Letters to the Editor
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Monkey_Claw:
BTW I’ve noticed a few comments talking about Bush v. Gore and I think it may be worth pointing out that it is probably not the best example of the right’s own judicial activism. It was widely reported at the time (and still is for that matter) that the decision was 5 to 4. However, if one carefully reads the opinion (as convoluted as it is with nearly every justice writing separately) one realizes that the final count was 7 to 2 as to the substance of the claims with either Kennedy or O’Conner authoring the opinion. The 5 to 4 number comes from the vote taken by the justices on whether to hear the case in the first place and that I suppose could be argued was activist in its own way. At least that is my recollection of the case from having read it at the time of the decision.
Please read my comment immediately above yours, and the Ronald Dworkin article URL I gave.
The portion that was 7-2 was defensible, but the right has twisted this to mean all 7 were on board for the manifestly stupid and partisan portions of the actual ruling. Not so.
It was a case of 7 agreeing in principle to a problem and 5 proposing a legally indefensible "remedy" to that problem.
Like saying you and I agree poverty is a problem, and my solution is to kill all the poor people. It would be wrong to characterize the resulting massacre as "unanimous" on our parts.
There's a reason the court explicitly limited the Bush V. Gore ruling to not be used as precedent for other cases, even they were ashamed of what they did. Tobin's book on the court has the revelation that one of the liberal justices thought of resigning in disgust over the ruling.
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Re: "Fewer Replies"
I know my posts are being read and thought about, why else would I state that the better my post the fewer replies I get?
-- Aycharaych
Could be that more and more people don't bother to read your posts. Which would, in turn, result in you getting fewer and fewer replies.
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Scientician
I rarely use that term but when someone comes into the thread and immediately turns the debate away from the subject at hand, to something completely irrelevant (in this case, the troll himself) it is beyond doubt what is going on.
I was responding to and elaborating upon futhark's post regarding the inability of Americans to think.
Go back and look for yourself if you do not believe me.
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Excellent post, but...
...you say Kucinich "received less than 1% of the vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire."
This is incorrect. Kucinich received approximately 1.36% of the vote in New Hampshire. And he and a Republican candidate are both requesting a recount of that vote which looks like it's going to happen.
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@Scientician
Remember, the thesis here is: Conservatives do not believe in any principle of objective legal reasoning or even-handed justice. All they want is conservative ideological results and the law be damned...
Conservatives simply do not believe in objective reality.
Usually we confine this thesis to neo-conservatives since they are the most explicit and aggregious examples of this, but regular conservatives are on board with it too, in practice if not in principle.
I think there are some conservatives with conscience out there. I honestly do, even if they are a small minority. John Dean, for instance. They are just not part of the GOP at this time.
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Kitt..
Could be that more and more people don't bother to read your posts. Which would, in turn, result in you getting fewer and fewer replies.
I gotta give you credit, at least you had the fortitude to use your own handle.
A lot of your own posts are pretty abusive, you sure didn't have much nice to say about bucky1 yesterday.
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Aycharaych
Yes, you replied to something topical and then immediately turned the discussion to you, in the form of an attack on "liberals" for not replying to you in a completely different discussion on another blog entirely.
Shit, even Shooter managed to stay loosely on topic with discussions of good or bad court decisions and judicial activism.
You're sowing dischord and irrelevancy and I'm calling you out on it. You're obviously doing it on purpose.
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LWM
I think there are some conservatives with conscience out there. I honestly do, even if they are a small minority. John Dean, for instance. They are just not part of the GOP at this time.
-- L.W.M.
I'd be surprised if Scientician disagrees with you on that. I could be wrong but good that you made or clarified the point.
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Wansee..
...I know, I know, everything in the world does *not* turn on the actions of the NSDAP.
But, this post of Glenn's almost inevitably reminded me of a moment in the middle of the HBO film *Conspiracy,* about the Wansee Conference, during which the Dr. Klopfer-character is berating the Stuckert-character to the effect that abrogating the Nuremburg Laws to initiate the Holocaust was perfectly ok. Stuckert says something like "you're making ad-hoc law, you can't do that" and Klopfer says "what am I telling you this for? We wrote the laws, just write some more." In essence "we can write any laws we want, so that we get the outcome we want."
It's not quite the same thing, but it is the same attitude. And it's very scary. Guys like Morrissey are *exactly* like the Klopfer-character in the film: we want an outcome, let's just make sure we get that outcome, and who cares what the law is?
We're going to have to fight very hard to crush this fascist attitude on the right. They've been liberated by the internet and by corporate control of media (and the Bush Administration's concerted effort to undermine the credibility of ALL media)...and they're going to be very hard to eradicate, but we have to do it. Or we'll be ruled by the Klopfers of this world.
I urge everyone to have a look at that movie. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's very, very salutary in certain ways, and very much worth your time.