Read it and weep.
What Obama is after is a logical extension of who gets to determine meaning and, importantly, how they are able to justify their right to do so — in this case, pretending that the law extends beyond what the law is supposed to address, allowing its newly freed interpreters to do as they please with all the penumbras and emanations they will suddenly discover.
Judges who look beyond the intent or scope of a law for ways to make special pleadings fit are no longer acting as jurists. They are acting as unelected legislators who presume to circumvent the will of the people based on their own subjective sense of right and wrong. They have become philosopher kings, and worse, they are acting in a way that is transparently political.
It is fine for a judge to be empathetic. It is disastrous, however, for a judge to rule based on what his heart tells him. In fact, it is the ability to make the correct legal ruling despite what your heart is telling you that should be the standard by which we gauge our jurists.
Just as tolerance is not working to make sure no one feels uncomfortable, justice is not bending the law in order to reach the outcome your heart tells you is the correct one.
The fact is, a particular judge’s heart can not be codified; and so it is more than absurd to try to base a legal system on such an arbitrary (and potentially ephemeral) standard.
That Obama has figured out a way to make his philosophy for politicizing the judiciary palatable to the American people just shows that Alinsky and Gramsci were no idiots.
That many Americans have fallen for his pitch for judicial “pragmatism” just shows that many Americans aren’t as clever or invested in their freedoms as Alinksy and Gramsci were in taking them away, one small step at a time.
Comment by Andrew the Noisy on 5/13 @ 3:30 pm #
All of this has been in the works for a long time.
Back in the Civil War, one of the last great bloodsheddings before the rise of germ theory, doctors spoke of certain types of oozings from bullet wounds as “laudable pus” and assumed its onset was a good sign. It wasn’t: it meant the wound was septic and would kill the patient absent a date with the bone-saw. This and the rampant dysentery that killed soldiers faster than battles ever would was held to be the result of “miasmic odors” or other such causes. None of them had a clue what the real problem was.
Obama’s media lickspittles are rather like that. They know there’s a problem, but they are so devoted to their ruminations and witch-doctoring that they cannot see it. They see the growth of unfreedom and assume it must be a “right-wing conspiracy” or the result of “excessive deregulation.” And with every crisis, they can do nothing but demand a larger bone-saw.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 3:34 pm #
Whelan, in his linked responses to the “95%/99% unanimity claim” Obama makes, says, rather more pointedly:
[emphasis in the original]
Comment by JD on 5/13 @ 3:35 pm #
I really really really do not care for these people.
Comment by Squid on 5/13 @ 3:39 pm #
Somebody needs to tell this guy that Justice isn’t just blind; she’s a heartless bitch. And that this is a good thing.
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 3:39 pm #
How did we arrive at the conclusion that Opie is intelligent? Based on what standard?
Comment by Makewi on 5/13 @ 3:43 pm #
He’s a democrat, and so he’s smart. Duh.
Comment by Matt on 5/13 @ 3:48 pm #
Feeeeelings… we nominate scotus based on … feeeelllinggs….
Comment by Joe on 5/13 @ 3:53 pm #
It is fine for a judge to be empathetic. It is disastrous, however, for a judge to rule based on what his heart tells him. In fact, it is the ability to make the correct legal ruling despite what your heart is telling you that should be the standard by which we gauge our jurists.
That is exactly correct. Judge made law is often cheap virture and in the end aything but virtuous. It is hard to pass legislation. It is easy to have an appointed person do it for you.
In a nerdo film reference, think of the Elf Lady of the Woods in LOTR, when she contemplates having the ring herself.
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 3:59 pm #
Errrrr Squid, I think you meant.
(Somebody needs to tell this guy that Michelle OBama isn’t just ugly; she’s a heartless bitch. And that this is a good)
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 4:00 pm #
I empathize with the taxpayer, does that disqualify me?
Comment by LTC John on 5/13 @ 4:02 pm #
“…Alinksy and Gramsci were in taking them away one small step at a time.”
