Sunday, February 17, 2008

How Big is My Dryer?

Honestly, I don't know. I might be able to make an educated guess if you'd given a little more information, or maybe left a photograph, because I recently did some shopping for washers and dryers. With nothing but the question to go on, though, this one is wide open.

Fortunately, though, this is an easy question to answer. The manufacturer's website will provide both information about the capacity of your dryer and about the external dimensions. So, whether you're looking for information about where you can fit the dryer or what you can fit IN the dryer, that information is readily available.


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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

What's Wrong With Constitutional Amendments?

Nothing, when they're used properly.

But as long as you asked, here's the problem that has frequently arisen with regard to Constitutional amendments in recent years. The United States Constitution was never intended to be a source of substantive law. The Constitution itself, pre-amendments, created a system of government and defined the roles of each branch and the relationship between the federal government and the states. That's what it was for.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution placed limitations on governmental power to restrict individuals.

Over time, other amendments were added. Many of the amendments following the original ten relate to voting rights and procedures. Only two amendments ever addressed substantive issue. The first was the 13th amendment, which abolished slavery within the United States. Frankly, I think the 13th amendment is a little dicey as written, but there are some justifications for it. The amendment effectively repealed a portion of Article IV of the Consitution, which addressed the interaction of slave states and free states. More importantly the amendment, though worded substantively, actually continued in the spirit of the original ten amendments by placing a limitation on the ability of states to deny individual rights and freedoms by sanctioning slavery.

The other piece of substantive legislation slipped into the Constitution was, of course, the 18th amendment, commonly known as "Prohibition". The 18th amendment was repealed by the 21st amendment, which in and of itself should give us pause. In the more than 200 years since the Constitution was written, there have been only 27 amendments...and we've used two of them to outlaw alcohol and then change our minds.

History gives us a lot of reasons to doubt the wisdom of Prohibition, and those reasons are often applied in other contexts today, particularly to the issue of legalization of various other drugs. The truth of the matter is, though, that the biggest problem with Prohibition had nothing to do with whether or not alcohol should be legal. The biggest problem with Prohibition is that people with an agenda used the Constitution to make substantive law--and that's not what the Constitution is for. It wasn't what it was for then, and it's not what it's for now, when politicians who know that perfectly well but want to make splashy statements advocate Constitutional amendments about marriage.

The issue at stake when that kind of amendment is proposed has nothing to do with marriage or even politics. It has to do with our system of government, with a 200+ year old document that was created for a very specific purpose and that has served that purpose for generations with very few amendments. It's not a place to make law, and it was never meant to be. It's not something we want to clutter up with amendments repealing other amendments and qualifying other amendments and adjusting amendments to amendments. It's the framework of our government. Let's leave it alone unless we want to make structural changes.


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