Of course he does. The Constitution being a flawed document and all, it takes someone willing to rewrite it to save it. Chris Stirewalt, Washington Examiner:
The White House and The New York Times are assuring Americans that President Barack Obama wants the next Supreme Court justice to be a pragmatist.
If you think of the law as a sick patient and the justices of the high court as country doctors, then pragmatism sounds pretty good. The most effective, least disruptive way to fix the problem is what everyone wants from a sawbones.
But what if you don’t agree with the diagnosis?
When legal scholars talk about a pragmatic justice, they’re talking about someone who isn’t bound by the law as written. In rendering a decision, he or she considers the context of the case and outside factors, like the greater social good.
[my emphasis]
Perhaps you’ve heard me mention this before, but it matters when some literary theorist or lawyer argues that context, rather than intent, grounds meaning. Context is ever shifting — giving interpreters license to argue that meaning, too, shifts with context, and that it is therefore their job to determine meaning rather than to interpret what was intended and apply that interpretation as a matter of law.
I’ve described that kind of “interpretation” as a rewriting of the original text by the interpreter, who then replaces the original text with his or her new text. And these new texts, under the guise of interpretation, pretend to attach themselves to the law as written, even as they often times are merely deconstructing the law’s original intent in terms of reach and use, if not extending it to the point where it becomes unrecognizable.
Such a maneuver enables “interpreters” to take control of that which is not theirs. From the perspective of formalism, the text — as a set of signifiers — hasn’t changed; but what has changed is that those signifiers are no longer under any constraint to be thought of as signs, and so at the end of the day, so long as the text looks the same, what it comes to mean is dependent upon how it is resignified by the interpreter, who now controls it.
And who controls it — who controls meaning — is now the new maker of the law. From the standpoint of the judiciary, this amounts to becoming super legislators: they not only write the law, but they are the last word on it, philosopher kings who don’t need to worry themselves over such tawdry things as elections and accountability to constituencies.
But as is always the pitfall with social engineering, somebody has to pick what’s good and what’s bad.
It was pragmatic for Chief Justice Earl Warren to find a way to outlaw school segregation through Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Most Americans came to see it as the right thing to do, even if Warren had to stretch the law to do it.
But folks were less happy 16 years later when Chief Justice Warren Burger used a similarly pragmatic approach to require some black students to be bused out of their neighborhoods.
[…]
Since the days of Jefferson, there has always been the concern that judges who consider more than the law and the facts of a case would become powerful, unelected legislators.
So Obama, who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, knows what he means when he says he wants a pragmatic justice to succeed David Souter.
The president, who is keen for an appointee with “empathy,†said last week his pick would know “that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory.â€
“It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of peoples’ lives — whether they can make a living, care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation,†Obama said.
That is a fine description for what legal pragmatism is all about — stretching the law in the name of the social good. But despite the workaday concerns the president used to illustrate the concept, pragmatism and practicality are not the same thing.
Robert Jackson was President Franklin Roosevelt’s eminently practical attorney general and eventual appointee to the Supreme Court. President Harry Truman thought so much of Jackson’s legal acumen that he asked him to take a leave of absence from the court to prosecute the Nazis at Nuremburg.
When Justice Hugo Black and the other activists on the Supreme Court were castigating the city of Chicago for stopping a racist speech that was causing a riot, Jackson dissented, famously saying:
“If the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.â€
Practical jurists, like Jackson and current Chief Justice John Roberts, apply their own legal views in light of the limitations of real life — the commonsensical application of the law by judges who believe in divided federal powers.
Contrast that with legal pragmatism, which holds that the pursuit of social justice requires the law to sometimes be subordinated or expanded by decree.
Obama knows how distracting confirmation fights can be. And given the massive agenda Obama is pushing, he doesn’t want to derail his global warming plan or health care initiative over an old-fashioned ideological fight.
One way to avoid that kind of showdown would be to appoint a practical liberal who agrees with Obama’s views but is still bound by the law.
But instead, it appears that Obama will attempt to pass off legal pragmatism — the essence of the activist approach to law — as a moderate view.
Obama doesn’t just want one nominee of his liking confirmed. He wants to redraw the boundaries of the legal debate and blur the lines between pragmatism and practicality.
Conservatives may not be that worried about seeing one liberal justice replaced by another. But if Obama succeeds in making activism a mainstream value, the debate, and the courts, could be lost to them for good.
To do this, all Obama must do is rely upon an idea of language that I’ve long pointed out has become heavily institutionalized, one in which meaning has been taken away from the utterer and rests with the interpretive consensus.
By pushing context over intent, literary theorists — and many others, including leftist jurists and proponents of a Living Constitution — have been able to hide the fact that they have taken control of every text by pretending that what were intended signs are merely signifiers, and that meaning therefore changes with context.
Which is true, to a point: their meaning, which is a result of their resignification of texts that they don’t own, changes from context to context. But the trick has been to sell this rewriting as interpretation, and then to pretend that such a disservice to the process of communication is somehow laudable as form of interpretive democracy.
It isn’t. It’s a form of collectivism, and what follows from that is majoritarian tyranny and, ultimately, totalitarianism.
But hey. Pointing that out from time to time seems to rock the boat, even on the conservative side of things, so I’ll go back to being quiet now.
After all, people like me don’t get fan sites. Hell, we hardly even get links anymore.
outlaw.
When I talk about someone who isn’t bound by the law as written, I use terms like “tyrant” and “dictator”.
It’s weird — the whole “torture memo” crap is over some guys being asked “what can we do and stay within the law” and coming up with answers that others disagree with. But when “progressives” flat-out declare that they’re not even interested in following the law, they’re either ignored or given accolades.
It’s weird… almost as if their concern for the “rule of law” was a paper-thin wrapper around their concern for their own power.
“someone who isn’t bound by the law as written”
So, 230+ years later, we’re to the Divine Right of Judges as political theory?
Fabulous.
I think our occasional nihilist/fascist/eugenicist mouth-breathing troll/commenter has stated that this is her ideal.
Well one of his nominees is on videotape saying that judges make policy and then starts laughing saying “we are not supposed to say that”.
HT Ace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Face%2Emu%2Enu%2F&feature=player_embedded
Close but not quite there. You got the thin paper part but forgot the two-ply and
small cardboard roll. Oh, and claims of soft comfort when used to wipe their backsides.
Great Moments in Future History:
Jeff Goldstein publishes “The Obamist Archipelago” – has to travel to Australia for the book tour as the US considers him to be an enemy of the state.
.
BumperStickerist,
Whaddya mean future? By the DHS’s estimation, Jeff and every last one of us commenters are “right-wing extremists” with “dangerous opinions about federalism” and therefore already qualify as enemies of the state.
This fits in nicely with Barcky’s desire to pursue social and economic justice with his picks as opposed to actually following the fuckin law.
