Aurora watch

[altivo]

It takes 30 minutes or so for NOAA to post the results of the latest polar orbital observation of auroral activity. In that time, the value may rise or drop by as much as two activity points. And a half hour ago they posted a value of 9. Somewhere between 9 and 10 is when aurora activity usually becomes visible at my location.

It was pretty cloudy at sunset but the forecast calls for "mostly clear" tonight. So do I walk out to the pasture, braving the mosquitoes, to see if I can spot the aurora? I dunno. I'm sorta waiting for them to post another reading to see if it is holding steady or moving up or down.

In any case, for those of you in North America and at latitudes above 40N or so, there's a good chance of visible aurora around your local midnight time, plus or minus an hour or so. If you've never seen it, I assure you it's well worth seeing.

Those of you who reside above 50N and see it more often are allowed to yawn, but I'll still point out that although I've seen hundreds of gorgeous sunrises and sunsets in my life, I still don't miss an opportunity to see another. Aurora is much rarer. I've seen it perhaps a handful of times in my life, and I don't want to miss an opportunity.

In other news, a federal court judge who was appointed by Ronald Reagan (and we know Reagan didn't favor liberals) ruled today that California's Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Apparently though, he stayed his own judgement from being carried out pending the inevitable appeal. Thus he has fixed nothing, but affirmed my belief that even a so-called "conservative" can't easily argue a way around this. Either the Constitution affirms equal treatment for everyone, or it does not.

Some voices on the extreme right are already mustering to repeal the 14th amendment. I can't believe the selfish gall of such people, I really can't.

Also, the great "I'm in favor of change" Obama has reaffirmed, though a spokesperson, the statement that he opposes gay marriage but favors civil unions. What? Here's a supposed black man saying he supports "separate but equal" treatment. I swear, we have no history at all in this country. Anything earlier than living memory didn't ever happen.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I live at 53N, but I sadly missed this light show due to high cloud levels. :(

How easy is to repeal something in a constitution? i can't imagine it being that easy. Which I imagine is why administrations who don't like certain parts of consitutions do not vote to repeal them; they merely instruct the law men to disregard them. Or at least that was what I was told was going on with the wire tapping stuff that was going on not so long ago.

[schnee]

That's what I'm wondering about, too.

We were actually taught in school that one of the differences between the German and US constitutions is that the former can be changed by parliament (with a two thirds supermajority in both houses), while the latter is pretty much sacrosanct and can only be amended. In practice, this is really only technically true, since as we've seen, it IS possible to repeal one amendment using a later amendment, but so far, nobody I've asked has been able to to explain satisfactorily just what can or can't be repealed this way (to be fair, though, I haven't asked many people).

In particular, one thing I'm often wondering about is the bill of rights. Suppose that, somehow, you actually managed to get enough states behind a new amendment that'd repeal the first. Would it actually be possible to enact such an amendment, then, or are there limits on what kinds of amendments can be enacted? (The whole brouhaha about outlawing flag-burning by means of an amendment since right now it's protected by the first seems to suggest that it would be possible to enact something like this.)

Suppose, then, that such an amendment were enacted. What would this mean for freedom of speech, legally speaking? It's often said that the US constitution doesn't grant rights, it merely recognizes their (independent) existence, so one might actually argue that the right to free speech still exists, despite it not being recognized by the constitution anymore. Such an argument would be unlikely to stand up in court in Germany (I think), but I'm not so sure about common law jurisdictions.

Finally, generally speaking, what happens when parts of the constitution (including its amendments) contradict each other, anyway? Does the later clause always take precedence? What about cases that are not obvious in the way that the 21st was when it explicitely repealed the 18th? I'm really wondering about cases where one amendment says A and another says B, without either addressing the discrepance — especially if it's subtle corner cases that aren't found until quite some time after the relevant sections became law. How do you determine which part of the constitution takes precedence here? Is it possible at all to make a decision without enacting another new amendment to clarify exactly that situation (as was done with the 25th)?

Inquiring minds want to know. :) (And you seem like someone who could actually answer these questions.)

[altivo]

See the Wikipedia article I cited for Avon. Anything in the US Constitution can be changed by amendment, including the procedures for amending. The only explicit exception is the weird and unbalanced way states are represented in the US Senate.

Various amendments in the past have changed significant sections of the Constitution, such as the part about counting Native Americans as three fifths of a person for the purposes of determining congressional representation. The first ten amendments were ratified along with the Constitution itself, rather than through the mandated ratification process, but otherwise they have no special or unchangeable status. Any amendment just becomes part of the original document, and can later be further amended (or repealed) by another duly ratified amendment. That's exactly what happened with prohibition.

Thus it would be possible to repeal the 14th amendment (equal rights and protection under the law) but I'd say the chance of that happening is extremely slim. The process required to do it would make such a loud and visible stench that the perpetrators would likely be lynched.

In long terms, it was inevitable that civil matrimony had to change in the US. The churches will be free to recognize or ignore whatever they choose, but as in Canada, the civil rights associated with marriage are going to have to be available equally to all citizens, without respect to gender just as in the past the Supreme Court has required that they be available without respect to race or religious creed. This is a constitutional issue, not only tied to the 14th amendment but also to freedom of religion. No religious body has the legal right to enforce its beliefs on the US population through law, which is what this comes down to. Civil marriage, with the responsibilities and privileges attached thereto, was modeled on a religious concept, but cannot be defined by that concept under the Constitution. The Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelical Protestants have no say in this except as individual citizens. And as the judge said yesterday, even a majority of individual citizens has no authority to abridge the human rights of a minority under the US Consitution as presently written.