Nothing small about it. Certainty is a huge part of, if not the basis of the Common Law. If it is just up to a judge to “feel” an outcome, you have no ability to know what will happen from day to day in the courts of law. This means nothing is safe – contracts, criminal prosecutions, tort law, BK, NOTHING.
Damn.
Comment by Makewi on 5/13 @ 4:07 pm #
There seems to be a good percentage of this country who have lost the plot. I’ve been involved in a discussion on another site in which those self identifying as being on the left believe that it is better to have 2 mechanisms to amend the Constitution, or perhaps more specifically the limited powers granted the government. The first being the one laid out for us in the actual text of the document in question, and the other being what amounts to the whim of 9 unelected God-Kings.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/13 @ 4:15 pm #
Out: Rule of Law
In: Arbitrary Rule of Men
“Fucked” doesn’t begin to cover it.
Comment by A fine scotch on 5/13 @ 4:35 pm #
Can I start printing “Uck Fobama” shirts yet?
Also, because I haven’t said it todays, I hope he fails.
Comment by ewb on 5/13 @ 4:41 pm #
Out, law.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 4:47 pm #
Ah, but for Obama and the Left they are “their” men. For those of a more pragmatic bent they should be called “good men”, and so they are all, all “good men”…of the Left.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 5/13 @ 4:47 pm #
“Empathy” is newspeak for “make policy” when the existing one isn’t sufficiently progressive.
That’s how the passage of a law in Belgium can count for more than a law passed by the legislature of Louisiana concerning the death penalty laws of Louisiana.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 5/13 @ 4:59 pm #
That Obama has figured out a way to make his philosophy for politicizing the judiciary palatable to the American people
Are you sure that it is more palatable?
Comment by adagioforstrings on 5/13 @ 5:06 pm #
re: A fine scotch:”Can I start printing “Uck Fobama†shirts yet?”
If you’re printing them, I’d prefer the more aesthetically pleasing:
“Buck Farack” bumper stickers.
Comment by Grammatiknazi on 5/13 @ 5:14 pm #
For a law school graduate, he sure does use horrible grammar when he doesn’t have TOTUS.
Not that it necessarily makes him stupid, just sloppy with language. Hmmm….
Comment by lee on 5/13 @ 5:24 pm #
Dr. Sowell has a nice four part series on this.
“Empathy” Versus Law.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 5/13 @ 5:28 pm #
I suppose one might ask why you’d have to have all that fancy book learnin’ to dispense empathy?
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 5/13 @ 5:31 pm #
Is he advocating prejudice?
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 5:43 pm #
me i want dart board “justice”. i hear its good for picking stocks.
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 5:48 pm #
He wants someone with EMPATHY. The last person of EMPATHY he picked was JEREMIAH WRIGHT.
Opie has terrible judgement.
Comment by happyfeet on 5/13 @ 5:52 pm #
What Barack Obama means is all those stupid fuckheads what have been picking judges year after year after year – they’ve all been doing it wrong but I’m here now and me and Mr. Soros have some New Ideas about this shit.
Comment by Republican on Acid on 5/13 @ 6:09 pm #
I think the best thing about this sort judicial criminal behavior is that it will soon evolve into being able to take out personal AND state enemies because their “heart” told them to.
Comment by JHo, resident sloganeer on 5/13 @ 6:13 pm #
Progressivism. The Emperor’s Smartest Clothes. The New Religion of State.*
*h/t Pablo.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/13 @ 6:15 pm #
Yes. Don’t you remember the poll that came out? People taking Obama’s lead and suggesting that the Constitution is the biggest obstacle to justice?
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 5/13 @ 6:19 pm #
Ah, heh, polls, I should have known. I read a poll the other day that said that 78% of people asked believed that the world was flat. Must be true.
In any case the quality or madness of this judge is irrelevant, he won’t vote or rule any differently than the chump he’s replacing.
