Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny pitcher-lovers.
Update! As I was re-reading that second meme I became suspicious, seeing as how “Section 98” casually mentions “50 independent, sovereign, continental United States of America.” I have two BIG problems with this: 1) there are only 49 continental states, not 50, Hawaii being an island chain in the Pacific; to get to 50 continental states, we’d need to officially bring in either Mexico or Canada, which ain’t even remotely likely now, much less then, and 2) in 1866, there were 48 States (actually, not even that many, as Aesop reminds us below), neither Alaska nor Hawaii having been brought into the Union as yet.
Moreover, the second circled section reads like it was written last week, not immediately post-bellum. The wording, spelling, and syntax is present-day American English, not that of the 1860s. At that point, my eyebrows raised yet further, and I thought I could smell something stinking to high Heaven here.
I have so far read through three (3) in-depth legal analyses of the Milligan case, and have found no mention of any of this “the government may not disregard” hooraw whatsoever; in fact, the Milligan decision seems to cut in quite the opposite direction as this purported “Section 98,” towards granting near-unlimited powers to the USG in time of war—an exception to the Constitutional strictures against the goobermint, not a more specific restatement of them. As such, even though I heartily endorse the sentiment expressed therein, I gotta call bullshit.
Yea, 2nd one is hooey, 100%.
Wish it were so.
Um, no.
In 1866, there were 36 states. #37, Nebraska, was admitted in 1867.
This is what happens when kids with Common Core educations try to meme.
Fucking retards.
Aesop beat me to part of my punch. When Supreme Court decisions are quoted on the internet – or even in case briefs – it is wise to look at the case cited itself, to get an idea of the context, or whether there might have been artful omissions. I worked on a case as a law clerk and there was a quote from a case with a citation in defendant’s reply brief – and the was an ellipsis (…) in the quote. I looked up the case and found out that opposing counsel had omitted the word “not”. That won a $5 million judgment for the client when we cited the entirety of the holding in our reply brief. Words have consequences.
Bad people during the Civil War tried to pull a fast one, when they could not get grand jury indictments, they would haul the citizen before a military commission, and Milligan put a halt to that, to wit:
“It follows from what has been said on this subject that there are occasions when martial rule can be properly applied. If, in foreign invasion or civil war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible to administer criminal justice according to law, then, on the theatre of active military operations, where war really prevails, there is a necessity to furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and society, and as no power is left but the military, it is allowed to govern by martial rule until the laws can have their free course. As necessity creates the rule, so it limits its duration, for, if this government is continued after the courts are reinstated, it is a gross usurpation of power. Martial rule can never exist where the courts are open and in the proper and unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction. It is also confined to the locality of actual war. Because, during the late Rebellion, it could have been enforced in Virginia, where the national authority was overturned and the courts driven out, it does not follow that it should obtain in Indiana, where that authority was never disputed and justice was always administered. And so, in the case of a foreign invasion, martial rule may become a necessity in one state when, in another, it would be “mere lawless violence.” Ex parte Milligan, 71 US 2 at 128 (1866), at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/71/2/
Page 71 U. S. 128