[schnee]

OK, thanks. :)

[hrrunka]

The important latitude for auroral displays is the geomagnetic one, notthe geographic one, and the north geomagnetic pole being where it is, Old London is geomagnetically further south than Chicago, so we get fewer auroral displays over here than they do over in North America. Somehow the news frenzy about the Sun's recent minor burp has ignored this...

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

How amazingly annoying. :/

[hrrunka]

NOAA has a page showing the current Norh and South Auroral ovals. There are other similar displays elsewhere, like this one from FHRadio.org.

[altivo]

Not as annoying as light pollution and clouds, both of which usually keep us from seeing the aurora even here.

The magnetic latitude of my location is about 52.2N, a full ten degrees farther north than the ordinary geographic latitude, but we still get to actually see the aurora here only a couple of times a decade.

The news media and popular venues like Facebook are full of misrepresentations and exaggerations over this latest solar "event." People are warning each other to shield their computers against corruption by solar radiation and other absurdities. I'm sure some of them have been wearing tinfoil hats too. The truth is, that this even only looks spectacular because we've recently developed the ability to observe and record the physical events in greater detail. A C3 flare or eruption is a pretty small one. Wait till they get the new, better view of a class X event. They'll be running for the abandoned fallout shelters I'm sure.

This is aggravated by the solar cycle itself. People have short memories. When ten years have passed without such events, their return makes them seem scary and threatening again.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I am not really scared by it...just fascinated.

I am surprised you have a problem with light pollution. I only have to go onto the Dales, and it's not much of a problem for me.

[altivo]

Most of the US east of the Mississippi is plagued by light pollution now. It appears that Americans are terrified of the dark. The wattage of the lights burned unnecessarily, sometimes 24 hours a day, is staggering.

Even in the rural areas like mine, people leave outdoor lights on all night. Often these are huge floodlights called "security" lights. The effect on the starscape is maddening, but of course none of them ever look up anyway. They are all indoors staring open mouthed and drooling at the television.

We won't even discuss the noise pollution, which exceeds light pollution by a factor of at least ten.

[altivo]

We were blocked by clouds on Tuesday night, when the light show did reach this far south. I think last night it didn't quite get here. By the time the clouds had cleared, the activity level was down to seven. It had hit ten several times during the afternoon, but of course that did no good while the sun was up.

Amending the US Constitution is a slow and difficult process, and was intentionally made so. Wikipedia has a good article on the ways in which it can be done and how often it succeeds or fails.

There is apparently only one thing that can't be changed by amendment, and that is the weird and problematic structure of the US Senate, that gives every state regardless of population exactly two senatorial seats. That is expressly set as not subject to alteration. The only way to change it would be to replace the entire Constitution, which is possible but extremely unlikely to happen except by a total revolution.

The Supreme Court has the authority to rule on the way in which any amendment is interpreted and applied. Thus an amendment that contradicts a previous amendment or clause of the original document without expressly stating its intent to repeal the prior provision would likely be ruled ineffective if it were actually ratified. When prohibition was repealed, the amendment that did so stated very precisely that it was removing the prior amendment. Amendments that make such changes are worded to identify the precise article and clause to which they apply.

Various crazies have tried before to get up the support for a movement to repeal the 14th amendment (Equal protection under the law regardless of race, etc.) but I think it extremely unlikely that such a move would ever make it through the ratification process.

Amendments can be proposed by national convention, but the process for convening and authorizing such a convention is so difficult that it has never happened. The only way an amendment has ever been put forth for ratification is through Congress. This requires a two-thirds vote in both houses, with a quorum present, to place the amendment before the states. Congress can then specify whether each state is to hold a convention to consider the amendment or allow the state legislatures to decide. I'm pretty sure the legislatures have always been given the option. In either case, three quarters of all the states must agree to ratify the amendment before it becomes law.

At that point, the actual enforcement or implementation of the change is to be enforced by the courts. The federal court system has the authority to interpret and enforce the provisions of the Constitution through its rulings. The executive branch is charged with enforcement as well, but must follow the instructions of the courts should its efforts be judged inappropriate.

The Supreme Court is also authorized to adjudicate disputes between individual states, and to determine whether actions by any state government are in contradiction to the Constitution itself, which is how yesterday's ruling was even possible. A federal court in California issued this ruling, but it can be reversed (or affirmed) by the Court of Appeals, which can in turn be reversed (or affirmed) by the Supreme Court itself. Given the nature of the challenge, I don't think the Supreme Court would ignore it, but it has to be brought to them through due process. It had to be adjudicated in the lower court first.

I personally suspect that this is going to stand, though. The judge has written a very careful opinion and made the right points. Religious conservatives are going to hate it, but the only way they can change things will be by Constitutional amendment.

I'd say that such an amendment has the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of actually getting through the ratification process. However, I'm not a lawyer and don't want to be one.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

That's quite a system.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

The British "constitution" is unwritten, which makes ammending it very easy indeed. This is a good thing because it means changes can be made quickly, and a bad thing because it means changes can be made quickly.