Legal Blog Watch confirms what I’ve suspected ever since a group of linguists filed that embarassingly silly brief in Heller, namely, that someone would over-interpret their reference to the justification clause of the Second Amendment as an “absolute.” Almost on cue, John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun writes:

The opening phrase of the amendment, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” is, as Dennis Baron points out, an absolute, a phrase governing the rest of the sentence. Or so Mr. Madison would have understood it. The right to bear arms therefore has a direct connection to the establishment of a militia.

[Link in original.]

So, if the militia clause is an “absolute,” that must end the eternal debate right there! Right? Well, maybe not. As Bill Clinton knows all too well, it all depends on what the meaning of “is” (or, in this case, its participial form “being”) is. “Absolute” may be a strong sounding word to most people, but to a linguist, all it means is that the verb of a clause takes the form of a participle (or, in some cases, is omitted altogether) rather than being declined to agree with its grammatical subject. In other words, if the main verb of a clause is “being,” it’s an absolute clause. If the main verb is “is,” it isn’t. Does anyone, including the “absolutists” espousing this theory, honestly believe that this:

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

would, should or even could be construed any differently from this:

Given that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Really?

My language may be gradually slipping south, but Microsoft is impeding my learning. Just the other day, I dashed off an email to a co-worker suggesting that we might should ask so-and-so about such-and-such. Outlook put a squiggly line under”we might should,” recommending “perhaps we ought to” instead.

Perhaps we friggin’ ought to.

Today I caught myself - twice, actually - using a double modal. I still can’t understand Boomhauer, though.

It pains me to say this, but I think this brief pretty well puts a fork in the idea of linguistics as a science.

A few observations from tonight’s debate:

• It’s official: Fred? is finally a Presidential candidate. He’s got my vote, and may even lose the obligatory question by the middle of his first term if he wins.
• Who the hell got the brilliant idea to invite Rong Paul to the debate?
• On the flip side, Why The Silence?^® from his favorite spammer, Richard Viguerie, who just last week bashed FoxNews for not wanting to invite Mr. Constitution to the debate?
• Speaking of idiots, how long will it take for Paul Slansky to write an op-ed in the L.A. Times bashing John McCain for falsely believing that Thomas Jefferson was a 20th Century Iraqi citizen murdered by Saddam Hussein?
• On the flip side, why is no one taking McCain to task for his equally ludicrous claim that “comeback” is an adjective?

One side argues that waterboarding is torture, therefore, we must ban it. The other side argues that waterboarding is definitely not torture, because we need it.

To both sides of the debate: would it kill you to consider the possibility that waterboarding is torture, but we need it anyway? We shouldn’t be debating whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed was or wasn’t tortured. Instead, let’s debate whether it was better that (1) Khalid Sheik Mohammed be tortured or (2) Library Tower go the way of the World Trade Center. Those are the choices.

As of last week, I have a temp job in North Carolina which, with a little luck, may turn into a permanent position. Moving again would suck, but if I have to move anywhere, I’d rather move within the South than out of it. Speaking of the South, Chris Lawrence is officially full of crap for describing a move to Carolina as “leaving the South.” This state is soooo south of Virginia it isn’t even funny. After about six months as a born-again Virginian, I barely noticed the accent anymore. Now I can barely communicate. Over the past week, I’ve encountered the following:

1. Earlier this week around lunch time, a co-worker asked me if I’d got lynched yet.
2. Last week, the same co-worker asked me if I whuckum downan eacho knees.
3. The same day, a hostess at a local restaurant (complete with a nose ring, a gazillion tattoos, and all the other garb that screams out “I belong in Frisco, not here!”) asked me if I was donaninn.
4. Around the same time, I called Duke Power to get the power switched to my name in my apartment. I did not understand a friggin’ word Boomhauer said, not even enough syllables to transcribe here. Next month I should find out whether I just ordered power, a new set of Ginsu knives, or something else.
5. I recently learned that the Carolina School of Languages is within walking distance of where I work. I showed up there today asking to enroll in an evening class where I can learn to speak Carolina. Judging by the strange look I got, I was relieved to see that for once, someone else had no clue WTF I was talking about.

UPDATE: If you’ve ever wondered whether “Unpartisan” actually has a human reading all the blog entries it links, or if a bot scours the net for anything that matches a few keywords, Wonder no more.

UPDATE x2: Chris clarifies in comments that his “leaving the south” post referred only to the Triangle, not to the state as a whole.

UPDATE x3: D’oh! Actually, the original post made that pretty clear to begin with. That’s what I get for attacking old posts by memory - particularly a memory distorted by my own lack of exposure to the region at the time it was formed - rather than waiting until I can get the original to load properly.

Is it still considered “animal abuse” when the animal is the one doing the abusing?

Seen on the NYC subway:

Become a NYC Teaching Fellow.

If you ever run out of silly things to say when you’d like to swear but can’t, check out this handy-dandy list of minced oaths.