Sometimes people send me videos and sometimes I watch them but sometimes I don't feel like muting the TV or hitting pause or whatever (generally, it depends on who sent me the video and how much faith I have in their taste). And even if it weren't blocked at work, I wouldn't use it there because our connection is slow (not to imply that I sit around at work all day surfing the Internet, but sometimes we have downtime, esp. in the Visitor Center).

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the primary audience for my blog is my mother, and I'm pretty sure she has no clue what rickrolling is, because while my mother is relatively tech-savvy compared to other women her age and even compared to some of my coworkers, she is not as fully immersed in the insanity of Internet culture as I am. So, rickrolling. Basically, during the course of a conversation/argument one party posts a link that on the surface appears to be to a study that proves their argument or a helpful wikipedia article or whatever, but is actually a link to the video for Rick Astley's hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" (which Mom, you'll probably recognize if you hear it). How and why it came to be this particular video I have no idea, aside from it probably happened once, people thought it was hilarious, and so it spread. I think it probably relates to how silly and cheesy the video is, how Rick Astley looks nothing like you expect based on his voice, and the fact that there is nothing offensive in the song/video, but it's not what you expected. It's a silly "haha, fooled you" and often used when the argument has degenerated to ad hominem attacks from one side or when the person being rickrolled seems incredibly gullible or willfully ignorant. And the fact that Google did it yesterday proves that they're all just a big bunch of geeks and makes me adore them.

Abstinence fails, use a condom

According to a recent study, 25% of teenage girls in the United States have a Sexually Transmitted Infection. (requires login) Such a high rate of infection is public health crisis, and one that is very preventable. It's also a sign that our government is failing our youth, especially young women, by insisting on abstinence-only sexual health curricula. Teenagers have sex. They have hormones, and they experiment, because, well, they're teenagers and they're horny and why not? Ignorance, combined with the adolescent feeling of invulnerability and the need to fit in, results in extremely risky behaviors. Even if girls know that they need to practice contraception, they don't necessarily practice safer-sex, and even those who insist on condoms for penetrative intercourse can catch diseases through other types of sex play. In fact, only half the girls in the study admitted to having had "sex", which, thanks to Bill Clinton et al, is often defined only as penetrative vaginal intercourse. There are lots of ways two naked people can have fun together, and many of those ways carry the risk of disease. Obviously, these girls didn't get HPV or chlamydia simply from holding hands, which indicates that they're engaging in other types of sex acts.

When teens know the risks of "sex" but define "sex" so narrowly, they decide to mitigate those risks by engaging in other kinds of sex play. And girls, especially, get the raw end of the deal when it comes to abstinence-only sex ed, because many girls feel intense pressure to give into their boyfriends' sexual demands in order to maintain a certain social standing.¹ Even in the 21st century in the USA, girls and women still do not have the same amount of sexual autonomy that males do. By giving girls accurate information about the risks associated with all kinds of sex, we empower them to make decisions based on facts, not what they learned at summer camp and on cable. They have better reasons to say no and to wait until the decision is theirs, rather than their partner's. And boys too, need to know just what risks they are taking by engaging in these activities.

But no one wants to imagine their precious little girl performing fellatio, so instead we bury our heads in the sand and tell teens to keep it in their pants. Which is good advice, certainly. I'm not advocating that we encourage free love in the corridors of our nation's schools. But we know for a fact that it isn't being followed by everyone. We tell kids not to smoke or drink or do drugs or speed, and yet they continue to do so, owing partly to adolescent rebellion and partly to that aforementioned feeling of invincibility. The difference between these activities and sex is that sex is a biological drive, necessary to the survival of our species, and there are ways to mitigate the risk when you give into that drive. We need to teach our young people what those ways are, because the chances that they're not going to engage in sex someday are very small. Teaching teenagers about sex and how to be safe doesn't turn them into fornicators. Being teenagers does (even the dullest teen can generally figure out that Tab A goes into Slot B, esp. in our sex-saturated media culture). Even if they make it out of high school without having any kind of sex, they grow into adults, and with each passing year, the likelihood that they remain virgins goes down (92% of women have had sex by age 24 ). If we don't make reality-based sexual education available to our teenagers, when is it that we expect that anyone will learn about the risks of sex? College? Loveline? Isn't part of the point of public education to prepare our youth for their place in society? And some of these girls are destined to join the unacceptably large numbers of people without health insurance (15.7% as of the last census). Who will continue to spread disease, because they won't have primary-care physicians to suggest testing or provide treatment and education. When left untreated, many curable STIs can result in infertility (and other long-term side effects, including heart disease and brain damage) or be passed on to infants during pregnancy and labor, greatly increasing the public health crisis.

