Well…the Democrats in Congress have gone even further off the rails since my last post…and not for actual they want to change things reasons but strictly for political gain.

While I agree that term limits for both the SCOTUS and Congress are a good idea that should be reasonably compromised on…instituting either would take a Constitutional amendment. Similarly…enforcing an ethics code on a separate branch of government isn’t in the powers authorized to the legislative branch so that again needs a Constitutional amendment. Similarly…now that the SCOTUS has stated that a President has some degree of criminal immunity…and left how much up to the lower courts to hash out first…and their opinion stated that this problem could not be legislatively fixed…again an amendment. And with that as background here’s what happened late this week. 

One amendment was proposed to reverse Presidential immunity. While I agree with the court that official acts confer absolute immunity and he has presumptive immunity for other acts but not for private acts…I think it’s too early in the process of hashing out the details in the lower courts to make a reasoned (i.e., non partisan) evaluation of this issue. Regardless…this amendment is being proposed as prescribed and it will either garner the required 2/3 majority in both houses and 3/4 of the states or it won’t; and I’m happy if it receives approval under the constitutional requirements.

The remaining issues have been proposed to be solved by legislation…and at this point all of the legislative people involved simply have to know that (a) there’s insufficient support to get them approved in either house of Congress, (b) they’re unconstitutional anyway, and (c) they’re just making these proposals to make political hay in the last 3 months of the election season.

Legislation has been introduced to (a) enforce an ethics code on the SCOTUS but strangely not on the legislative or executive branches, (b) add term limits to the SCOTUS, and (c) overturn Presidential immunity. As I said above…all of these are doomed to failure due to both insufficient votes to pass and unconstitutionality and even if the Democrats win the Presidency, keep the majority in the Senate and take the majority in the House there will still be insufficient votes since they won’t have a 60 vote majority in the Senate and they’ll still be unconstitutional. So…they’re just political muckraking. And the funniest part of it all is the Presidential immunity law…entitled the No Kings Act and introduced by Chuck Schumer. This legislation actually has a paragraph in it stating that the law cannot be ruled on by the SCOTUS…yep, it’s right there in the text. Apparently he thinks that Congress can by legislation simply declare themselves instead of the courts to determine the constitutionality of legislation without any possible review by the courts. Yeah…right.

Anyways…let’s get on to the afternoon images from day 4 in Costa Rica. But first a quick comment on Tropical Depression 4 which is currently passing over Cuba near Havana and heading northwest. It looks like it will continue on across or near Key West then curve northward and then northeast passing us about 100 miles or so off the coast, making landfall somewhere west of Cedar Key and exiting out into the Atlantic near the FL/GA border before continuing northeast out into the open ocean. It’s forecast to remain a tropical storm all the way through landfall and heading back out to sea although it could possibly reach hurricane status before landfall. It’s forecast to be 40ish mph winds as it passes our area with 8-12 inches of rain depending on where you’re at in FL and which prediction you choose to believe. So…pretty much a nothing burger for us as local winds are forecast at 20ish with gusts to 35 and some rain. We’ll pull in the light stuff from the lanai today as it will pass us in mid morning tomorrow but other than rain and some wind it’s not gonna be much it looks like.

As I said before, after lunch we headed further east on the Osa almost to the end because…Scarlet Macaws and I did put a couple of them in the previous post.

Scarlet Macaws are parrots about 30 inches long but half of that is the long tail and like eagles they mate for life, so the shots that have two individuals in them are very likely a mated pair with essentially no plumage difference between the genders. They particularly like to eat palm nuts as seen in these photos and will fly to the fruit to pick out a nut then over to a perch to eat that one before repeating the process…and a particular individual tends to always go to the same perch to eat. So…as photographers you pick out a good spot to set up your tripod with a view of the fruit and use a long lens but with enough space in the frame to get nice flight shots as they arrive and depart the tree…then swing around to get eating shots on their perch. High shutter speeds and frame rates are required to freeze the wings and get nice poses. And yes…there are a lot of these but they spent going on 3 hours at this location and there are probably 8-10 individuals at least represented here…there were 50 or more in the area but some were going to less conveniently placed palm trees. I’ve also tried to include a variety of wing positions so you can see the differing colors on top and bottom of the wings as well as interesting poses. And although several of them would probably be deemed lousy shots since the eye isn’t visible…Neil liked them so left them in anyway, particularly as some of the obscured eye shots are part of a several frame sequence of flight.

They really are pretty birds, aren’t they?

They finally headed back for the resort about 1630 as it was 2 hours drive back. Dennis’s stated intention was to not stop for anything at all but then about halfway back we stopped again at his almost in-laws place for a bathroom break and a monkey break he didn’t tell us about. Turns out that Squirrel Monkeys have 5 different sub-species and the Central American Squirrel Monkey which is only in Costa Rica on the Pacific coast are listed as vulnerable which is the first of the three categories recognized (vulnerable, threatened, endangered) that scientists recognize. Anyways…there is a troop of them on the family’s land and they’ve been feeding them for a couple of decades. I’m not going to get into the “feed them or not” debate…generally I come down slightly on the don’t feed them side but hey, not my country or land. They only feed them bananas so at least it’s part of their normal diet and they don’t do it daily so the troop isn’t really tame but is pretty habituated as these photos will show. Most were taken with his shorter 100-400mm lens rather than the 600mm. Strangely enough…this species can only sweat through the palms of the hands and feet and the feet are really more of a second pair of hands rather than what one normally thinks of as a foot. They’re also one of the few monkeys that doesn’t really have a prehensile tail…infants use it as one when very young but mostly it’s used by any that are past infant stage as a balancing mechanism very similar to the way the cheetah uses the tail. 

This one isn’t a newborn but isn’t quite to the teenager stage of development…they’re really a small species. The other members of the party were taking bets whether this one would climb up his leg.

Tightrope walk.

Next time…macro day with frogs and snakes galore.

Cyas.