February 19, 2018

Howard Simon – Director

ACLU

4343 W Flagler St. #400

Miami, FL 33134

RE: What to do, what to do? – Some comments on your mini Op-Ed in Sunday’s Sun Sentinel.

Mr. Simon, 

The Sheriff of Broward County said that the “alleged” school shooter was an “evil killer”. T. S. Eliot spoke of evil in a most definitive manner. You may wish to familiarize yourself with it. Almost 200 years before Eliot wrote, Samuel Johnson told us 

“Of all the things that man endures, how few

laws or kings can cause or cure.” 

On the other hand…here are some stop gap measures.

#1 – Even though the First Amendments permits people to go to veterans’ funerals and shout “Death to fags” and permits an aging, skanky actress to hold up a severed head, said head resembling Trump, and allows a crucifix to be suspended in a vat of urine under the guise of art – and why can’t we see those cartoons of Mohammed, the goat humping paedophile? – and have the American taxpayer subsidize a play – Corpus Cristi, by name – whose premise is that Christ was crucified because 2 sodomites, Jesus and Judas, had a lovers’ quarrel, the part that identifies and encourages lobbying is bad because all modern American Liberals know that money sent to the NRA is used to bribe Republican legislators to continue the slaughter of school children. Making it worse, the noxious Koch Brothers fund these “deplorable bitter clingers” as they go about committing their profoundly perfidious deeds and that they support teenage bullying.

Suspend it. Scratch that. Repeal it.

#2 – The 4^th & 5^th Amendments are like manatees. Whatever purpose they once may have served their time has come and gone. Do you remember when Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, said you didn’t have to obey an old law because it was, you know what I’m sayin’…old? I do. The point about “the wind and the rain may enter but not the King” may have held water before the Internet, and I can’t thank Albert Arnold Gore, Jr enough, and microaggressions led to school shootings. Not now. Get the warrant after the arrest. After all, it’s for the children, right?

Self-incrimination? Get real.

After you read the little shit his or her rights give them a few lefts. Then put the boot in. Defenestration is a scientific word for a process to see if someone can fly. It won’t take more than 3 attempts to get the usual suspects singing like an exultation of larks. Trust me.

It is culturally kosher for feral Black youth not to drop a dime when they “see something”, something as in “something evil this way comes”. Not so for melanin challenged scions of privilege. When they “say something” they expect either the Cossacks or the Brown Shirts, both of them if possible, to sort things out.

Come to think of it, the 8^th Amendment is getting a bit long in the tooth. While I am bound and determined not be cliché-ridden, the salutary effects of “cruel and unusual punishment” can’t be overstated.

 The British used to strap an intransigent Indian over the mouth of a cannon and have a family member light the fuse. That helped keep them in line for more than 2 centuries. Their Navy used “flogging through the fleet” and “keelhauling” as a run up to Trafalgar. Napoleon would select 3 poilus at random before a battle and execute them for cowardice. He said it “encouraged the others”. It worked until Waterloo. Salem had a witch problem in the 17^th century. A few of them were hanged and the problem was solved. The President of the United States, when advised that the Army had broken the Pullman Strike, was told that some of the strikers had been killed. “Did you kill enough?”, was his reply. 

It’s been 22 centuries since Carthage bothered Rome. Cartago delenda est worked.

Hillary, she of the fat ass, told us that we are “stronger together”. Let use the Ricky Ray Rector protocol and kill this right-wing gun nut.

Kevin Smith

PS – Just some thoughts from a curmudgeonly community activist.