Bill's Little Corner of the World

Comic-Con has been a staple of San Diego county summers for 40 years. It is, in fact, become so large an entity that other larger venues are wooing the convention and the consensus is that Comic-Con’s days at the San Diego Convention Center are numbered.

Oddly enough, I have never found the time to make it to this 4-day event and on the occasions when I’ve decided to go, the event was sold out.  But because I have a friend who goes religiously every year, this year I got a goody bag.

In addition to the 2010 souvenir book, I got Brightest Day (issue #0) and a beautiful tee-shirt for the upcoming Jon Favreau directed movie, “Cowboys and Aliens,” which I am not showing here until September.

Sadly, because there are so many creepy people in the world, I don’t want to name my friend, but I have directed her to this post and I want to say publicly and loudly, “Thank you so much!! These gifts made my year!”

An interesting essay on Andrew Brietbart and the edited tapes of Shirley Sherrod of the USDA by Bob Cesca of the Huffington Post. Bottom line – he said all I was going to say on this issue, only he said it better than I would have. Read it.

Today, a Federal judge in Denver ruled that the law known as the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment.  U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn dismissed a case  against a man claiming he was an former Marine who was wounded in Iraq and received the Purple Heart and the Silver Star because the law violated the man’s right to free speech.

To say that I find this judge’s interpretation of the law offensive is putting it lightly.  Apparently, the law is “fatally flawed” because it doesn’t require prosecutors to show anyone was harmed or defamed by the lie.  The problem I have with this ruling is that every lie is intended to gain an advantage that one wouldn’t normally have by telling the truth. Telling a girl (or a guy) in a bar that you are a war veteran and have a war wound you’d like to show her back in your apartment is substantially different from a man claiming a false identity as a wounded combat vet and raising money using that identify. The Stolen Valor Act correctly addresses the latter and not the former. 

The harm the Stolen Valor Act defends against isn’t against an individual harm, but rather against a society harm as a whole.  The people who serve in the Armed Forces don’t do brave things for medals, but medals recognize the brave things these people do. When others are permitted to improperly reflect in the glory of these heroes without punishment, censure or consequences, we are all diminished. (“When everyone is special, no one is.”)

This ruling is very personal for me as I wrote here. I’m just disturbed that I can see the harm in this fraud. Why couldn’t the judge?  The Denver Post story is here.

This has been a long five day weekend for me and it’s been an interesting couple of days.

- Have been reading Quotable Star Trek by Jill Sherwin all week. If you are a fan of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, this is a great book to have. Be warned that it does not have any of the quotes from the last years of Deep Space 9, the last year of Voyager, the last two Berman movies or the 2009 Star Trek movie. Nevertheless, this is among my favorite books. And for the record, the doctors in Star Trek Read the rest of this entry »

Today we celebrate the 234th anniversary of the American experiment in Human Rights.  In declaring their independence from Great Britain, the founding fathers risked their property, their honor and their lives for the reasons outlined in their signed declaration. Eleven years later, after a bitter revolution and the failure of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the current U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787 and this nation as it is currently structured came into being.

In these times it is easy to forget that this nation is constantly changing and constantly evolving. It was Chief Justice John Marshall who said in 1821, “The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.” We, the people, have changed this living document, the  Constitution, 27 times in order to make it reflect our will and to make “a more perfect union.”  This is the greatness of this nation. We are a people who are resilient in hard times and not afraid of the future or change. Today celebrates a beginning and the founding of an idea; an idea whose time had come and whose dream shall not falter because we the people shall not permit it to fail.

I wish it were possible, but I can’t call my Dad on Father’s Day.  But that shouldn’t stop you from calling  yours.  Happy Father’s Day.