Letters to the Editor
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NOT JUDICIAL ACTIVISM: JUST PLAIN POLITICAL GREED
Dennis Kucinich just filed to run for his Congressional seat back in Ohio too. Shouldn't Dennis Kucinich's opponents get equal time and be invited to the MSNBC debate under the "equal time" rules?
I mean, how many ways can this guy have it? He's running for both President and Congress and spends his time fighting in Nevada courts to appear on national TV where his political opponents in Ohio don't have a chance of competing with THAT!
Maybe his political opponents should sue MSNBC for equal time? If anyone really cared what Dennis had to say he wouldn't be in this dilemma anyway, would he? Wish Dennis fought as hard for jobs for Clevelanders as he does his right to get free TV coverage.
Guess they just make it as they go along. Sounds like something Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) does. He appointed Wicker (R) to fill former U.S. Senator Lott's (R) seat. Said a "special election" would be held in November - yep! all the way to November. That's not a special election, Haley, that's what we do when we want to prop up incumbents who might be weak and challenged. Give 'em the benefits and trappings of incumbency.
Meanwhile, a local paper reported that Wicker will also continue to serve as Congressman until someone can be elected to his seat in the "special election" in November. Is that right? Or is the reporting sloppy? Wicker serves as both Congressman and U.S. Senator until November's "special election?" Hmmm.
And get this, the guy's campaigning in Pascagoula (Lott's backyard) the oher day, and tells folks on the Gulf Coast that there's about another billion dollars in Washington, D.C. he and the other Mississippi U.S. Senator Thad Cocheran are going after for Katrina relief. More Katrina relief?
OH REALLY? ANOTHER BILLION, DUDE? I don't think so. Maybe ya'll haven't figured out there's a recession brewing, and gee, we're real sorry but some of you might actually have to get jobs down there and make some tough decisions about where to move, live, etc. Hey, we know how it feels. About a half a million Americans in just Michigan and Ohio alone had to find new homes, jobs, etc. when corporate hurricanes blew their jobs overseas. Think about that a minute. Almost 500,000 fellow Americans jobs "disappeared off the face of the map." Funny, I don't recall ya'll sending any care packages up or taking up a collection.
But I digress:
Although one Court already ruled and said that Barbour was wrong,that a special election has to be held with 100 days of Lott's resignation, Barbour said he thinks the Mississippi Supreme Court will have to decide this very complex case. Why? Don't y'all have a law or something to cover this or did Katrina blow that away too? Meanwhile the clock runs down on two Democrats, one of whom has been elected statewide, and who are poised to challenge Wicker. And that's really what Barbour is hoping for of course. That, and a favorable judicial ruling from activist Mississippi Supreme Court justices.
So much for activist judges. Guess it just depend upon which ones are yours and which ones are mine.
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Thanks, Dirigo
for suggesting that interview with Harold Bloom. I haven't read a lot of his work, but I did enjoy the Western Canon. I'd forgotten that he wrote the Book of J... I should add it to my list on Amazon.
If anyone else would like to read it, here's the link:
http://www.thewip.net/contributors/2008/01/according_to_harold_bloom_what.html
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Politics as Combat
@LWM:
"A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary
"Politics
"By ALAN WOLFE
"To understand what is distinctive about today's Republican Party, you first need to know about an obscure and very conservative German political philosopher. His name, however, is not Leo Strauss, who has been widely cited as the intellectual guru of the Bush administration. It belongs, instead, to a lesser known, but in many ways more important, thinker named Carl Schmitt...
"http://www.stanford.edu/~weiler/Wolfe_on_Schmitt_044.pdf"
That was an illuminating essay by Wolfe, LWM. Thanks for calling attention to it and posting the link.
In the conservative/liberal framework within which Wolfe works in the essay, to which do you feel more drawn and by which do you feel more animated, what he describes as the "liberal" modus operandi or the "conservative" one?
I ask because his essay reminded me of one of your posts some time back in which you described politics as a "street fight."
KR
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Paul
But I can't help but note with irony, that the point of the article is that people are quick to pass judgment on court decisions without bothering to educate themselves to the details.
Granted. But the "same sex marriage" issue is ladden with bad legal decisions. It is an issue that open minded conservatives aware of the misuse of the term "judicial activism" would have a hard time swallowing as a good example to make Glenn's point. Obviously we all can't read every decision that comes down the pike and make informed comment on them. We have to rely somewhat on synopsis from those we trust. Broadly speaking- the "Same Sex marriage" issue is one that conservatives are generally right in citing as cases of Judicial Activism- though some deicisions may not be. In a short post essay like this one- I don't think it was the best choice to get his point across.
Schiavo, various court decisions against prayer in schools that have all manner of nuance, and of course the laughable denunciations of judges that have ruled against the torture regime of this adminstration as "activism" are far better examples for general purposes in my opinion.
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Chris Dowd
Roe v. Wade, to which you alluded earlier, would be a perfect rare example of the legislature at State and then Federal levels failing to achieve needed consensus.-- Gordon
I don't know what to say to this. No "Consensus" was needed....The 50 states had various laws on the subject that were all over the map- from strictly prohibitive to rather more liberal.-- Chris Dowd
That's the sole point of disagreement with my feeble stab at legal history? Then you contend that the SC should have declined to hear the case? Isn't it the Court's right to hear any case brought before it? If the law Roe challenged was unconstitutional in Texas, how could it be constitutional elsewhere? Of course consensus was needed.
The SC stated it would have preferred not to make the scientific investigations needed to settle the law, but absent legislative action prior, and with the urgency of a biologically imposed deadline, and with the immediate compelling interest of Roe's rights, they took care of the nation's business - legitimately. Any other outcome would have violated Roe's rights.