Bottom line is this: the vast majority of people will have sex at some point in their lives. By hiding the realities of sex from our teenagers, we do everyone a disservice. Ignorance may be bliss, but it's a lousy bedmate. Why are we so afraid of teaching people how their bodies work?

1. I remember a very interesting discussion in my Sociology of Sex and Gender class about why such a narrow definition of sex is embraced by our society. Teenagers are under pressure from the media and their peers (and their hormones) to have sex. Teenage girls are under pressure from society to remain chaste until marriage (or at least college). By engaging in sex that isn't intercourse, they get to remain "virgins" while still satisfying their boyfriends' and society's demands that they be sexual. But our public schools can't discuss these activities or the risks they carry, and so your average teenager doesn't know what her risks are or how to prevent them.

Margaret Sanger

I (finally) saw Juno last night. And any movie or story that deals with unplanned pregnancy is going to eventually lead to discussion of reproductive choice and freedom.
So today I wanted to write a bit about Margaret Sanger, who is one of my heroes. Margaret Sanger came from a very large family. Eventually she became a nurse and was faced with many cases of women whose bodies were worn out from so many pregnancies and births, not to mention the labor required to take care of so many children. She also saw the horrific consequences of abortions (which were illegal and thus unregulated and frequently unsafe). When these women begged doctors to tell them how to avoid future pregnancies, the doctors' only solution was frequently to suggest abstinence, a remarkably unhelpful and impracticle solution. Margaret Sanger knew there had to be a better way.
She set out to inform women about their birth control options, starting clinics that were often shut down. She was arrested for disseminating birth control advice through the US Postal Service, because the information was deemed "obscene." Not only were there extremely limited contraceptive options available, telling women what those options were was against the law. Kind of difficult to imagine in a world where ads for various contraceptive pills air on network television. But it is Margaret Sanger that we have to thank for the existence of the Pill. She realized that it was important for women to be in charge of their own fertility, and helped fund research that led to the development of hormonal contraception. She also started Planned Parenthood, which was connected to the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut that made birth control legal in the US. Imagine living in a world where it was illegal for married couples (because of course single people would never have sex!) to regulate the number and spacing of their children as they saw fit. Then be grateful to Margaret Sanger and her coworkers that you live in a world where you can decide if and when to have children based on what's best for you and your family.

Blue Skies, Silent Springs

Since today is such a beautiful day, I decided that today's historical female would be Rachel Carson.
I remember reading Silent Spring as a freshman in college. I had heard of Rachel Carson and this book, but it wasn't until I took an intro-level biology class aimed at non-biology majors that I was assigned it (probably the single most useful thing I did in that class, other than meet someone who didn't believe in natural selection for the first time in my life. The rest of the curriculum had been well-covered by my ninth-grade biology teacher, Mrs. Acattato, and by Mr. Goodfriend, with whom I took Anatomy and Phisiology in twelfth grade).
I grew up in a relatively eco-conscious household. We recycled more than we threw away, even taking into account that garbage was collected twice as often as recylcables. I had books on how kids could save the planet. I also had lots, and I mean lots of books and magazines about animals and nature. This isn't to say that I was a particularly outdoorsy kid, but I loved nature, and I still do (note to potential suitors- the zoo is on my list of top 5 best first dates). I spend so much time indoors that sometimes I forget how restorative fresh air and sunshine can be. But even though I knew that CFCs were bad for the ozone and you shouldn't throw out soda rings, I didn't necessarily know all about the complexities of the environment.

Rachel Carson's book was the kind of book that shakes up the world, much like Uncle Tom's Cabin or The Jungle. It made people aware of how their actions were (and are) dramatically impacting their environment for the worse, and ways that they could try to restore the balance they had upset. Long before Al Gore started telling us An Inconvient Truth Rachel Carson was spreading the word about environmental destruction. Her book challenged the conventional wisdom that man-made chemicals were always the correct solution and were a sign of progress. I'm sure I'm not the only person whose choices to use natural or organic products whenever possible were influenced by Rachel Carson's work.

As spring begins to bloom around you, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Silent Spring from your local library and try to think of ways you can live Ms. Carson's environmental legacy in your life.