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Sanctuary House
On Thanksgiving Day, I stopped by the palatial home of my longtime friend and lawyer, E. Hobart Calhoun, a fellow Mensa member, bon vivant, and part-time oenophile. He was burning leaves in his front yard. I jumped out of my reconditioned hybrid Ford Falcon and raced to stomp out the flames, feverishly checking for any sign of the EPA death squads routinely patrolling our neighborhoods these days.
“Have you lost your mind?” I asked E. as I stepped out of my rugged Duluth steel-threaded overalls, which had caught fire in spite of Duluth’s guarantee that they were flammable or inflammable, whichever word is right.
“Relax,” E. said with his characteristic intelligent chuckle. “You’re standing on hallowed ground. I’ve declared my estate to be a Sanctuary Home.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how these cities around the country have pronounced themselves Sanctuary Cities, and therefore not subject to the laws of the State or Federal governments?”
“Sure. It’s in all the news.”
“Well, I’ve done the same thing with my home.”
“You mean…?”
“That’s right. I’ve filed affidavits at the court house. Now, nothing is illegal here on my property,” he said, lighting up his favorite crack pipe and blowing the blue smoke into the lower troposphere. “In fact, as soon as I finish raking and burning leaves, I’m going to wash my Escalade in my driveway and let all of the sudsy water run off into the storm drain to commingle with the nation’s water supply.”
“My God, E.,” I said, grasping the enormity of the concept. “The EPA can’t do anything to you if you live in a Sanctuary Home.”
“Correctamundo,” E. said. “The IRS and the county can’t touch me, either. I no longer pay income or property taxes. I’ve also removed all those tags on our couch pillows that say ‘do not remove under penalty of law.’”
A huge hazardous material truck began backing onto E.’s front lawn. A bevy of Hazmat-clad men jumped out and began stacking stainless steel barrels in the yard.
“Nuclear waste,” E. said, anticipating my question. “I’ve contracted with Sen. Harry Reid to take all the radioactive waste he kept out of the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada. They’ve already buried 10 loads in the backyard and filled the pool with heavy water. And you know what else? The backyard glows at night now, so I’m saving a ton on electricity by shutting down all my outside lights.”
“Your neighbors are all right with this?”
“You know that jerk Potter who lives next door? He ran over here last week and started screaming. Even took a swing at me.”
“You got in a fist fight?”
“Not exactly. He’s in the back yard, about 30 feet down,” E. said, patting the Uzi on his hip, which he redesigned to hold 900 rounds. “You should come by this afternoon. I’ve got some boys coming over to hunt bison and bighorn sheep behind the house.”
“Aren’t they endangered species?”
“They will be later today,” E. said.
©2016 Michael Henry
Published in Humor
Love it.
Love it. Well done. This site can’t have too many satirists.
I understand that colleges are now getting in on the sanctuary model. Isn’t federalism great!!!
What a wonderfully clever and creative form of whistling past the graveyard (we can probably take for granted that such politically-correct lawlessness is here to stay). I am certain those who zealously support (is there any other kind?) sanctuary cities viscerally detest anarchists. Humor sure makes for devastating criticism.
Can somebody explain why this sanctuary thing works for liberal causes but not for conservative ones? Illegal immigration have sanctuaries every where and nobody seems to care or can to stop it. But a conservative resistance to SSM required it to be enforced with the full force of the federal and state governments immediately throughout the country including back water parts of Kentucky where they have to ship in sun light. Why is one cause ok and the other not?
Well, Mr. Henry has given us the idea of using their little tactics against them. Why not have “sanctuary states” where federal laws that WE don’t like are ignored? Let them see how stupid and unwieldy it can be.
Recall the story (in the 1970s I think) of when National Lampoon seceded from the Union.
Well, why not? ;-)
Welcome to Ricochet!
Good stuff!
Uh oh, more competition on the humor front… gonna have to step up my game.
Well done!
Love it, Michael! You really drew me in! Skipsul should be worried!
Ya, me too. I didn’t think at first it was satire. (I’m still not sure for sure.)
Either way: we want more!
I like your friend “E” and I needed a good laugh.
What is enforced, traditionally, has to do with public perceptions. Those, traditionally have been controlled by the MSM. If the MSM hated sanctuary lawlessness, they would push it loudly and continuously until the law was enforced (the fact that the judiciary is heavily filled with progressive activists like the MSM has a lot to do with it, too). That would be how it would go if a city decided, for example, to ignore federal gun control laws. The media would scream continuously until heads rolled. Maybe, just maybe, the election of Trump signals the beginning of the end of that power. It really goes to the heart of the question of whether or not we are still a nation of laws.
C’mon Skip. You make electronic control systems. Cheat! Make something that breaks into the Ricomachine, finds the competition and messes up punch lines, confuses subject-object agreement, dangles a few participles, inserts random non-sequiturs, and the like.
