Letters to the Editor
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Me too LWM
But I know this particular RWer well enough to know he hadn't done any such thing and was just spouting some crap he heard on Fox or saw on Newsmax.
Thanks for the board list. I didn't have time then to look it up, and forgot about it later. I'll be sure to pass that little gem along.
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clear headed thinking
thank you kindly for some clear-headed writing. what a relief!
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"Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Thanks for the link to that letter from Ike to Ed, LWM. I loved it.
I've seen small excerpts of it before, but never the whole thing. I must still agree with my "topic" above, but wonder if we shouldn't add, "but their power has grown," except that now I'm more hopeful that it will diminish.
Dan Froomkin had a link to this WSJ story yesterday... It did my heart some good:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120027737099687613.html?mod=blog
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Judicial Activism
Glenn is dead on with regard to the definition of "Judicial Activism." The Right would have us believe that they are against any instance where the Judiciary opposes the will of the Peepul. But it's only when it's the will of their people, the classic case being Roe v. Wade.
If a ruling goes their way, on the other hand, it's clearly not judicial activism. The classic case here is Bush v. Gore, which was both a bad ruling and which the Supreme Court tried to pretend didn't set any precedents. Scalia leads the way in this area, of course, shouting "original intent!" and "federalism uber alles!", except when his ox is gored, at which point those bedrock principals are tossed out the window. (Aside from Bush v. Gore, there's his ever-popular dissent on the Texas sodomy case, where he ranted for several pages about gays. How that doesn't count as "judicial activism" is beyond me.)
Like much else with the Right, it's power and getting their views put forth that counts; things like "judicial activism" and "voter fairness" are merely hypocritically-used tools to that end.
I used to think conservatives had principals, as odious as I thought some of them. It's clear that they don't; just power.
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@Dirigo-
It goes something like this: a liberal is one who believes in the widest scope of inquiry, the broadest opportunity for education, security and economic success, and an unlimited paradigm of debate in the public forum. Government authority and power should be used, where and when it is appropriate, to help as many people as possible, without any one interest, or set of narrow interests, having an advantage not available to the people as a whole.
It points to the idea of developing and nurturing what used to be called the "commonweal," the republic. The idea should be central to "government planning," and any such planning should be of, by, and for, all - as Lincoln said.
-- Dirigo
Liberalism is not socialism, and never will be... Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly.
Winston Churchill, 1908
Churchill was a conservative for about a year before he could even shave.
Quote falsely attributed to Churchill:
"Conservative by the time you're 35"
"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112
It's safe to say that when Churchill was referring to socialism he meant Marxist dogma and not social democracy as practiced today.
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Embalming the law
Chris, it might be helpful if you'd openly state your own beliefs with respect to the question at issue, i.e. whether or not it's right and fitting for gay couples to be allowed to define their own partnerships as marriage under existing laws, or perhaps more accurately, whether or not the definition of marriage in the existing law should be extended to include them.
There's no point arguing that the intersection of politics and the law should be restricted to legislatures. Historically, it never has been, and never will be in a functional democracy. I give you:
1) Marbury v. Madison
2) Dred Scott
3) Brown v. Board of Education
4) Roe v. Wade
We creep forward, or we lurch. We battle in the rubble of our former understandings, and will never be restricted to a ring some interested party claims to have built for us. It's not that this battle has no rules; rather it's that the rules have never been what you say they are.
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Chris Dowd?
http://thedailyburkeman1.blogspot.com/
He thinks gays are icky.
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Chris Dowd
The right drags the gay issue or the gay marriage issue into nearly every election. And while doing that they are always shouting about "judicial activism". One of the latest examples of that on a large scale was the 2004 election during which time they tried to make a big "judicial activism" stink due to what was going on gay marriage wise in San Francisco at that time.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/20/samesex.marriage/index.html
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-- shooter242
"Too many avenues for a gotcha upon the average individual."
Darlin, that's just so yesterday's thread.
Please try to keep up.
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Chris:
Well then. We don't need judges. We should just have you tell us all what is objectively true and follow you and others who agree with you. I think you mistake what the role of judges is supposed to be. Their role is not to tell us what is true and to then fashion the law around their view of it- their politics.
You mistake me. It isn't that I have some unique insight into truth or some special reasoning, but that a strong body of evidence exists done by competent experts seeking to discover the truth of the matter.
And yes, the role of "judges" is precisely to tell us what is true and fashion the law around that belief of it. How could it be anything but? How else could a judge rule on a question of some homosexual claiming the state of NJ was wrongly denying him the right to marry, unless the judge understood the issue of what it meant to be a homosexual?
The judge would have an obligation to hear legal and factual arguments from both sides, then he has to decide which factual account to believe, and thus apply legal reasoning to it. He's not limited to the options they provide of course, and can use precedents neither side brings up. But still, there is a measure of discerning what is, inherent to what judges do every time they bang the gavel.
We have a framework of rights that exist for certain things. They are not up for debate. They can't be wiped away by majoritarian rule or impulse. But when a certain elite comes along and suddenly says that "society" has a new view on things and that they are right and all laws must be changed to reflect this new "Right" view- and then a judge says- Gee I think your view is the correct view now- so all those laws we once had? Gone. Why? Because I am right. You can't have rule of law under such circumstances.
I can't figure out how you think this works. What protects those rights in your conception of a society where judges cannot strike down laws? Without judges, they actually can be wiped away on majoritarian impulse. What prevents a legislature from passing an unconstitutional law if no one can gainsay them? Please don't say elections because we have reams of unconstitutional laws that were passed that no legislator was ever in danger of losing his seat over.
You do have a point that I have conflated objective reality and what society believes in a questionable way. Let me clarify: The "critical mass" of people who believe gays should have the right to marry was large enough and based on enough evidence for someone to be able to convince a court of that case. Judges are imperfect arbiters too, and a novel theory that is completely correct will bear very little legal weight until evidence for it amasses. So the argument that gays are normal people who deserve equal treatment only makes sense if you have enough evidence that gays are in fact, "normal" and not immoral or destructive.
Gays were normal 30 years ago and 300 years ago, just much fewer people knew it, and they had little to prove it with.
So it's not that society's views should sway the judges per se, just that sound legal and factual arguments don't exist in a vacuum. To prove gays deserved equal rights one needed proof gays weren't aberrent. To do that, researchers needed money and time to do research into that, something that couldn't happen earlier for societal reasons.
And once again, "society" seems to be marching in a new direction now. Perhaps not to your liking. What are going to hide behind having knocked down all the laws in the land to get the devil- when the devil turns on you?
Since the devil I advocate is reason informed by objective fact, I'm not too afraid.
I'm not the one questioning the premise of a judicial branch empowered to enforce constitutional precepts.