Glad to hear a conservative who understands that affirmative action is constitutional since the Reconstruction Congress undoubtedly did not intend the 14th Amendment to ban racial preferences.
Can anyone decipher #9?
Again, this just stares me right in the face: “they’re talking about someone who isn’t bound by the law as written”
But, remember, Bush was the evil imperial President, doing as he saw fit; codes, statues and the like be damned.
Turns out, it was enough projection to open a chain of drive-in theaters……….
Um, wrong thread on the wrong board, troll.
No, Crab People is making a flippant remark about the 14th Amendment and intentionalism. But, well…:
I liked what John Derbyshire said some time back: The judiciary is the branch of government charged with making the laws that Congress has omitted to make.
Is there such a thing as a pragmatic empath?
Some people are more equal than others, huh crabs?
I like the entire quote:
“This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is a danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.â€
-Robert Jackson, dissenting in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 1949
That quote, of course, rebuts nothing I said. The same people who ratified the 14th Amendment also enacted legislation that created racial preferences. So either they thought racial preferences were constitutional or they were voting for legislation they thought unconstitutional.
Aside from the theoretical incoherency of intentionalism seriously as a method of constitutional interpretation, it has the practical flaws that anyone who takes it seriously has to think that Grutter was correctly decided while Brown was not.
The same people who ratified the 14th Amendment also enacted legislation that created racial preferences.
Evidence?
@Crab People: Yeah. Why should anyone be required to try to consider what was meant originally, when a black man’s been elected President? Everything’s unprecedented, now.
Like McCain – Feingold, you mean? One wonders, if it was their intention to ratify an amendment supporting the Constitutionality of racial preferences, why they weren’t a bit more explicit in their language. Instead, they seem to have gone out of their way to leave the language sparse, to give equal protection the greatest possible latitude. Did they do this accidentally or intentionally, do you believe?
As the Cornell link points out, the legislative history doesn’t give us any idea about what the final consensus was regarding stated intent. What we have to judge that by is the language that was eventually decided upon.
You don’t understand intentionalism, clearly. It just is. It is not a method of interpretation. It is what interpretation requires for it to be interpretation.
Another idiot has dropped by to annoy the PW commentariate. How original of him.
We are living in unprecedented times, with unprecedented challenges. So, screw precedent.
Crab people got no reason to live.
Screw history. History is riddled with bad mistakes by white men. Rewrite the whole damn thing.
“Comment by Crab People on 5/4 @ 3:49 pm #
That quote, of course, rebuts nothing I said. The same people who ratified the 14th Amendment also enacted legislation that created racial preferences.”
Yeah the Democrats created the poll tax, Jim Crow laws, segregation, literacy tests to keep non-whites from voting and racial preferences and licensing requirements that discriminated against non-white businesses and tradesmen.
That there is some mmmmm-mmmmmm good racial preferences.
Crab People wants to have it both ways of course. On the one hand it is shocking that Jefferson would write that “all men are created equal” while owning slaves. Clearly, Jefferson didn’t believe that. So there is no point in trying to live up to that ideal, since we have now established what a liar he was. Right? Now that we have figured out that his intention was something other than all mean being created equal, we are now free to ignore that ideal.
Maybe it’s better to understand that people can intend a great number of things that they are yet unable or unwilling to live up to themselves.
“theoretical incoherency of intentionalism”
Fine, I no longer think the Constitution was INTENDED to give you the right to voice an opinion on the internet. In fact, I INTERPRET that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen the arising of such an easily accessible form mass media that could sway souls to doubleplus ungood thoughts, therefore it can be my prerogative to control what is and what is not allowed online.
Pray I’m not a pragmatic judge in my spare time.
(standard disclaimer)
History is constantly being rewritten by The Deciders. If we start acting properly pragmatic maybe they’ll let us help with that. Okay, they won’t, but they will at least say they will, and that’s all that matters. Good intentions trump results.
Incidentally, didn’t Grutter turn on Bakke?
Wouldn’t want to be hidebound by the wrong authority, would we?
“form OF”
Oh. And now’s a good time to reintroduce this steamed dumpling conversation.
Likely the latter, if history is any guide.
Crabs likes bukkake?
Evidence?
Jed Rubenfeld, “Affirmative Action,” 107 Yale L.J. 427 (1997)
Key excerpt here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu/msg05088.html
Indeed. Why did they not say “color-blind”? The answer is, of course, because they didn’t want to upset school segregation.
And, as I pointed out, I’m not talking about the legislative history. I’m talking about what the same people did in other legalislative acts enacting racial prefences.
I’d say the same about you.
The judiciary is the branch of government charged with making the laws that Congress has omitted to make.
Wasn’t that the Central Scrutinizer?
Key excerpt here:
Read: “out of context quote here”.
Legislation to help specific group of people rendered destitute by a recent war is not the same thing as a preference based SOLELY (or even primarily) on race.
Try harder.
BTW, Congress doesn’t “ratify” amendments, Mr. ConLaw Expert.
Hiring or admissions quotas and spending appropriations aren’t necessarily very good analogues.
Question: Where’s the Constitutional authorization for Congress to appropriate money to spend on destitute women and children of any race?
Answer: No where, dude.
So I was right, they were certainly willing to pass laws they had to know were un-Constitutional.
http://wefivekingsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/common-good-is-emmergent-property.html
Fuck social engineering.
I know it did not work in jumping the Japanese economy when they had their lost decade, some some of this type of engineering would be cool. There are lots of these mega projects in Asia. Remember when the USA was famous for them?
And I am sure Instapundit would agree this type of project would be okay too. And the beauty is it could be done on the cheap, with existing technology.
In a post-racial America, your racial preference is who you are.
Maybe you missed the repeated references to “colored” in the statutory text.
<
Maybe you missed the repeated references to “colored†in the statutory text.
Maybe you missed the repeated references to “destitute” in the statutory text. Or the fact that those people had been made destitute by a recent (and brutal) war.
Oh, sorry. “Passed,†not “ratifiedâ€
Translation: you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Evidence?
Jed Rubenfeld, “Affirmative Action,†107 Yale L.J. 427 (1997)
Key excerpt here:
Did you even read the follow-up comments in that thread?
Also, this email from a law professor at the bottom:
-emphasis mine
I don’t see you proving what you think your proving.
Social engineering = Imagine having to watch David Bracchio for the next eight years. Now that is torture. At best, boring and expensive.
Real Engineering = Lets’ make something useful
Engineering is Fun! Okay, not that much fun, but it does do something productive.
If so, AA was operative for actual victims of racism.
Exactly so, and no one (certainly not classical liberals) would object to actual victims being entitled to recovery, even (let’s make that “especially”) if the perpetrator of the tort or other harm happened to be the government.
That’s a far cry from permanent preferences based SOLELY on race, and enforced against those who have never done the “victim” any harm.
Also, this from another law professor:
Compared to the crab cake, the steamed dumpling knew stuff.