Then people will go “Well, I guess, but I like Skip’s stuff better…”
Wait! You mean this was satire?
Anyone know where I can get some DDT? My Sanctuary House is going to be a lot more aggressive next summer in taking on the mosquitoes.
Me likee!
Excellent work. I enjoyed the tone and style and look forward to much more.
Where do you download the sanctuary home application forms from, and what filing fees are involved?
— great satire…
The legality of a “sanctuary” policy requires a case-by-case analysis. The law on what the federal government can compel the state governments to do in terms of law enforcement is somewhat complicated, and I would recommend reading Justice Scalia’s decision in Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997). Interestingly, the Printz case involved the attempt to require state LEOs to enforce the federal Brady Act (gun control law). The Supreme Court struck the law down to the extent it required state LEOs to conduct background checks.
Some basic takeaways:
State officials cannot actively prevent federal officials from apprehending an illegal immigrant, but at the same time, they cannot Constitutionally be compelled by federal law to act as a mere arm of the federal government. Obviously, state law could require a particular state (or municipal) official to comply with a particular federal law.
This made my day!
Whatever the federal government CAN do it should do.
Do you agree with this statement?
Yes, I think so. But to un-pack it a bit: The Executive Branch should enforce the law as written to the extent Congress allocates resources, with due regard for individuals’ rights under the Constitution. It should not engage in Obama-style DACA or DAPA plans to rewrite federal law. At the same time, the Legislative Branch should set reasonable immigration policy (removals, eVerify, prosecuting employers of those without authorization) that can be enforced without spending amounts of money that are counter-productive. [I think we would all agree that spending trillions of dollars to ensure absolute compliance would not be, overall, the best use of taxpayer money. But some very hard/alt-right folks do not seem to have any sense of proportion.]
I don’t think that the federal government should escape public scrutiny by pushing the blame for failing to enforce immigration laws on state governments, even if the state governments are being uncooperative. The federal government has all the authority it needs practically to deal with uncooperative state governments–and the discussions about the horrors of “sanctuary” cities strike me mostly as passing the buck. If the federal government wants someone detained and they can’t secure the state’s assistance, they should pick that person up immediately and without delay.
To add one more thought: I think it is important to recognize when the politicians who hold themselves out as being “on our side” are actually holding onto a wedge issue by failing to really fix the problem while claiming some other person is responsible for blocking their efforts.
You see it with the Democrats on poverty. They love to talk about all the work they are doing to prevent poverty (which never fix the problem because that would help them to lose their wedge issue), and to blame the evil Republicans for standing in their way. Both major parties do this on a wide spectrum of issues.
It is important to formulate a clear policy objective, figure out who is best able to implement the objective, and hold that person responsible until the objective is complete. A lot of the talk about “sanctuary cities/states,” aside from raising all kinds of Constitutional problems, just strikes me as being a mechanism for those with power to fix a problem (the federal government) speaking out about a problem while not taking clear corrective action and avoiding accountability by laying blame elsewhere.
The city where I work just declared itself a “sanctuary city.”
My response: posting this article on my office door.
Thank you, Michael.
I agree with you — especially the bolded section.
The term alt-right does not have common definition here at Ricochet (or Breitbart or Trump’s transition team) after the left has gone through and made it the same as racist. If you mean racist or bigoted then I think you should say so.
There is a super majority in America who want illegal immigration to stop or turned down to a trickle. There is a small but well-placed minority that is opposed to us and are deliberately breaking the law and paying no price for doing so. In fact they are flaunting it in our collective face.
Going after sanctuary cities is essential to break the influence of the minority of scoff-laws. Letting the left use some diversion tactics to prevent the country from ruling itself must stop. This minority needs to learn the lesson — not that they are wrong (you can’t teach the left right and wrong) but that they do not have the right to oppose our will on what is now a crucial and very important issue.
I think we are generally in agreement, but I hope you would also agree that immigration, while crucial and very important, is not the only issue. In a sense, people do not care about immigration per se, but about the effects that it has on them. If the economy was functioning in a way that worked better for the average person and people felt secure in their person and property, I doubt very much they would care about the mere fact that illegal immigration was occurring.
So immigration enforcement is a means to an end. It is not the only tool for fixing the economy or preventing crime, and I don’t think bedrock Constitutional norms should be violated where there is a solution that comports with them. (Specifically, getting the federal government to do its job.)
Fair point. I meant “alt-right” to mean the conservative movement that rejects Classical Liberalism in favor of Nationalism as the dominant intellectual principle. I did not in any way mean “racist” or “bigoted.” There are prejudiced Classical Liberals and there are perfectly open-minded folks in the alt-right, I’m sure.
Haha! Excellent!