(1) The president shall have the power to veto specific expenditures within every federal budget, in the interests of balancing the budget.  All vetoes, either of specific expenditures or whole bills, shall be subject to Congress’s power to override vetoes.
 
(2) Congress shall be required to balance the total federal budget every fiscal year except under the following circumstances: 
(A) A three-fifths majority in both houses approve the whole budget.
(B) A decoration of war against a foreign enemy or armed domestic insurrection having been made and that war being actively conducted. 
(i) If necessary, the decoration of war for the purposes of this amendment must be sustained every four years by Congress for section (B) of this amendment to be valid.
(C) The president having vetoed specific expenditures in the federal budget three times, and the Congress having voted to override his veto three times, as required in Article I section 7 of this Constitution, and having failed, a three-fifths majority of both houses in Congress shall be sufficient to make law an unbalanced federal budget.
(i) Section C of this amendment shall not be construed to limit the veto powers of the president on whole bills, or with non-budgetary legislation.
 
(3) This amendment shall not be construed to override the normal rules of the Senate or House except where the procedural burden shall be greater on that body.

Though you wouldn’t have minded–it was always in the sprit of things.

This is the truth, as best I can manage.

I wrote two poems for you

One truthful, one beautiful–the two are not the same.

I know because I did it and the two are not the same.

You might say they are not the same because I lack art.

No.  You would not say that in so many words–

Unkindness, if it existed at all, was always revolting to your nature.

Perhaps you might say, in your graceful way:

“The chasm yawns before us all” to tease me into thinking you thought of it first–

A metaphysical didactic to titillate the mind.

No.  You would just say the problem is false or doesn’t matter

Which never comforted me one bit.  An odd juxposition that way–

You were at ease but disquieting at the same time.

Now that I think on it, I found your easy manner easy to overlook.

If setting people at ease sets them on edge–you were the master.

–But I admire boldness and dash.

Life’s cares make it hard to see through the murky pool of friendship.

It was a friendship, wasn’t it?  Never solemnized, so it’s hard to tell now.

I think so.  I’ve decided to think so.

The truth is we were competitors in the greatest fights of all time.

We contended over coffee, beer, or cheep food

For the power and privilege of knowing the world as it truly was.

But for all your skill, I do not envy you now.  The narrow space cannot hold your memory–

For me it is long dormant like the lifeless, seized up ground where you died.

But if our association was modest, it spanned the stars, now frozen in their course.

I do not know what to make of death except to give it a dignified bow–

As you would do so often to lighten the mood.

Not yet thirty I imagine pleasing stillness–and then something else.

You would have laughed at me for this–but only if I was earnest or said so many times.

Considering that an act of folly, your truth marred my beauty.

Sorrow weighs me down because I know nothing about death except that there must be beauty in it–

For there is no truth worth having.

It rained today–Spring is near, though your death reminds me a certain kind of Spring

Will never come again.  This was the thing I loved most about you and all the people

That shared that time and place.  That Spring comes only once.

They said today you claimed to find it again, at Chicago.

The fresh reverberation of new minds in a new context

But it must not have been exactly the same, because you had done it before.

Blessings to you!  Two Springs are more than many will have in a whole lifetime.

But enough of truth–tell me of Beauty.

The world sometimes fit neatly for you: a legal mind of the first order, they said.

It is always gratifying to hear praise from stern judges, and many have found you worthy.

Now that I recall, there was too much truth and not enough beauty in our friendship.

So I was content to let it pass away into something else

–A kind of unseemly indifference–so ugly to my eye now.

You did not protest or abuse me for selfishness.

Perhaps it was because you did not foresee this end–perhaps you were happy to see things pass as they did.

Perhaps you were focused on yourself, as I am–and forgot that time is always passing–

Passing into something else, whether we choose to acknowledge the passing or not.

I saw your mother and father and brother for the first time today.

They wore their devastation with some reserve but much approbation.

“The fire that extinguishes quickly burns brightest,” everyone seemed to say, but I knew better.

I knew you would have lived a long, productive, and thoughtful life if it was within your power.

–It was not.

Nobody quite knew what to say about you–they saw a life less half complete.

You were still their infant to the end–these things cannot be helped.

But I knew better:

Sensuous, curious, and comfortable in his skin,

This was a man in full, completely made up–

In the early Spring of our lives I knew his Summer.

Nothing aside from memory captures the truth of our lives.

Not art, or poetry, or philosophy, or dusky images void of context.

We live on only in the minds of the living who strive to make something that cannot pass away–

but it vanishes anyway, like so many footprints on the shore.

–Until the envelope of time finally gorges it’s fill and every moment is gone forever.

This truth beguiles all the poets, I think.

This is the third, and last poem, I will write to you.

My other poetry failed because it tried too hard to be all things at once.

This is still a youthful indiscretion I’m susceptible to. Forgive and correct me if you can.

But it is mostly your misfortune that now my words have come to possess your soul.