Comment by Republican on Acid on 5/13 @ 6:24 pm #
Obama declaration number 2,183,277: All media outlets taking stimulus from Media Czar task force that perform polling must use ACORN as a statistical arbitrator previous to making findings publicly known.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 6:37 pm #
Powerline has posted on this topic just this afternoon. They quote:
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 6:38 pm #
Heck, I figured the rule had always been only poll ACORN members or their family. Makes the polling easy to do.
Comment by dicentra on 5/13 @ 6:41 pm #
If a judge gives unjust preference to the rich and powerful, isn’t the judge also going with his feelings? He empathizes with the rich guy and feels his wealth.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 6:45 pm #
Either that or he’s paid off.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 6:47 pm #
Which gets to the heart of Chicago style empathy.
Comment by Republican on Acid on 5/13 @ 6:49 pm #
@#33
Well yeah, but now they HAVE to.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/13 @ 7:03 pm #
Well, no. But how do you want me to answer a question like “are you sure that [Obama's idea of justice] is more palatable [to voters than it has been in the past]?”
If you won’t accept polling data, or the fact that this guy won the majority vote, or that many on the left seem to be embracing many of his other policies that fly in the face of individual rights, what should I do — go ask everyone in America myself? To which data you’d likely reply, “Ah, heh, a poll, I should have known”?
That’s quite relevant. Because it signals that we’re willing to put up with other judges who refuse to follow the law simply because they are replacing judges who were also lousy.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/13 @ 7:08 pm #
Dr. Sowell has a nice four part series on this.
“Empathy†Versus Law.
Man, I like Tom Sowell. He’d be in my Cabinet, that’s for damn sure.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:09 pm #
You might have to put a gun to his head to get him there though Jeffersonian.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:19 pm #
More shit for brains pragmatist rhetorical fumbling:
[emphases added -- sdferr]
Comment by steph on 5/13 @ 7:24 pm #
Doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’re stuck in a Mod Squad rerun? Where the fuck is Capt’n Andrews when we need him?
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 5/13 @ 7:28 pm #
If you won’t accept polling data
I just think asking 800 people what 300,000,000 think is asinine. And to whatever extent the polls are accurate, peoples moods change rapidly: a year ago most people would answer that very poll differently, eh? So I don’t see any basis for concern about this. A judge replacing a previous one with the same positions. We already knew Obama would pick someone like this, whether he sold it to the American people effectively or not. People’s perception or acceptance of this nonsense is irrelevant.
Too many bloggers eat up polls like catfish and spew them back with shreiks of dismay or gleeful grins. I wish people would just ignore the damned things entirely.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 7:29 pm #
These words do not seem to have meaning when used together.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:32 pm #
“I wish people would just ignore the damned things entirely.”
Me too, Christopher, but given decades of a teaching that holds politics to be somehow “scientific” I don’t have much hope our wish will come about any time soon.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 7:34 pm #
The trick, which the aforementioned Republican strategists would decry, is to question the nominee so as to let the whole of the people see exactly who and what Obama thinks is a proper type of Judge.
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 7:35 pm #
here’s a better poll
?
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:42 pm #
That republican strategist bit came out of an US News & World Report story written by Kenneth Walsh geoffb, so take it with a bigass grain of salt. Why Allah goes there I don’t understand. Maybe he just doesn’t like Cheney?
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:44 pm #
No, that’s not right. In fact it pisses me off that Allah sets out to screw Cheney the way he does. He knows what he’s doing, the fucker.
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 7:47 pm #
Well, sdferr, let’s check his twitter feed and check.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:48 pm #
You check it and report back bh, I’m gonna be over here steaming for awhile.
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 7:51 pm #
?
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 7:53 pm #
Don’t get steamed at him, sdferr. He’s too vapid to worry over his arguments and openly speaks of antagonizing his readers for hits.
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 7:55 pm #
And, honestly, after seeing him interact with Meghan McCain? I feel sorry for the guy. Don’t really like him but I do feel sorry for him.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 7:56 pm #
Game playing is shit. And the torture meme he used above is the pisser. Well, that and the Caps got the shit kicked out of themselves 6-2 tonight.