The interesting thing is in state law, where I practice (I am admitted to the federal bar, but have not argued a case there yet) there is clearly defined steps to determining legislative intent, starting with the plain language of the statute, reading it as a whole.
And in regard to Brown v Board of Education? I think Justice Harlan’s dissent in <iPlessey v Ferguson is the better answer. And the majority opinion in Plessey is the best argument against judicial whim.
Joe
You would think we would have got at least a couple Hoover damn-esque projects from $787 billion worth of “stimulus” expressly touted as infrastructure focused. Even maybe a couple high tech hydrogen processing plants for the engines of the future or something large and visible that could be put in an O! campaign ad for 2012. But I think the neo-Luddite left what rants hysterically at defamations of mother Gaia likes neither construction or industry in any form, cf. the Massachusetts wind farm and the desert solar plants among others.
And if I can remember any of those correctly, the 14th Amendment made the protections of the federal constitution the floor beneath which no state could go. Before that the federal government could not regulate speech, but the states could. The 1st Amendment provided protection against an act by Congress, by the federal government. It did not restrict the legislature of any state. State blasphemy laws, for example, were constitutional.
Hey, hey, hey, Dash! Uncool! The Massachusetts wind farm has cancer, dude!
You know that to be the collective intent of all those who supported the amendment?
And yet wouldn’t or couldn’t make that explicit when framing the amendment. Not that that even matters.
I suggest you re-read the conversation with the dumpling.
As to my lack of understanding of intentionalism, well, I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.
Damnit. I must be pro-carcinogen.
If anyone can actually make an argument rebutting the proposition that the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment did not intend for it to bar racial preferences, please let me know. Not one of you has done it, for obvious reasons.
Except for referring to the Reconstruction Congress in my very first comment. But other than that, yeah, nobody would have had any idea that I could have been referring to acts of the Reconstruction Congress. Try re-reading the dumpling post.
Here:
Gee, you think? From a comment under the link you shared. And of course, originalism differs from intentionalism, in that intentionalism here would appeal to the intent of those who passed the amendment.
What are you talking about? I wasn’t talking about how the language of the amendment didn’t frame it in such a way that it was explicit on the point of race. I was talking about how you framed anything. That would be an entirely different discussion.
. Not one of you has done it, for obvious reasons.
Ah, now we arrive at the “proof” by bald assertion. For the obvious reason that you got your ass kicked.
The trouble with kind of linguistic theft is that the “interpretation” is always the same and favors only one ideological agenda.
When we were in grad. school and had to sit through some performance of this kind of rot, I had a friend who’d lean over and say “laminate it!” Meaning, neither the original text nor intent mattered–when a Marxist (feminist, anything-ist, puts the text through his interpretation sausage maker, it always comes out the same. So, they might as well laminate their argument and just post it somewhere.
Same with a “pragmatist” on the supreme court as described in this post. It won’t matter what the details of the case are–the pragmatist will always find in the direction of whatever social “good” (based upon some pet victimology) he or she prefers.
Crabbie pattie fancies itself a thinker. Sad.
what follows from that is majority tyranny and, ultimately, totalitarianism.
I see minority tyranny, starting with the nine black robes, continuing through an expansion-happy congress, and ending with the academics and MSM who control what flows through the public’s ideological circulatory system.
They’re in a minority by definition because they’re elitists, and when the “elite” become the majority, they’re not very elite anymore.
And we can’t have that.
Crab people, you’ve stated that Jeff doesn’t understand intentionalism.
Perhaps you could put forth a declarative paragraph or two defining intentionalism and then a paragraph or two explaining how Jeff doesn’t get it.
Because, hey, I’m all ears. Maybe you could teach us something.
Now think this through just a bit. In order for this Amendment to take effect, it had to be passed and ratified. When intentionalists examine that process, it is insufficient to note the behavior of one of those parties. The intent that is important is not merely that of the Senators and Representatives who proposed the Amendment, but also the members of the various state legislatures who ratified it. Their understanding of the meaning of the words is as important as that of the members of Congress that passed it (most of whom didn’t write a word of the Amendment, but may have participated in recorded debates about the wording.
One of the good reasons why most proposed Amendments after the Bill of Rights incorporate language requiring the requisite number of states to ratify within a few years of the proposal by Congress is to be sure that the meanings of words haven’t shifted measurably in the interim, the newspaper accounts of the Congressional debates have yet to yellow and fade, etc.
More, on the 14th.
Monster —
I think you’ll find I said something very similar to the steamed dumpling. And why I note that intentionalism differs from originalism in cases such as these.
Someone who knows better clarify this, but it has been bothering me (maybe I missed the full explanation above). This exchange at #45 between Crab People and, I think, Dan Collins (but I’m not sure because the nesting of quoted material and rebuttal doesn’t make it clear):
<
BTW, Congress doesn’t “ratify†amendments, Mr. ConLaw Expert.
Oh, sorry. “Passed,†not “ratifiedâ€. Devastating rebuttal, sir.
I think the BTW is a criticism of Crab People’s understanding of the amendment process and the “Oh, Sorry” is Crab People’s clarification.
But it’s my understanding that amendments may be introduced in one of two ways–by 2/3rd vote in the House and the Senate (or, through a Convention convened by the states themselves–which has never happened), but that there is only one way to ratify an amendment ot the U.S. Constitution–through a simple majority vote within the state legislatures of each of the states. Is this right?
In which case, the U.S. Congress neither passes nor ratifies amendments to the U.S. Constitution–it’s the state legislatures that do so. Am I correct in this understanding?
Okay, was posting before I saw Monster’s above. Jeff’s critique notwithstanding, I think Monster credits my understanding (of the process, not of intentionalism).
Crab People, you’ve stated that Jeff doesn’t understand intentionalism.
Surely it wouldn’t be very hard for you to write a few paragraphs supporting that statement. Just state it in the positive. 1. Define intentionalism. 2. Explain Jeff’s confusion.
C’mon, if you think you have him on the ropes — in an area of his expertise no less — why not finish him off?
It’s simple, bh. Intentionalism is what Crab People say(s) it is.
I think crab people is talking about originalism: “Originalism is the view that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning established at the time of its enactment.”
Hey–that’s what I said it was, except the opposite!
It’s like Government’s preferred shares mean something, but other people’s don’t. See? Screw contracts.
I suppose so.
Minor problem for the theory espoused by “Crab People”: the Jim Crow laws didn’t really kick in until the 1890s; the 14th was passed in 1868.
You can posit that the same people voted for both, but lots of things change in 22 years. In that span of time, the Democrats had managed to terrorize Southerners (white and black) out of voting Republican.
I’m interested in reading this. Anybody have a copy they can lend?
Which is to say, the “Reconstruction Congress” had nothing to do with Jim Crow laws. During Reconstruction, federal troops ensured everyone had the chance to vote; it wasn’t until the Democrats forced the withdrawal of federal troops and sent their “militant wing” to terrorizing Republican voters that they had the least chance of imposing Jim Crow laws.
