New At YDN

I have a piece out today arguing that, since there's so much controversy over whether or not the Constitution contains an unenumerated right to privacy, why not go ahead and enumerate the fucker. Here's the nuts:

There is an Alexandrian solution to the problem of a constitutional right to privacy, available to those of us who think the moral issue of privacy rights is inarguable: simply amending the Constitution to include an explicit right to privacy.

In one clean stroke, the governing constitutional interpretation according to which the state may not intervene in its citizens' private lives will be codified, and any attempt to undermine abortion rights by attacking privacy surreptitiously, rather than arguing openly for legal recognition of blastocysts as persons, will be hobbled.

The victory for privacy rights in Griswold has come at the cost of throwing privacy advocates on the defensive for decades over an admittedly tendentious interpretation of the Constitution. Through an amendment to guarantee privacy rights, we would assert, in no uncertain terms, that those who argue for the regulation of private conduct according to tendentious moral schemata have some explaining to do as well.

You might notice that the piece contains a few awkward constructions that don't sound like my writing. That's because they're not my writing. Somebody at the paper decided to make alterations to my column after it was edited, without telling me. There have certainly been occasions in the past in which I disagreed with editorial decisions about my writing, and I've kept the public bitching to a minimum, but I'm a staff columnist goddamit, and I shouldn't have to wake up to find a half dozen of my phrases rewritten.

That said, I very much like being a YDN columnist and this is water under the bridge as long as I can get an assurance that nothing like this will happen again.