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 7:57 pm #
i like cap’t ed but he needs new shirts. allah is an idiot atheist lawyer.
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 7:58 pm #
go guinspen
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 8:03 pm #
Oh, I totally agree, sdferr. I’m not saying he isn’t a dick. I’m just emphasizing his juvenile pitifulness as well.
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 8:04 pm #
?
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 8:05 pm #
a little Zappa’s making me feel a bit better (camarillo brillo)
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 8:21 pm #
I did take “Republican strategists” with some salt. My wife always uses the Comcast home page and reads their news stories. The one I saw was AP and was going on and on about how Republicans would do so much better if they would just bury Cheney or something like that. I figured the “Republican strategists” were “in name only”, but un-named, and just a cover. Like the seminar callers. A media rhetorical device.
Zappa is nice. I usually use Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke or Otis Redding to feel better.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 8:23 pm #
Zappa would be amused, I think, to hear himself referred to as nice, geoffb. :-)
Comment by router on 5/13 @ 8:45 pm #
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 8:46 pm #
He was “nice” as a musician like House is “nice” as a doctor. Genius is like that, in some.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 8:47 pm #
Nicely put.
Comment by B Moe on 5/13 @ 8:48 pm #
Did Joe Biden write that for him? Because that doesn’t sound like something a mad leet Constitutional Law Professor would say. Not out loud like that.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/13 @ 8:55 pm #
Backup, just in case nothing else works.
Comment by Jeff G. on 5/13 @ 8:58 pm #
How do you know? I should think not, actually, as people have been taught repeatedly that social justice is somehow more important than the law.
About what, exactly? That Obama wants to place justices on the Supreme Court who don’t follow the rules for being a freakin’ judge?
Pardon me, but your being so cavalier about it is cause for concern.
Huh? Just how do you think precedents get set? How do you think perceptions become ingrained and accepted and eventually considered objective truths?
Actually, the people dismayed over this particular poll were liberal elites (at TNR, I believe) worried about how unknowledgeable Obama voters were made to look.
I’m literally stunned that someone who purports to believe in conservatism or classical liberalism doesn’t believe it’s any big deal that so many Americans are so wrong about what constitutes a legitimate legal philosophy, just as I’m stunned that that same person would pretend that those kinds of positions, when echoed by the President, won’t become more widely accepted as a competing legal viewpoint rather than excoriated for providing the rationale for undermining the Constitution.
Comment by gus on 5/13 @ 9:03 pm #
So how is that $timulu$ package that had to be passed RIGHT FUCKING NOW, worked out so far?
Any signs of life? Nope. Obama has no idea what he is doing, because he has no experience at anything except manipulating people in Chicago.
He’s a completely empty suit.
Comment by Pablo on 5/13 @ 9:23 pm #
It has worked out like this. Which is to say it hasn’t worked. Or, that it has produced exactly what we were told outcomes would be if we didn’t do it. Or, you might say, FAIL.
Comment by mcgruder on 5/13 @ 9:29 pm #
How the hell do you look inside a man’s heart and have absolute faith and confidence that he is committed to the highest standards?
Answer is, absent a clear paper or behavioral trail, is that you cant.
which is why Obama lied.
Obama is not smart, at least not smarter than Bush, its just that hes sharply better spoken and much quicker on his feet.
You add that to the lazy appeal that liberalism has—”nice thoughts and intentions equals desireable outcomes”–and you make a senator into a POTUS.
He is going to suck way more than Bush, which is a mighty impressive feat of failure engineering.
Comment by lee on 5/13 @ 9:37 pm #
Yeah, con men almost always are sharply better spoken(?) and much quicker on their feet than an honest man…they have to be.
Comment by Jeffersonian on 5/13 @ 10:01 pm #
You might have to put a gun to his head to get him there though Jeffersonian.
I’d lure him with the promise of dynamiting any three federal agencies of his choosing.
Comment by geoffb on 5/13 @ 10:17 pm #
He seems well enough trained as an actor. Someone else has to write the good lines.