IOW, race preferences enacted in the late 1800s had the same goal as race preferences enacted in the late 1900s: to cement the Democrat party’s hold on political power.
Just for fun I am going to drop this link in for the Michigan Appellate Digest. Through it the process of interpreting legislation can be found. I have found it vaery useful.
http://coa.courts.mi.gov/Digest/DigestLaunchPage.jsp
Congress “proposes” amendments as would a convention if one were convened.
In Re: The 14th Amendment. Here is the text.
Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Now, the concentration is on the first section. Despite all of the debates, what does the plain meaning of the words mean?
Just for fun, again, here is a link to Justice Harlan’s dissent:
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/plessy/dissent.html
And here is a pertinent part:
“But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
Enjoy.
I just love BS arguments from people that choose to name themselves after a nickname for a STD.
Re #81. My point was that while the Congress may propose, as may the states, ratification is reserved to the states within their state legislatures. There’s no mechanism for the U.S. Congress to have any thing to do with the ratification of a proposed amendment (except insofar as individual Congressmen and Senators prevail upon their state legislatures to pass or not pass).
I take it that the progression must go kinda like this:
Historical oppression of minorities > prohibitions against oppression of minorities > special programs for minorities > discrimination against the majority > other minorities pile on, sum as a majority of thought, advocate oppressing the former majority, even if it is by now a phantom > institute policy against certain speech and action > former majority becomes and stays a tacitly official minority > process halted, Amendment left violated.
Former majority, not terribly concerned at it’s new minority status per se, nonetheless chuckle at the contortions that lead to official speech policy.
That seems pretty straight forward to me. So how do you reconcile that with this:
Which sure sounds to me like some folks are more equal than others.
Oh, further to #85, this is to say that to avoid a lopsided application of law as well as discrimination and bias, the government must, as a practical concern (leading to an new enlightenment on constitutional principle and with it, on liberty) remain entirely outside of all racial issues, save to ensure not instituting racism or classicism itself.
Which is really to say that any domestic policy placed on the private individual outside of the basics of criminal justice is a constitutional violation waiting to happen.
Hence, JHoward, the reason why Justice Harlan should have been the basis of Brown, and why, over a hundred years after Plessy, he is stil pertinent. The federal constitution makes no classes of citizens, all are equal before the law when civil rights are concerned.
Are as Chief Justice Roberts has said, ‘to cease discrimination on the basis of race you have to cease discriminating on the basis of race’. (not precise quote)
How bloody liberal of both of them.
Which is a huge problem for the left. Except when it can load all four offices of the federal State, so we’d better watch that that never happ–
Ha! Somebody didn’t understand the word “analogue,” I take it.
Comment by B Moe on 5/4 @ 6:37 pm #
And I am glad that I can bow out, having placed the actual words before the forum.
What does the plain meaning of those words mean? To paraphrase Justice Harlan, If you are a citizen you have the same civil rights as any other citizen. No more – no less.
Now we can squabble about what is a civil right.
If I remember, O’Connor punted in Grutter — and kept bad law alive.
My hundred pound weight vest just arrived. If you don’t hear from me for a while, I’ve been consumed by the earth.
Don’t get too close to any black holes, such as Crab People’s intellect, and you should be just fine…
100 lb weight vest? Keeeeyrist!
Try and stay off the sandy places. Colorado’s practically made of granite, sandstone and clay, though, so you should be good.
Damn, I want one of those 40-lb vests, but freakin’ mail-order is about the only way to find one.
So Fishcakes simply declared victory and ran away?
Typical.
I have had one of those for a while now. Most folks call mine a beer gut, though.
I have the 40 lb from Everlast. I use it when I do my Thai box workout, and I’d been using it for walks.
Thing is, the weight is secured pretty low on the vest, which goes below the waist. The new one I have is the size of a half-shirt. Works the abs better and doesn’t pull as much on the shoulders.
See, that’s just the kind of information I’m looking for. There are some vests that are full-length and loose, or plain not conducive to doing any kind of body rotation. And then there are the ones that ride up high. Usually more expensive, but maybe worth it?
Okay, it’s starting to add up now. You’re going to join the bear wrestling circuit.
100lbs? And to think I didn’t like wearing 70 lbs of kit and carrying a carbine…
I do hope you do not submerge into the embrace of Gaia, too deeply.
I am afraid that our poor little common law is going to watch “certainty” get zorched, as a one time pillar of its poor self.
Depends on what you want, Slart. But I’d say yes, it’s worth it. The one I bought uses a d-ring and strap for a side fasten. Here.
It’s freakin’ HEAVY.
I can’t believe they make soldiers carry 70 lbs of kit. Walking a few miles with the 40lb vest is no picnic, let me tell you.
Sure, he wants a social engineer. He was talking the code recently I heard on the radio: “I will choose a judge who understands that justice is not an abstract concept.” Now, digging through the nonsense academese, what that means is this: justice isn’t a concept of right and wrong, it isn’t a principle of truth and fairness. It’s what you accomplish, what goals you achieve as a judge. Justice is a verb to the left, and he wants a verby judge.
Yeah, I looked at those. $300 is fairly steep.
Guess it’s what the market will bear, though.
Oh, the 50-pounder is only $200. Guess a 200-pounder would be a better deal, if there was one. But then I couldn’t move.
the talking points as I understand them is that the person our dirty socialist piece of shit president picks doesn’t even have to be a lawyer much less a judge, it just has to be somebody what feels it … I know this cause I been in many airports and the cnn propaganda is inescapable … but they’re very very into this idea to where they’re even getting droopy diseased Arlen in on the meme
did you pay shipping on a hundred pound weight vest?
Powerlineblog had the best title for this incident- “A Lawless President seeks a Lawless Supreme Court Judge.” If you haven’t figured it out yet, this man who was elected President does not respect the rule of law- he respects personal force, much like King George did- and he wants a judge who agrees with him. Whether it is using the force of the White House to intimidate banks, circumventing the bankruptcy process and intimidating judges there, or putting a judge on the court who decidedly does not believe in rule of law, Obama is a lawless tyrant.
What do you do in a 100 lb vest? Can you actually work out? Or do you wear it around doing normal stuff and work your stabilizer muscles?
I’ve occasionally worn a vest during a cardio workout before but it doesn’t weigh half as much and I can’t go longer than 15 minutes.
Obama is a lawless tyrant what stole Chrysler while I was busy doing stuff. He’s a dickhead socialist like that. I hope people are keeping an eye on all the stuff him and his skeezey woman are stealing.
I had one of those 40lb vest thingers for wrestling way back in the high school. They’re nice in theory but not so good for joints. Avoid especially if you’ve got bad knees.
gregorbo,
Sorry for the delay, life happens.
I wasn’t aiming #81 at you, just clarifying the language involved. Since Crab People had first asserted that Congress “ratifies”, which the State Legislatures do, and then that Congress “Passes” amendments which they also do not do, they “pass” Bills which then may or may not become Laws. They propose amendments to the Constitution.
