It's a basic legal principle that where the words used in a controlling law (whether the law is contained in a constitutional or statutory provision, or a binding judicial decision) are clear and unambiguous, courts are obligated to follow the controlling law's "plain terms" or "plain language."

With respect to the concern you raised about the judicial function of declaring some laws unconstitutional, discriminatory, etc., the key word is "controlling." All laws are not created equal, and it is the controlling law whose plain language must be applied. As a simple example, a law could be enacted prohibiting African Americans from using public transportation. It could do this in quite plain terms. But the state law, however plain, would be outranked by the plain, contrary terms of the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, assorted Supreme Court decisions, etc. You don't follow the law where another, higher law prohibits what the first law purports to do.

Of course, the law is often neither plain nor easy to follow, and then courts have to determine what the law is and means, sometimes by employing legal reasoning, sometimes by making shit up.

I should probably take Omooex's advice and ignore you, but I can't help noticing that your fevered screeds about his alleged racism (at least the ones I've read ... I can't claim complete familiarity with your entire body of work on the topic) never actually quote anything he has written that you would describe as racist. (You put "I am entitled to hate" in quotation marks -- is that something Omooex has said, and if so, when and about whom?) Instead you just bellow that he is a racistly racist racisting racerific racist.

I find the topic of race, and people's perceptions of racism, very interesting. If you could actually quote, verbatim, something Omooex has written, and explain why you think it demonstrates his racism, that might be interesting.

Your repetitive, fact-free rants are sort of interesting, but only from a psychological perspective.

Thanks for your substantive response, which raises interesting points.

As to Omooex's joke about white men's genitalia, it was obviously a joke. But you know that -- your real gripe is that, while Omooex made a joke playing on a negative stereotype about white men, white people are, under some circumstances, made to feel less free to tell jokes that play on negative stereotypes about non-whites. That is true, and perhaps there is a measure of unfairness in that. However, among all the injustices that plague the world, from East Oakland to Gaza and back, I must say that social conventions inhibiting the ability of white people to tell racial jokes are, well, pretty low on the list.

Although I don't really think it's unjust -- we oppress them for centuries; they get to tell a few more jokes than we do. That is a bargain that I, as a white person, can live with.

As a Jew, of course, I get to enjoy the other side of the equation; I can say whatever I want and anyone who has a problem is an anti-Semite. :-)

It is a historical fact that Thomas Jefferson repeatedly sexually penetrated at least one of his slaves. Although she may (or may not) have given outward manifestations of consent, a sexual relationship in which one partner literally owns the other is inherently coercive, and calling it "rape" hardly seems unfair. So that's awfully weak evidence of Omooex's alleged racism.

Nor does it strike me as racist to place importance on Obama's race as a factor in wanting him to win the election. Given America's history of discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, a lot of people, including a great many white people, think it is truly grand to have a black president. I have a white Republican friend who told me last fall that, although he was voting for McCain, he wouldn't mind seeing Obama win because it would be such an extraordinary milestone in American history. Is that guy a racist, too? Sorry, but thinking it would be bitchin' to have a black prez does not a racist make.

Omooex: "I feel like I'm talking to a seventeen year old white kid from the suburbs." OK, that was pretty condescending, and a bit of an insulting generalization about white suburban teenagers. I wouldn't call it racist, but it was obnoxious. You can have that one.

Omooex: "My personal opinion is that libertarianism--while perhaps a philosophically sound proposition--owes much of its political support to people who grew up in white flight suburbs and have no idea that there are invisible sociological and political forces at work which form the basis of their comfortable daily life. In short; lazy thinkers with stingy fingers."

No part of the above statement is racist. "White flight suburbs" are a historically documented phenomenon wherein white people "fled" urban centers so they could continue to live among whites instead of among blacks. It's not outrageous to suggest that some people who call themselves libertarians have an incomplete and unrealistic understanding of the world due to having grown up in such a place, and that the illusions fostered thereby comprise the underpinnings of their libertarianism.

So here's the deal, as I see it. Omooex is not a racist. He is a person who says things about race that you don't like. You are free to dislike the things he says, and you are free to challenge his statements. (You have shown yourself to be capable of coherent debate when you are in the mood.) But if you just screech racistracistracistracist all the time, you will contine to look like a tiny, shriveled-up white penis.