Off the cuff, the few times that has been allowed to be seen, he is lost at sea unless the press covers his ass. He can’t even do softballs well off prompter.
I expect he, like most charismatic narcissists can “light up” a room in person, charm most everyone. Saying nothing very well. He still speaks like Shatner over doing Kirk though.
Bill Clinton was much better at all of it especially the off the cuff remarks. I didn’t agree with him either but his abilities dwarf Obama’s. This Messianic cult stuff has to be killing Bill, and I’m ok with that too.
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 10:29 pm #
Okay, sdferr, this is what I’m talking about.
duchess_rebecca: @allahpundit Carrie [Prejean, Miss Cali] would admit all of her flaws upfront, Palin’s just keep seeping out slowly but constant.
Allah: @duchess_rebecca You’ll never make it in the righty blogosphere, babe. More power to you.
At some point, even the idiots who read and comment at HA will realize that Allah hates them.
And, at some point, Allah will realize that he’s as shallow as an argumentative college freshmen. Atheism as a form of taunting? Check. Soft guy playing edgy? Check. No one really understands him? Check.
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 10:30 pm #
Hits on chicks as the “gay friend”? Check.
Comment by bh on 5/13 @ 10:42 pm #
And, well, as I feel enthusiastic tonight, Allah acts like a cliquey teenager behind the scenes. Check.
Comment by pdbuttons on 5/13 @ 10:44 pm #
two blondes wearing burkas come to a stop sign
Comment by psycho... on 5/14 @ 12:03 am #
Not in that sense, I think.
Clinton, though there’s definitely something wrong with him, is basically a confident guy people like. Confident guys people like don’t lead cults. Dangerously damaged assholes no one really likes do.
Clinton was only a little like that. He seems to have become a politician just to make himself free — to give Asshole Bill some room to live. That’s not the most admirable reason to become President, but it’s among the least evil. And whatever cult following Asshole Bill had (among women in the media, mostly), regular Bill didn’t cultivate it. He smirked at it.
(Maybe you’ve noticed how he seems not to like the ladies much. If you were him, you’d think they’re all panty-throwing idiots, too.)
Remember when he was stumping during the primaries, how shouty and pissed off he was getting? He seemed enraged by the blind idiot support Obama has, not envious of it. He may have thought better of “us” until then.
And now, he’s just not around. I wonder if he said “Screw you guys” on the way out.
Comment by geoffb on 5/14 @ 12:10 am #
Thank you that is more along the line I wanted. I’d go have a beer with Bill. Obama no.
Comment by lee on 5/14 @ 12:19 am #
I’d have a beer on Obama.
No, not if he bought it, I mean literally on him.
About a half hour after I drank it mind you…
Comment by LTC John on 5/14 @ 6:32 am #
“Obama is not smart, at least not smarter than Bush, its just that hes sharply better spoken and much quicker on his feet.”
I dunno about quicker onhis feet – I have all but gotten worn out from trying to watch the left-right-left-right looking at the teleprompter screens. Th uh-uh-uhs that follow an unscripted moment make me wonder if maybe both men just were not oof the cuff type speakers of any note.
JJeff, I am as worried/alarmed/pissed about folks not really understanding (or seeming to care) about the basis of our rule of law vs rule of whim/droit de seigneur. I rather hoped that I had fought to keep people from having to live under whim o’ the judge or “who can, may” – not to come back and watch it blithely voted away.
Bleah.
Comment by Lyndsey on 5/14 @ 7:24 am #
The rule of law has nothing to do with “empathy”. The law is supposed to stand on its own. What a crock. It’s just a bunch of word play on the president’s part.
Comment by Matt on 5/14 @ 7:37 am #
Maybe its just I put up with slick public speakers in court on a semi-regular basis but Obama is freakin terrible on the stick. John’s right about teleprompter jesus’s back and forth between the screens- its the mark of amateur. Also, he needs em so badly because I don’t think he bothers to really read his speeches before he gives em – somebody writes em and he spits em out but I get the impression he doesn’t really understand what he’s reading. He’s in wayyyy over his head. “Let me be clear” is possibly the gayest repeated lines since “my friends”.