Power, will to, any means necessary, file under Democrat, leaders of.
The MSNBC guy has beautiful little cheekbones.
Interesting bit here (emphasis mine):
Am I stretching the logic to say that aliens occupying US territory in violation of immigration law are enemies of the US by virtue of their committing acts hostile to her laws?
Does not a person who circumvents the border controls mandated by US law thereby refuse to subject himself to its jurisdiction?
The MSNBC guy has creepy nazi hair though.
Yeah, fuck you and your weight vest, pal. Next time, I’m dumping it on the sidewalk. Asshole.
The MEDIA is dead. Edward R. Murrow is gone. Consider this. Dan Rather tried to SMEAR a sitting President by actually holding fraudulant documents in his liberal misguided, RICH RICH hands. And when it became CLEAR that RATHER was the biggest FUCK UP in the HISTORY of MSM-Main Stream Media, he just continued forward as if he hadn’t pissed his own pants. HE DID PISS HIS PANTS. HE IS A LAUGHING STOCK. This smear happened DEAD CENTER in the MIDST of a Presidential campaign vs. a COMPLETE AND UTTER FRAUD. John Heinz Kerry Kohn. Kerry is a fraud. His claims at SUPERHUMAN NAVY PATRIOTISM AND MULTIPLE PURPLE HEARTS is and was the EASIEST….JOURNALISTIC TAP-IN, in history. When was Kerry wounded. How severely? Who put in the paper work for medals? What were the wounds? How long did he convalesce or recover? Where? What are the scars?? What are the disabilities that he suffered? Who witnesses these terrible war wounds?? Why don’t we know the extent of all these terrible wounds? Where are his medals? Whose medals did he throw over the White House fence? Why does’t Heinz-Kerry-Kohn show America the pertinant records????
The MAIN STREAM MEDIA never asked because they didn’t want to know.
Fast forward to OBAMA and his birth Certificate, Rezko, Reverend Wright etc etc etc.
The MAINSTREAM MEDIA is dead. Unless you are a lib or a sheep.
Not so fast, ‘feets. Not for lack of trying, but they ain’t quite stole it yet.
That’s heartening. This Lauria person is acting heroically which is a damn rare way for people to behave in Barack Obama’s America.
I will use the 100lb vest for short sprints; a 3 mile walk; heavy body weight workouts (push ups from a blow up ball, squats, etc).
The best part of it, though, is that the weights are removable. I’ll probaby use the new vest at 50 lbs for my Thai boxing workout and see if going up ten pounds makes a big difference with the weight up higher when I throw kicks.
Shipping was free, happy. It’s why I went with this company over MiR.
And yes, USPS delivered it. It came in two flat rate priority mail boxes.
Heh.
Good God.
We’re on a tour bus. We’re Romans on a tour bus, watching the decline and fall of our empire:
“And next we’ve got the public forum, where bread is distributed by the Praetorian Guard on days there is no Circus. Just look at all that construction going on; the Caesar and Senate know the importance of public works projects. What? Oh, those are Goths. Don’t worry, you’ll learn all about them a little later in the tour.”
Meanwhile, The Fedora is not amused.
Conservatism 3.0 anyone?
LOL! Obama has been in office for 100 days and all of you neocons have all shit your pants!
Read this clearly…. Obama is trying to salvage the American Banks and Auto Industry! He did not take them over – he is trying to save them from certain bankrupcy. What is wrong with you people???
This whole blog is for morons.
“watching the decline and fall of our empire”
and who are you blaming for this? The almighty 100-day-in-office Obama? No sir, it was 8 years of BUSH and the GOP. You have no one to blame but yourselves.
why?
Jeff, I hope you are doing rigorous due diligence on flexibility and diet if you intend to wear that much weight while kicking.
There’s nothing sadder than the sound of a thoracic disc giving up the ghost when you are at full extension, full power…
… and the sensation can’t be described, just experienced.
Peter, I think you should explore your statements at greater length.
Why do you consider this a neocon blog?
How did Bush cause the failure of the banking and automotive sector?
How is Obama saving them?
Do you consider Obama’s first 100 days to be full of consequence or little? Should we credit him with great action or credit him with going slow?
What do you think is the matter with us?
Please explain.
shhhh, bh, he’s rolling.
Hey, Peter, just where in the Constitution does it say “… and Spanky the Prez will always stand ready to divvy up the manufacturing base with the unions, with full authority to shit on creditors, it goes without saying”?
Governments build Trabants, Peter.
And historically, the Unions’ ability to fuck up a circle jerk is only eclipsed by the spectacular failures executed by elected governments “doing shit for the best intentions”.
Except that you seem to think that the One’s tap dance is supposed to fix something; nothing could be further from the truth.
It’s about bringing down the system. Nothing more. O’s not interested in fixing anything connected with the world he was raised to despise.
He’s come down from the mountains to show us the error of our ways. Give him a beard, a cigar, and the ability to speak in public without a teleprompter, and he could run Cuba. Not as well as Castro, but it’s the same show.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/4 @ 8:22 pm “Obama is a lawless tyrant what stole Chrysler while I was busy doing stuff.”
PLEASE CHECK YOUR FACTS DIPSHIT. Obama bailed out Chrysler and saved them from bankruptcy. He set some oversight to ensure the fatcat CEOs don’t run off with it.
Chrysler is in bankruptcy. And your Messiah is pushing GM into bankruptcy as well.
Paying too much attention, apparently.
You might want to check the news.
Don’t forget that Obama made that comment about the special olympics. Obama hates the handicapped!!
Give me a break.
um….
you were yelling about facts?
No, Bush, bailed them out and they’ve gone bankrupt under Obama. It was just last week, and it was in the papers and everything.
What was that you were saying about facts and dipshits?
DAMN YOU PABLO!!!!
um, could you maybe open the curtains a bit?
Chrysler currently exists solely because of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that Obama’s administration has provided.
Tell me I am wrong.
What’s worse is that he gets his history from Andrew Sullivan. For such a smart guy, he’s a dumb motherfucker.
Okay, which one of you jokers is doing “Peter”? No one is this dumb and owns a computer.
Trolls here are like a 4X400 relay. They all sprint then sputter and pass the baton to the next moonbat. A paranoid soul might think they’re sent here in shifts by some entity.
Hopefully Peter will be kind enough to answer BH’s questions for our ent-o-tainment.
hey, where’d the goalposts go?
OK, Peter. You’re wrong. Really. And you’re dumb.
I hope that helps.
Bankruptcy, this thing is not the thing you feel it to be. What Obama is doing is much worse and will have effects that ripple through everything, bad effects, for years.
Of course the things I see as bad, in my insanity of the “false consciousness”, progressives see as wonderful. So there is that, and thus no reason to “reason” about it with them.
