ginandtacos.com

Ginandtacos feels compelled to note the passing of Aaron Hawkins, the 34 year-old U of I graduate who was the mind behind Uppity-Negro.com.

Better writers and closer friends have said more than we could say, so we will content ourselves with stating the obvious: Hawkins and his website will be missed.

A lot.

Loyal readers of ginandtacos.com may be thinking "The election is nearly upon us, yet your recent articles have not made clear how you feel about the electoral college….it's a good thing, right?"

Bitch, I will disabuse you of that misinformed notion.

How many Americans realize that the way in which we elect the President is largely a matter of custom and not law? The Constitution lays the framework for the electoral college in a minimalist manner. Each state has electors equal to its number of Congressmen and Senators. The manner of selecting electors is left to the Legislatures of each respective state. There is no emoticon or HTML tag of which I am aware that allows me to emphasize that enough.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

That's it. It's up to the states, period. South Carolina, for example, selected electors in its legislature until 1840. If states want to appoint electors by order of the Governor, majority vote of the Legislature, or proportional representation they have every right to do so. If they feel like appointing electors by cock size, random selection, or ability to play Slayer's "Angel of Death" while riding a gay horse through a trench filled with pudding, they may also do so.

Here's a little-known (actually, just "little-reported") gem from 2000. When Florida was in the midst of its recount crisis, the state legislature (Republican-controlled) convened a special session for the purpose of altering the state's method of selecting electors. The popular vote was just too inconclusive and controversial, they said. We need to go ahead and make that decision for you, good citizens.

Florida: The state that brought you Hooters Airlines

See, most people have absolutely no idea that there is nothing in the Constitution that says we get to vote for the President. And this, my friends, is what some in the field of Political Science call "the electoral time bomb". If a state decides that it will no longer pick electors based on popular vote, they have every right to do so. If Kerry wins 55% of the vote in Florida but the Legislature convenes (even after the election, as no timeframe for settling the selection process is specified) and decides that it will choose electors itself, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Short of, of course, rioting in the streets, which I heartily endorse.

Before you write it off as a crazy conspiracy theory, they were very willing to do this in 2000 under the pretext of the election being "inconclusive". And it's not a "republicans vs democrats" issue. The real horror of it is that whichever party were to strike first, the other would return the favor in a different state. And pretty soon we'd have a large number of states – maybe all of them – in which the rabidly partisan legislatures selected the electors, and we'd have one less thing to (not) vote for as a nation.

Congratulations, America! I hope you enjoy the next phase of the end-justifies-the-means, illiterate, corrupt politics you've rubber-stamped into existence. With partisanship in government empirically at an all-time high, I hope you're prepared for the final ludicrous chapter in the 1994 Republican Revolution's brand of "Fuck you" vs. "Oh yeah? Well fuck you" politics.

OK. Grab a pen and paper, assault weapon fans, it's time for some logic games.

The fact that some people can drive perfectly fine when drunk does not mean drunk driving should be legal.

The fact that most people who would carry a pocketknife onto an airplane would not use it to hijack the airplane does not mean that knives should be allowed on airplanes.

The fact that some people who buy fake passports really would use them "for novelty purposes only" does not mean that fake passports should be legal, ignoring the fact that most people who buy one would use it for a decidedly non-novelty purpose.

The fact that the NRA population (totalling 3 million people out of the 280,000,000 in this great land) can manage to own an Uzi with a 30-round magazine without using it to out-firepower the police in the commission of a crime does not allow us to logically deduce that assault weapons should be legal (and thereby subject to market forces which will bring their prices down). It furthermore does not allow us to appropriately conclude that the other 277,000,000 people in this great land will similarly use the weapons in a legitimate, safe manner or that the freedom of 3 million responsible gun owners to own submachine guns is worth the consequences to the rest of the society.

Yes, gun ownership is a right. But for varities of reasons, varities of rights – ranging from the right to blare music at 150 dB at all hours of the night to the right to purchase Uranium-235 (which has thousands of positive uses) – are curtailed when one lives in a civil society.

The same individuals who will use assault weapons only in a safe, legitimate manner would no doubt use shoulder-launched SAMs, hand grenades, and M1 Abrams tanks in a safe, legitimate manner (imagine how much fun a weekend at the gun club would be with all that firepower – the clay discs wouldn't know what hit'em). If, then, you are willing to make the claim that assault weapons (as defined by the expiring statute) can be used legitimately and therefore should be legal, the same logic would apply to the three aforementioned weapons. And if you're willing to argue that shoulder-launched missiles should be legalized, you are simply a dolt, utterly beyond reason, who lives in his or her own fantasy world, and you may step forward and put your tongue up my ass.

