scarfman | Fanfiction 10/6/06

Here are cartoons from the fanfiction sketchbook website since last Friday. Arthur, King of Time and Space cartoons in a separate post.

After this cartoon had been up for about twelve hours, a reader suggested that the issue to which it alludes isn't being covered in the news extensively enough for the cartoon to be comprehensible. [I saw it all over my flist, so I suspect everyone here is up to date, but still.]

There's a good article at The Washington Post, but in brief: Both houses of the U.S. Congress have passed a bill which, if signed into law by the President, will give the President the power to wiretap at his own discretion, to detain without due process at his own discretion, and to torture at his own discretion and have those who commit it pardoned. The Post article contains a quote from a Republican senator who decried the law as unconstitutional before voting for it.

I didn't have any plans to address the issue in my work because, with Merlin, I fear and believe that the growing obvious, blatant deterioration of the U.S. government is manifest of the cycle of human history; and that that won't be broken till we evolve into something else; and that there's no point to beating your head against a tidal wave. Then I read what Wil Wheaton wrote and agreed with it, which amounts to, "I want at least to go on record." Because the heroes I write would not be okay with this, none of them, on either website (nor some of the villains), and that's exactly the sort of thing I hope my readers come away with.