Still bankruptcy is not all bad, it is simply a legal announcement of a reality everyone knew existed. Until the problem can be and is acknowledged it will just grow worse. Which is what I expect and believe Obama and company want. A worse and worse crisis, to use, to not let go to waste.
I do tech support for a living. You simply have no idea how dumb a computer-owner can be.
Point taken, Monster. Carry on, Peter.
Christ, that money from Bush was pissed away in weeks. It is all lost and unaccounted for and Chrysler was still going under. THAT IS why Obama is stepping in to ensure the bailout does not go to bonuses and CEO vacation homes.
It is about accountability.
Peter, the brevity of your comments is your only fault. Please expand, at length.
Fixed that for you, Peter. Except that didn’t work and Chrysler is dead. All that’s happening now is picking through its pockets and trying to figure out if there are any organs worth selling.
Do you like Fiats, Peter?
so Peter, do you have some kind of motorized something to move those goalposts? because I must say, it’s not going terribly smoothly for you. might be time for a tune-up.
Oh, and do show us the money Obama gave them what works so much better than the stoopid Bush money. Don’t be afraid to link.
Maggie, I’m on a neocon blog and I am the only one that hasn’t crapped their pants over Obama. It has only been 100 days… just give him a chance.
Peter, you’re an idiot, and you’re lost. Do you have an emergency contact?
Hee hee, you can bet that no foreign national will be throwing shoes at Obama. That shit only happens to you neocons! LOL!
Neocon blog? Could you define neocon? Just a sentence or two is fine.
And, just a 100 days? Or, the best 100 days evah?
Fill us in. Thanks in advance, Peter.
oh look! BUNNIES!!!! thank you, Peter.
speaking of oversight. you do realize that this guy is kinda in charge of that? is that a good idea?
Is there like some family or a mental health professional that’s interested in your well being? Anyone?
aw, i goofed the html. Rattner, car czar extraordinaire.
“I’m on a neocon blog”
Heh. With that gem and everything else you’ve written tonight it’s pretty obvious you don’t have a strong grasp on reality.
Watch as all of the moderate republicans jump ship and go independent or democrat.
The GOP is history.
Hee hee, you can bet that no foreign national will be throwing shoes at Obama. That shit only happens to you neocons! LOL!
That’s true. I’ve never seen a conservative throw shoes, wear a papier mache mask, throw a pie in someone’s face or shout down a speaker. Probably because of the adultness.
and other link.
oh Peter, your last name is Rabbit isn’t it? the bunnies, they are multiplying!
Consider all of the ‘damage’ Obama has caused in his 100 days… imagine how it affected his approval ratings.
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090429/obama_100days_090429/20090429/?hub=TorontoNewHome
64% approve of your so-called Socialism.
I guess the whole world is delusional.
um, did you read the whole thing, Peter?
Ah, come on, you know you want to flaunt the big ol’ “J” word.
Don’t read this, Peter. Really. Just don’t.
Peter, the rest are making fun of you, but you know how those neocons can be.
Me, I want to hear more.
Could you flesh out your ideas at greater length? How did Bush destroy the banking and automotive sectors? How will Obama save them?
I’m a potential convert. Explain those to issues and I’ll get all Specter with you.
That’s true. I’ve never seen a conservative throw shoes, wear a papier mache mask, throw a pie in someone’s face or shout down a speaker. Probably because of the adultness.
Yeah, Abe… Neocons prefer assassination.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/oct/16/na-obama-slaying-joke-sent/news-politics/
to = two, I was home-schooled by neocons, Peter, both excuse and educate me.
“I guess the whole world is delusional.”
Now a tepid 64%, considering the absolute love fest on TV and in Print, is the whole world?
Honestly, how old are you Peter?
Yeah, Abe… Neocons prefer assassination.
Wow! A tastless joke. And mere weeks after a progressive loon tried to set off a bomb at the Republican convention. C’mon Peter. I’m a potential convert, do better.
except that the joke doesn’t mention assassination. if you would look for the whole thing it says his plane is hit by “friendly fire” missile. FF are generally accidents.
Peter changes subject in 5… 4… 3…
Peter, I personally find neocons to be a little bergy and steiny. Kinda fatcat-like. Bankerish, if you will. Weird spinning holiday toppish. Unleaveny.
You ever notice that, Peter?
You certainly appear to be.
Nice website Maggie. Oorah!
getting bored now.
Worst troll ever.
Today I have learned that CEO’s are fatcats and if you don’t watch them like hawks they will run away with stuff.
I don’t know, Makewihe doesn’t look like he’s running much of anywhere.
I’m sure they haven’t scraped the bottom of the Prog barrel yet. Like the Japanese WWII fighter pilots they will just get worse as the experience level declines.
Peter is an example of an “engaged” progressive.
God help us.
And I learned today that,
– Obama is a lawless tyrant what stole Chrysler while I was busy doing stuff.
– we are “watching the decline and fall of our empireâ€
– Maggie loves her gunz
NEOCON!!!
He can’t run maggie, because he’s loaded down with all the money that Bush gave him. Which is, like, totally different then the money that Obama gave him.
um, you really don’t pay much attention to details do you?
*ahem*PLEASE CHECK YOUR FACTS DIPSHIT.
You’ve learned nothing today, Peter. Hell, you don’t even know where you are, much less who it is you’re talking to.
heh, so it is, Makewi, so it is.
[…] to Protein Wisdom homepage « “Obama wants a social engineer for high court” | Home | May 5, 2009 Obama appoints self Commissioner […]
And I learned today that
What I learned today:
Peter isn’t very bright, and is only marginally literate.
That is going on a bumper sticker.
“I do tech support for a living. You simply have no idea how dumb a computer-owner can be.”
Did you ever get a “my cup holder won’t come out of the computer” problem?
I think Peter’s entire contribution to this thread can be summed up when he was trying to argue Obama was saving Chrysler from bankruptcy. Hilarious freakin hilarious.
150
Never heard about Chicago, have you? Pity.
He had me at “fatcat CEOs”.
When these little whiney losers type “fatcat CEO’s” do they realize the amount of work those people put in to build the resume’s and experience needed to get those jobs? It is almost as if they think the CEO job just falls in some random rich kids lap, some random rich kid they are much better than in every detail.
It is also just kind of childish and lame I think. I much prefer robber-barons, its what I call the owners of the company I work for. They like that a lot.
“Do folks think that the Warren court considered “more than the law and the facts of the case†when it made its weak attempt to end segregation?”
Gee, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us?
Here we go again. Meya trots out the argument that the Warren court basically allows any left wing judge to make his opinion law. Evolving standards of decency I guess.
“No doubt there were conflicting interpretations of the phrase “equal protection†among sponsors and supporters and the legislative history does little to clarify whether any sort of consensus was accomplished and if so what it was.”
So I guess intent goes to the one that best ignores evidence of the other side.