Comment by Matt on 5/14 @ 7:39 am #
Also I quit even reading the allahpundit threads- he’s one of those “straddling the fence” type guys- I suspect its a result of all the nasty emails he gets- so I figure “why give him the traffic”. I’m voting with my clicker finger and maybe Ed will take notice.
Pingback by Jules Crittenden » Obama = Clinton? on 5/14 @ 7:39 am #
[...] on, another moralism minefield up ahead, and Obama’s charging in. Protein Wisdom on Obama’s plan to apply an “empathy” standard to his judicial appointments. [...]
Comment by mcgruder on 5/14 @ 7:45 am #
BH, lotsa folks in these parts dont like Allahpundit, but I do.
I knew the guy some back when and respect him. I think he’s funny as hell and more often than not, correct.
As an evangelical, he clearly isnt down for my side in the God trade, but so what?
Im not saying your wrong or your criticisms dont have merit, its just that I dealt with the guy a fair amount a few years ago and found him right on.
Much was different then.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 5/14 @ 7:47 am #
It looks like this comment by a left wing jackass on the Washington Post website will be our guiding legal philosophy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303173.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
“As always, The Post’s editorial board has taken the Republican point of view on the issue of the bailout of GM to the exclusion of all other considerations.
You are more concerned about the bondholders, most of whom are wealthy and whose personal lives will not be severely affected however a GM bankruptcy may go, than you are about the employees and retirees who stand to lose literally EVERYTHING should once GM goes into bankruptcy.
Barack Obama is perfectly right and correct to take the needs of that much larger and more relevant group into consideration than those few individuals who will still be very well off afterward.
I really don’t like the thought of people who worked for a large and extraordinarily stable company all their working lives being left to live in refrigerator cartons under bridges in order to satisfy the avarice of some wealthy bondholders. We do not need Hooverism to rule American policy in the 21st century.
And we do not need the Post to emulate the Washington Times in its editorial stances. I will resubscribe to the Post when and only when the Post restores reason to its editorials, starting with the firing of Fred Hiatt. Certainly, with great newspapers closing willy-nilly all over this great land of ours, the Post can find SOMEBODY with less of a right-wing, Bush League bias than he so consistently demonstrates. “
Comment by SBP on 5/14 @ 7:54 am #
I really don’t like the thought of people who worked for a large and extraordinarily stable company all their working lives being left to live in refrigerator cartons under bridges in order to satisfy the avarice of some wealthy bondholders.
Too bad many of those “wealthy bondholders” were actually pension funds, eh? I guess it’s okay for those people to live in refrigerator boxes.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 5/14 @ 8:06 am #
The entire comment was laced with retarded. This part here got me.
“Barack Obama is perfectly right and correct to take the needs of that much larger and more relevant group into consideration than those few individuals who will still be very well off afterward.”
Where the hell does this douchebag get the idea that our President should be adjudicating bankrupcy court? Fascism writ large if the executive branch merges with the judicial. The “relevant and majority parts were freakin scary if that thought is prevelant. Laws now should be chucked out in favor of the more “relevant” group, with relevant meaning higher on the left wing grievance scale. Also the idiot says we should chuck the law aside in order to cater to the larger group. WTF
Comment by Spiny Norman on 5/14 @ 8:18 am #
I’m guessing the jackass WaPo commenter is one of his Marxist economics professor’s star pupils.
Comment by TheGeezer on 5/14 @ 8:19 am #
Maybe it’s time to ignore the judiciary?
Comment by mcgruder on 5/14 @ 8:23 am #
There are things that are complicated in life and there are things that are not.
What the Obama administration did to bondholders was not complicated.
It was legally and morally wrong–if only for the fact that GM’s bondholders, by purchasing the paper that GM issued to fund its lavish pension and healthcare benefits, helped forstall this crisis at least five years ago–and a complete bastardization of American law and business practice.
yeah, its fair to say it was a bad idea.
