Now We shall See...

[rain_gryphon]

Sigh. Yet another halfwit has popped up to produce a bowdlerized version of "Huck Finn". O, Despair that tires the world!

People were doing this when I was in high school, and they'll prolly keep on doing it after I'm dead. What on earth is the point of making literature "accessible" if in the process you obscure the actual point of the story?

It's a great shame Twain's dead, as fools like these were pretty much grist for his mill.

*****

Tomorrow, the House will read the Constitution aloud on the floor. I'm honestly kind of horrified that that's never been done before. It seems like the sort of thing that ought to start a session.

They're apparently taking turns by order of precedence. There's a small but non-zero chance that Pelosi will burst into sulphurous flames when she touches the document. I hope someone from the Tea Party gets to read the Tenth Amendment, although they're pretty junior to get that, I think.

*****



Yes, we are...

Comments

[loganberrybunny.livejournal.com]

The bowdlerisation has apparently made an editorial in The Times. That paper is now behind a paywall so I can't link to it, but the relevant BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12126700) reports it as calling it "a well-intentioned act of cultural vandalism and obscurantism that constricts rather than expands the life of the mind".

[xolo.livejournal.com]

That pretty much describes it. Incidentally, if you've never read "Huck Finn", I think you'd appreciate it.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

I'm glad Congress is reading the Constitution. I'm also in favor of the idea the Tea Party suggested that any proposed bill has to have a citation from the Constitution stating where it's constitutional. If it's taken seriously, that should stop any power-hungry idiots (on either side of the aisle) from abridging our liberties in the name of "national security" or "protecting" minorities with so-called "hate speech" laws.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense. The point of the Constitution is mostly to proscribe, not prescribe. So for a given law, if it's constitutional, the reason is going to be "because it's not forbidden by the Constitution." It's a lot easier to cite the Constitution to show why something is unconstitutional, so the burden of proof is on that side.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The point of the Constitution is mostly to proscribe, not prescribe.

While the Constitution does have some narrowly-stated proscriptions (no attainder, no quartering of troops, etc) the Tenth Amendment is quite broad and explicit in insisting that those rights not specifically prescribed to the Federal Government remain the rights of the several States.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

That's really pretty plain, for all that it's been ignored since 1861.