“You know that to be the collective intent of all those who supported the amendment? ”
Can anyone ever? A lot of people are involved in getting an amendment passed. Congress has to approve, and states have to ratify. That’s a lot of people with intent to add up. Do they all matter equally?
“Gee, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us?”
Believe it or not there are folks out there who opposed that decision and think it was lawless activism. Not me.
“There is a danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
He wrote this in a dissent 60 years ago. Would it be practical or pragmatic to note that he wasn’t really correct?
“Does not a person who circumvents the border controls mandated by US law thereby refuse to subject himself to its jurisdiction?”
You’ll find that when an undocumented alien commits a crime, they are subject to the jurisdiction of the US. Or perhaps you’d rather have it otherwise?
Good to see that meya got her morning mendoucheous puke out of her system.
Believe it or not there are folks out there who opposed that decision and think it was lawless activism.
You need to take that up when them folks out there then.
Would it be practical or pragmatic to note that he wasn’t really correct?
I think incoherent is the word you are looking for, and the answer is “yes”.
So I guess intent goes to the one that best ignores evidence of the other side.
Is there an emoticon of a dog twisting its head sideways like when it hears a strange sound?
“That’s a lot of people with intent to add up. Do they all matter equally?”
Try reading the amendment and seeing what it says.
WTF does any of this have to do with the President wishing to appoint a judge who looks beyond the legal text and law when deciding a case? I mean why stop at “empathy”, he could just say he wants a judge to decide how “cool” a decision is before coming to it.
I’ve had to deal with discs that no one can access because they were put in upside down. I blame TV and movies for that one; they always show people putting optical disks in the drive shiny side up. Between that and people calling a slash a backslash, they really make my job difficult.
But I think the one that takes the cake is when someone called said that their “hardware guy” had told them that a monitor was wearing out and would need a “new light bulb”.
Meya why should we care about Warren and Jackson and all those old dead white guys? We need some CHANGE and to start looking at the SC as a place where empathy rules. Also the judges need to start getting into redistribution of wealth, because our Congress isn’t doing it enough.
Shorter SFAG (and Obama):
Judges should be all-powerful — as long as they rule in conformity with my whims.
Teh little fascist meya appears desperate to change the subject.
It happens.
“Meya why should we care about Warren and Jackson and all those old dead white guys?”
Jackson was wrong. We should care about that when trying to promote him as a paragon of ‘practical.’ Lest we end up with the ‘practical’ limits on the first amendment that Jackson wants us to have.
Teh little fascist meya appears desperate to change the subject.
About every other sentence, as near as I can tell. She is making incoherence an art form.
Yeah I know right. Obama rules Governments by the People drools. He won so now “No soup for you”. No rights for any coorporation and not any democratic resource for the People to affirm their will. All those Prop 8 type ballots, F them just appoint a judge to overturn them. AIG execs contractual bonuses, well F those too just get together a MSM lynchmob and then have Congress invalidate them and tax 99% of their pay. Chrysler bondholders stake in the company, sorry guys you gots to pay into the UAW retirement fund so they can continue donating to Democrat campaigns. Screw the People, power to the Government.
““Try reading the amendment and seeing what it says.â€
Ah but that’s different than intent.”
W.
T.
F.?
SFAG never stops to wonder what’s going to happen when that mob with pitchforks turns on her and hauls her in front of one of her rule-by-decree “people’s judges”.
Hint: look into the fate of Maximilien Robespierre.
“SFAG never stops to wonder what’s going to happen when that mob with pitchforks turns on her and hauls her in front of one of her rule-by-decree “people’s judgesâ€.”
I bet those judges have alot of empathy.
““Try reading the amendment and seeing what it says.â€
Ah but that’s different than intent.â€
Which explains the ex-post facto taking Congress passed against those AIG people.
After this:
“There is a danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.â€
He wrote this in a dissent 60 years ago. Would it be practical or pragmatic to note that he wasn’t really correct?
And this:
Jackson was wrong. We should care about that when trying to promote him as a paragon of ‘practical.’ Lest we end up with the ‘practical’ limits on the first amendment that Jackson wants us to have.
I have no idea what position she is even taking.
Neither does she, B Moe.
She’s essentially a two-year-old screaming “Me WANT! Me WANT!”, without any clear idea of exactly what she wants or how to get it.
It’s up to Daddy…er…”the government” to make her happy. The government, and indeed, the entire world, exist solely to cater to her inchoate lust for power.
Tyranny of the Idiocy.
Justice Frankfurter in dissent:
Shining a light on the arbitrary sleight of hand.
Maggie – that was a great cat picture- its now my desktop bankground. Corporations are bad !!
And I’m confused- there’s something wrong with a woman who loves her guns ? Call me a neocon redneck godbotherer but there ain’t much sexier than a woman who can handle a handgun.
meya, if you’d just cop to wanting courts to enact “social justice”, this debate would be much easier to have- we can then debate the merits of it versus the intent of the founders, which would be fine if you actually understood their intentions.
You have about as much a handle on the constitution as barraky.
There is none to take in the sense you mean. For the Left arguments with political opponents are a game of “throwing shit against a wall and seeing what sticks”. Since it is a game, as I said previously they see our world view as insane, it cannot have any effect on their positions.
It is done only to see what can be used to drive the squishes to them or at least to flee us in horror. It is why the ones on TV are constantly smiling, they have nothing to lose and can only win in their view of the confrontation. They are playing “Go Fish” with a child as they see it.
The real game is not about positions, law, the constitution, it is simply about power, the acquisition and retention of. Those positions we hold, liberty we love, can be removed by the use of power and so mean nothing to them, ghosts they are. Easily removed by the proper application of a rubber hose. A socialist exorcism rite.
For this reason you’ll never see a leftist statement of principle (in fact, you’ll see plenty of overt rejections of principle from the left.)
meya? Apply your towering intellect to this fundamental problem. Can you? No?
We’re on a tour bus. We’re Romans on a tour bus, watching the decline and fall of our empire
Its been collapsing for about fourty years, we’re just seeing the latest pillar fall in the process. Rome took centuries to fall apart.
meya’s position is that divining intent is difficult — and to get it absolutely correct in the case of long dead ratifiers is impossible — therefore why even bother? I mean, to decide, we have to decide. And to decide, we might have to create a hierarchy of evidence, some of which conflicts. And that is just wrong!
Difficult is so much more difficult than not worrying about intent and just taking ownership of those signifiers ourselves! And hey, who were they to tell US what to do, anyway?
This is the default position of leftism. They take the labor of others, co-opt it, and then claim that it is as much theirs as it is that of the people who produced it in the first place.
Nothing she’s said here challenges anything I’ve written. Nothing she’s said here challenges intentionalism. Originalism is not the same as intentionalism. And to answer what she appears to think is a difficult question, no, we don’t need to atomize all the individual intent. We have, in cases such as these, to try to glean the consensus of intent that enabled the amendment’s ratification. The way the amendment was ultimately written is a clue toward the intent of those who ratified it. In fact, given the conventions for writing law — the aim is for precision and to leave the text open only to those interpretations that fit the intent — the wording of a particular law is often the best clue toward divining the intent of those who wrote and/or passed it.
