Yesterday's decision by the U.S. District Court in San Diego dismissed a lawsuit brought by PETA against SeaWorld which sought to free five orca whales held by the amusement park company. The U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller wrote in his ruling that the lawsuit had no standing because the 13th amendment of the US consitution does not protect the right of 'non-persons'. "The only reasonable interpretation of the 13th Amendment's plain language", Judge Miller said, "is that it applies to persons, and not to non-persons such as orcas". PETA should, in this writers opinion, appeal this ruling immediately to the US Supreme Court because the ruling shows a clear logical and legal route to the solution of the conundrum of the corporate personhood fiasco that is right now destroying the 2012 election process and threatens US democracy in general.
As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn.". Here-the question of who has a soul and who doesn't-lies solution to both the animal rights and the Citizens Untied situations and if PETA argues this case along those lines it will change the course of history one way or another.
There are only two answers that the Supreme Court can give to such an arguement. One is that only living breathing members of the species homo-sapiens are persons-which means corporations are non-persons. The other is the souls for all decision-in that case not only corporations but all flora, fauna, microbes, minerals, forces and faeries are given personhood too. mr. mud, like other panthesists including Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Margaret Atwood, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, Henry David Thoreau, Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Spinoza and Sitting Bull-to name a few-favors the latter.