Intoning a homily of the gods at rest, I bid you quake only in my memory, but gently–

These words are bound, inexorably, to a mind that knew you.

I promise, above all, to be a good steward of your memory–as you were a sorter and purifier

Of the rubbish in my thoughts.  You couch upon them now.

It was eight years since we last spoke at length and I would I have you here again,

To make my pretty prose set right by reason, or make a sound idea more beautiful by your art.

A good midwife to one’s thoughts is hard to find and impossible to replace.

–RIP Grant Folland, JMC ’04

America’s greatness is largely thanks to the fact that we are both a nation of laws and votes.  Votes without the security of the law is a majoritarian tyranny.  Law without votes is no democracy at all.  Neither interest can override the other.  The court is in a bind because it cannot make an exception for this particular issue.  The balancing test must be applicable every time, for every issue going forward–that’s their problem. 

Nobody cries for the California supreme court; they got themselves into this mess.  They created or upheld the distinction between the vote and the law when they overruled the first ban on same-sex marriage.  Going far beyond the merits of the case, they forced a crisis where the vote or the law would fundamentally triumph.  They now must back down from their original holding or explain how the people of California could violate their own constitution by amending it.  They must explain how the Californians who ratified of the state constitution back in 1879 are more binding on the court than a referendum passed in November of 2008.

The opponents of Proposition 8 are inclined to use a nuanced argument.  They reason that California’s constitution requires both a 2/3 vote in each house of the legislature and the people’s approval for major changes in the constitution.  They further reason that the marriage issue is so fundamentally a fairness question that it needs a 2/3 vote in the legislature to be binding law.  Therefore they believe Proposition 8 is unconstitutional unless it is passed by the state legislature, something political impossible at this time.  

The marriage issue is a good question for the states because they have an interest in who gets marriage certificates and benefits.  If the question before the court was only marriage certificates and benefits an equal protection argument might very well triumph.  But the proponents of same-sex unions in this instance have not made a traditional equal protection claim.  They have argued everyone enjoys a fundamental right to marry whom they wish–a claim not found in the explicit verbiage of the constitution and which most Californians do not popularly support at this time. 

So the court must weigh two dangers.  The value of the vote is diminished if the court throws Proposition 8 out in the name higher laws.  Californians may come to doubt their democracy belongs to them.  After all, if their opinions are less than those who voted for the 1879 constitution, or worse, an appointed (not elected) state supreme court, why should anyone bother voting?  The too-much triumph of law tramples on the precious significance of the vote.  At the same time, the California supreme court clearly has a public policy concern that the definition of marriage be expanded to include same-sex couples.  Setting aside the sympathy I have for both sides, I think it’s time for Californians to reclaim their state from extremists and harmonize the interests of the vote and the law. 

The standard for proposing an amendment to the state constitution on the ballot should be extremely difficult.  In California today it only takes 700,000 signatures out of a population of 37 million to put a question before the people.  I believe it’s time to do away with referendums for anything but constitutional ratifications and true amendments.  Referendums should only be used sparingly for resolving profound public policy questions.  Too often referendums tear states apart with divisive issues or end up adopting awkward, conflicting policies rather than helping to build genuine consensus within the electorate.  Referendums enable extremists to use the mantra of “the people’s will” to pass their agenda without compromise.  Too often those policies neither serve the interests of the law or people.        

The Founding Father’s got it right; Americans are best governed by representative democracy.  We are diverse and opinionated and no one election at any moment, by any electorate, truly shows who we are or what we think.  In a just society our votes are sanctified by the law.  The law upholds and supports our votes while leaving space for legislators to best reason how to resolve society’s conflicting interests.  Those legislators must answer to us for their success or failure and we must hold them accountable.  But in return they will expect us to form a consensus within our neighborhoods, communities, and states for the values and priorities we want in government.  

It’s a slow, difficult process, but nobody said self-government was easy.  It’s time for activists to role up their sleeves and really get to work.  It’s time to stop using shortcuts to subvert our democratic system.  It’s time to reach out and build coalitions and consensus with our neighbors before forcing the issues onto ballots where they don’t belong in order to secure the thunderclap of sudo-legitimacy.

The Aiakeion was usually used as a granary, but like many utility buildings it had multiple and  changing purposes.  Like Rome, Athens’s population was so large it could not feed its people with domestic production, so early on she used military force to conquer an empire.  The driving force of Athenian foreign policy was always grain-lust and acquiring tribute money to buy grain from as far as the Black Sea and Egypt.  As you can imagine, these policies often caused friction with Athens’s Greek neighbors.  

Athens’s government took direct control of the grain market during times of national distress.  It was probably from this building that each household was allotted their share of grain or flour provided at public expense.  It was a place where people waited in long lines.  

The building was named after Aiakos, a mythological king of Aegina, a island in the Sardonic Gulf and early rival of Athens.  Aiakos later became one of the judges of the underworld.  There he sentenced the shades of morals to eternal torment for the crimes they committed in life.  It made sense, therefore, that the verdicts handed down by Athens’s juries were posted on its walls.