And yes, some laws are badly written. Which is why we should repeal many that have become too “open” as texts.
Robert Higgs’ statement should become a rallying cry: “Don’t just stand there, UNDO SOMETHING!”
Brilliant.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guns. I just can’t recall ever having handled one. RTO occasionally mentions going to the range, but we’ve never made it there together. FTR there is some kind of hand gun here and a commemorative AR-15. But I’m guessing peter just saw the profile picture of RTO firing an mp5 and ran with it.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean – neither more or less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
While we’re there:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
It’s tempting to frame this as a simple choice — Do we interpret what’s written or do we rewrite what’s written? — but it’s not that simple. Lawyers and judges interpret documents every day. It’s part of practicing law and it’s often necessary to look to context to interpret the intent of a legal document. In general, conservatives are simply more interested in incremental change than liberals, so they favor more limited interpretations. I’m a conservative so I favor incremental change instead of the broader, more sweeping changes many liberals embrace. In other words, both use interpretation as a vehicle to make change. It’s simply a matter of degree.
DRJ !!!!
You and Reubenfeld should know, if being honest, that you can’t compare Congress’ authority over DC to their national legislative authority.
THe 14th Amendment was a watershed–for the first time the Congress could reach all the way to the lives of individual Americans, but are still bound by other Consitutional limits. Congress has, since ratification, had such authority, and far more, just as any City Council does, in the lives of residents of DC.
Apple, meet Orange.
Brilliantly articulated as always, Jeff. Leaves me with a pit in my stomach, too.
You know, in response to Meya, I posted a link to Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy, that pretty much said everything that needed to be said about equal protection and civil rights in, what, 1893?
beware of activist judges, such as the Plessy majority, who decided that the plain meaning of the Amendment under question was something totally different.
Perhaps I should repost the link to Justice Harlan’s dissent, and this time emphasize the essential liberality of his dissent? It is classical liberal, clasical liberal, clasical liberal because it states that before the law all are equal, equal, equal. There are no favored classes, favored classes, favored classes.
My pardon for the repitition, but I wanted to say it in one comment without repeating myself again.
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/plessy/dissent.html
She doesn’t get it. She measures the world by idnetity and thinks that we must. She judges that we would or should agree with the Sentiments of Terminiello, therefore, we should think that he should have prevailed.
And it doesn’t work that way.
From the perspective of semiotic, it is that simple.
Leaving something intentionally vague opens it up to a broader interpretive berth.
This has all been covered. The problem is, meya, you didn’t really pay attention when I was discussing intentionalism.
“Leaving something intentionally vague opens it up to a broader interpretive berth.”
I know. I listed this as a limitation to the precision that intent can give us. The framers gave us words like ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection’ and ‘due process’ and ‘necessary and proper.’ Which gives quite an interpretive berth.
oh good the choice is interpretation or rewriting what we want. mother earth how much does it cost to be so stupid. it is ok obama will pay for it. obama likes stupid people like himself.
You can’t assume that a law means what the words say it means? Then why even bother writing it down? Why bother posting here, you can’t really assume any of these words mean what we say they mean either, Hell we may all be raving fucking lefties, who the fuck knows?
I guess this is about what I should expect from pinheads who think the world needs regularly reminded that Mean People Suck.
I interpret meya’s comments to mean “I’m out of Clearasil so I have to stay indoors hiding and with nothing better to do than say stupid shit on the internet.”
Your confusion is understandable, having to guess at what I think, as you have taken both sides of the Termineillo example and I referred to what had been, at one time, your position.
So thank yourself for the lack of clarity.
Perpetually.
Verum Serum digs up an enlightening Sotomayor speech. It’s what you’d expect.
Why is everybody looking at me?
I wanted to like you Larry. You fucker. I really did.
I have no idea what this means.
Terminiello’s speech rights were not violated. In fact, they were protected by the presence of the police. It appears to me that the cited case wasn’t a case remotely about the First Amendment. It was about whether the state could fine the guy a hundred bucks for inciting a riot, thus disturbing the peace. So the majority was wrong and the dissent had it right, that the majority overreached on account of their personal feelings and read into the record much matter that simply wasn’t there, all while reading out of the record everything that was there.
If it’s uninteresting, why did you quote it and comment on it?
And Sdferr’s point is well taken. Terminielllo was completley allowed and even empowered by the state to say what ever he wanted and needed to say.
What happened next was that there were consequences that arose because of how he went about it, in this case a fine for disturbing the peace. Speakers may say what they like, but they may have to contend with consequences because of it. That the state might impose some of those consequences is not an abridgement of their freedom of speech.
It’s a common point that the left has problems with (either failing to understand it, or mroe likley, deliberately misstating it in hopes that the audinece will and so be swayed to support them)–the kerfuffle over the Dixie Chicks, for example, with the (completely wrong) claim that they were being “censored.” No such thing–they simply succeeded in alienating a large chunk of what had been their fan base and had to deal with it.
Just as in the majority’s opinion in Bush v Gore, Justice Jackson completely missed the correct reasoning and misstates the law, but still comes to a correct result. Misapplied as it is, though, it’s still a great quote.
Not so.
They allowed the use of the hall, which could have been prevented in any number of ways, as Sdferr mentions, they exercised police protection (heroic measures even as it’s described).
Didn’t remotely say this. Said quite the opposite rather.
Impossible, as throughout the course of the thread you’ve taken both sides at different times. Therefore I prefer to say that I agree with you.
I don’t suppose you’ve ever bothered to read Vinson’s or Frankfurter’s dissents? They are better argued, if less sonorous than Jackson’s. You shouldn’t get the idea that this is a new position for me. I had my Con Hist prof in about as sputtering a state as you are now and that was 18 years ago.
Kinda funny for a first amendment case, eh?
Not what I said. Not what happened either. You really don’t have to work so hard to understand what I say (what most of us here say). I know it’s not what you’re used to, but your constant attemtps to “decode” are just going to continue to lead you further into the weeds.
RTO Trainer, you’re bending over backward to credit meya with discussing this in good faith.
She’s not doing anything of the sort.
Of course, but not for the cause that you assume, and the court assumed. That’s not what he was fined and convicted for.
Yes. And they were wrong. It happens, but we needn’t compound the error.
What a douchenozzle.
A couple of hints for you meya. The crowd didn’t disagree with Terminielllo, they rioted because they agreed with him. And secondly, people say essentially the same thing as Terminielllo all the time and never get in any trouble. He wasn’t arrested for what he said.
Asked and answered, Counsellor.
Which is still inaccurate.
Fruit of the poisoned tree (to borrow a phrase). It’s still not a speech issue.
Ask the victim of a lynch mob.