Dismissed.

I received the following email from "CJ" at shykiss.com after we had to ban her IP because she left about 50 comments on our webpage – every one identical – from midnight to 5 AM the other evening. Truly, this is a person with a lot of time on her hands, and very little she is capable of doing with it.

Due to its extreme length, I understand you may not wish to read this in its entirety. Suffice it to say it contains numerous insults I last heard in second grade and more than enough information to get this person committed for some badly needed psychiatric care. As a refresher, here is a quick photo of the sender:

Hi Edwina,

CJ

Ms. Diseased Pussy, PLEASE, for the love of god, skip directly to #5. Call our webhost as soon as you possibly can. And I'm glad you interpreted the fact that YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND and we blocked your IP because YOU ARE FUCKING DERANGED AND HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN POST 10000 COMMENTS HERE as a sign that you have "defeated" us. Yes, you got us. If your point was to be psychotic and annoying in a way no one ever could have predicted, you have won.

Thank you for turning this brief exercise in mocking some random girl I found on a google search into your fucking life's purpose. We are your windmill.

Although we are aware that there is no way for us to enforce these rules, please be respectful of our rules and regulations.

Really. We do.

It must really suck to be a deer in today's world. With sprawl, pollution and ecosystems in disarray life must be hard on poor Bambi. And at 12:01am Monday, it's about to get even worse – because that's when the Clinton passed Assult Rifle Ban is set to be repealed.

I mention deer only because while doing research about the topic I came across this post by user JesusCyborg on a gun board: "You don't think guns are awesome? Well to each their own. I do. I can't wait to get my hands on an assault rifle so I can pump some deer full of lead."

So maybe that is that. Maybe a bunch of rednecks will take uzis and AK-47s into the woods and hunt nature the way we conduct our foreign policy: with overwhelming unilateral military force (will the deer will have to wage an asymmetrical war, kidnapping journalists and getting box cutters that fit in hooves?). Maybe there is nothing to really fear here.

But the police, who probably have more of an expertise than 'jesuscyborg' in these matters, disagree. There is talk of a more 'militaristic' approach to policing. Armored vehicles will become more prevalent among law enforcement. AV's will have to become standard for simple robbery cases. As anyone who has been around law enforcement or guns knows, there is a world of difference from a deer rifle and an uzi, if only for the mental state of the person holding it. As the man points out above, guns are 'awesome', and bigger assult rifles in your hands are the equivalent of a hit of PCP in the "I can take on 6 cops" department.

above: what the framers had in mind.

Will the government step in? "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire" said majority leader Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. "If the president asked me, it would still be no," chirped in Representative Tom DeLay of Texas. President Bush said he supports a renewal and would sign it, but he hasn't pushed very hard. Or at all for that matter. Great job having it both ways; I hope no crackheads jump you with an Uzi on the way to cash all those NRA checks.

"But Mike, even with the ban criminals already have access to these guns if they want them." Maybe my formal background in math logic is working against me, but doesn't then repealing the ban mean even more criminals will have access to them? And worse, with the market flooded won't prices drop, allowing your more broke, desperate and likely to shoot you for a Social Security check variety of criminals larger access to these weapons? And isn't that a bad thing? There is only so much you can argue the tautology "more access will result in more access."

"But Mike, with the weapon ban repealed I can purchase assult rifles to protect my wife, children and three-step ranch home." That is an excellent point, and ginandtacos.com would love to help you out. Now for various PR reasons, the gun industry is keeping it's mouth shut with how much it is salivating at the idea of expanding this market come Monday, so it is hard (and techinically still illegal) to find places online where you can order these guns. And legally (damn Clinton!) guns of this nature that are produced before Monday have to be 'marked' with law enforcement stickering, reducing their sales worth, so we have a few more days before actual production. But come the time, we will have a running list of online ordering sites for the new weapons with which you can "shock and awe" the deer, cheating spouses and late-night gas station attendees of America.

Until then, here are the semi-automatic fruits of what is to come:

From: Erik Martin
To: mike

There comes a point in every man's life when his girlfriend gets off of work at 9 oclock in the pm in Champaign, and he decides he must call mike in Chicago to see if he can get show times for a movie. It is not often that such a movie exists that warrents this type of behavior, but last friday such a cinematic masterpiece was showing.