Comment by Matt on 5/14 @ 8:30 am #
mcgruder’s got it. The people who are, according to the post’s marxist, most effected by the bankruptcy- ie the employees- are a big part of the reason the bankruptcy is necessary. And I hate it for them but the union bosses, like so many democratic schills, screwed the people they were supposed to be representing and ultimately cost them their jobs. Well, those people and algore and his green BS.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 5/14 @ 8:46 am #
Union bosses — with their six (seven?) figure salaries, their private lodges and golf courses, their chauffeurs — are the little people. The retiree whose pension fund just lost 90% of its low-risk investment in GM — he’s one of the “money people”.
Comment by Sdferr on 5/14 @ 8:57 am #
Comment by Matt on 5/14 @ 9:01 am #
I always laugh at the scene in goodfellas when Henry takes Karen to the restaurant where everybody is kissing his ass and he’s tipping everybody, Sinatra style. Karen asks what he does and he responds “I’m a union delegate”. Fits the union culture nowadays perfectly.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 5/14 @ 10:00 am #
I’m literally stunned that someone who purports to believe in conservatism or classical liberalism doesn’t believe it’s any big deal that so many Americans are so wrong about what constitutes a legitimate legal philosophy
Sorry if I didn’t make myself clear. I’m not concerned about the present poll for three reasons:
1) I don’t trust polls and know that they change very rapidly based on the latest news cycle, who took the poll, and other cultural pressures
2) President Obama was going to choose someone like this regardless of what polls say people believe about them or not
3) The present justice that any choice would be replacing already is of this philosophy so there’s no quantitative shift in the supreme court
I hope that’s more clear.
Comment by Blaine on 5/14 @ 11:10 am #
When it becomes standard operating procedure to be apply a caring solution to court cases the overlap of one judge onto another should be spectacular.
When I was a young surveyor one of my party chiefs (head of the crew) told a story about how he worked on a dam site up in the midwest. They were in the building phase and were using a lot of heavy equipment to move earth around. After about 2 hours of work in the morning a lawyer would show up with a court order telling them to turn the volume down on the back up beepers it was disturbing the wildlife. They would turn down the volume and get back to work usually just after lunch. Then after about 2 hours another lawyer would show up with a court order telling them to turn the volume of the back up beeprs to OSHA standards. They woud turn the volume back up and then it was time to go home. This went on for weeks.
Another one I read in the papers on the Mississippi River, one judge ordered the water level lowered for the endangered wildlife, while another judge ordered the water level increased for the barge traffic. I never heard how this was resolved.
Maybe one day we can have WFJ wrestling, both judges get in the ring to decide whose decision holds.
Comment by Silver Whistle on 5/14 @ 1:16 pm #
Look on the bright side – won’t it be hard finding a betazoid?
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 5/14 @ 2:47 pm #
As near as I can figure, everyone is a Betazoid. She only was able to “sense” the most obvious and easily guessed of emotions.
“They’re shooting at us and screaming obscenities. What do you sense?”
“I sense rage, Captain.”
“Good thing you’re along, how else would we know?”
Pingback by Steynian 355 « Free Canuckistan! on 5/15 @ 1:49 pm #
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Comment by Patrick on 5/18 @ 11:35 pm #
Ah yes…and the douchebag who can’t get a real job weighs in.
Comment by maggie katzen on 5/18 @ 11:41 pm #
well, hopefully Patrick, you’ll comment before the post is five days old next time.
Comment by pdbuttons on 5/19 @ 12:09 am #
empathy test
i work construction/ so peeps always lookin for power
with their cords and such…
so i tried a thought x periment one day
went up to an outlet/ a virgin outlet
and thought/ where should i plug in my sugaree
then…empathy!
i’ll plug in the one that would make the next pluggee easier….
[usually the bottom one)
then i tried this exper/mint to un/ work life
i would hand someone a elictrical device and ask them to plug it in…
to see if they had empathy!…
sadly…everyone has failed
u try it
ask someone to plug something in/ and see
they always take the lazy top outlet…
wankers!
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