|
|
|
|
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 1:31:25 PM | She's a potential female presidential candidate who personally decided against abortion. And so did her daughter.
If that was all there was to it, she herself would be off limits. So would her older daughter. However, the very fact that you are discussing her daughter's pregnancy in terms of personal choice is a testament to all that Palin stands against. It is conservatives who reach into the bedrooms and want to control reproductive options, not liberals. Eugenics might have been part of a progressive ideology, but I think you will find that liberals have repudiated it for the very simple reason that, as it turns out, the feeble-minded still have rights.
You again equate liberalism with socialism. While there is often considerable overlap as socialists co-opt as many issues as they can to undermine the idea of private ownership, what liberals want is the greatest liberty for the greatest number, not unrestrained license for a wealthy few to exploit everyone else with no consequences.
As far as there being no case law prior to Roe v. Wade to support the decision, when rights conflict and the legislature cannot reslove the matter, it is up to the Courts to protect those rights. Women either do, or do not, have the right to control over their own bodies, which includes the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy prior to the development of a self-aware fetus. To say otherwise is to say that women are either chattels to their unborn children or to the fathers of those children.
So, it's not enough just to sneer at them as hopelessly lame hicks--Sarah Palin's a threat that must be dealt with. (Statists/liberals tried to destroy Clarence Thomas with the same kind of vicious attacks, because he was uppity enough to hold conservative views completely unlike those of their beloved first black Justice, Thurgood Marshall.)
Both Ms. Palin and Justice Thomas appear to favor a roll-back to a time when only the rights of wealthy white men of the proper religion counted. That is the problem that liberals have with them. The liberal agenda is for all of us to be free to enjoy all of our rights, including the right to petition the government for redress of grievances--even when those grievances seem incomprehensible to those who aren't currently suffering from them.
It is only natural to ascribe criticism that one does not understand to an identified enemy. The liberal agenda simply is not a communist plot. If anything, communists do all they can to co-opt the liberal agenda to further their ideology. The communist ideology, as you correctly point out, amounts to just another form of unaccountable control over a disproportionate share of productive resources.
In an nutshell, the liberal agenda is about a government that protects the rights of the weak.
Roe v. Wade solved a real problem for women who were confronted with unwanted pregnancies. It gave them a choice. Even if the lineage of Planned Parenthood is tainted by an association with eugenics, women would not be free today without widespread access to birth control and safe, legal abortion. The most a woman like Governor Palin could have hoped for without us liberals would be a job as an executive assistant to a governor, if even that.
We all know this, and the fact that Governor Palin will not admit that she owes her position to the very people she dismisses is what makes her a laughingstock and someone not to be trusted. It has nothing to do with the fact that she made a choice that is in keeping with her own values. It is the fact that she won't acknowledge the right of others to choose differently than she did.
Liberals have no dispute with her values. What we do dispute is her view that she is entitled to impose them on others by constraining their choices in violation of their rights. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 5:31:30 PM |
It is conservatives who reach into the bedrooms and want to control reproductive options, not liberals.
Ace... aren't you tired of categorizing people yet.... I'm getting so tired of this argument... That all these people stand for this and all these stand for that...
As someone that is more conservative... Yes I do disagree with where I feel/think that the far left wants to take this country. But I do not believe all Democrats or Liberals feel the same way as those extremists. I'll disagree with their politics, but I know everyone is human and they will make mistakes. Pelosi, and Barney Franks for example I believe have made some big mistakes and I will call them on it... But I will never attack Franks for his sexual preference or Pelosi for any of her personal life's choices... Only when it has to do with the laws they are creating for us, or rights that they are trying to take away.
Just like I know not all Republicans or Conservatives agree with the extreme right.
The extremists on both sides want to control... what ever? wether it is for or against abortion, same sex marriage, unwed parenting... or anything else.... These are debates we have had for ever... and debates we will keep having.... But there is no need to attack someone personally over it.
What I'm getting tired of is everyone being placed in boxes by a few people on here. Not all Christians think alike... and neither do Atheists... Neither do conservatives or liberals.... We can discuss the difference in policies but it's a shame to mark everyone because you disagree with them.
Thats been my point.... Just because someone is conservative... and a Christian and believe that getting pregnant out of marriage is wrong... doesn't mean they are a worse person than someone who doesn't believe that and gets pregnant.
I believe I should get more exercise.... but because I don't... does that make me a worse person than someone who doesn't care and doesn't exercise?
With this logic.... People shouldn't care about anything... so they don't risk messing up. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 6:16:13 PM | Only when it has to do with the laws they are creating for us, or rights that they are trying to take away.
Fair enough. I object to Palin's stance on the basis of the rights that she would take away--rights that she herself has benefitted from. If the recognition of some of those rights came from the judiciary, I can live with it.
Of course people should care, but there's a difference between saying "you should all live by my moral standards," and "I am living by my moral standards." Liberals and conservatives generally both want to have a morally decent society. We just have different ideas about how to get there.
There is a huge difference between informing people of the risks and likely consequences of their behavior and telling them what to do. For example, if I say: "continue to eat farmed Atlantic salmon and you are contributing to the destruction of prime marine habitat and also increasing your risk of contracting mercury toxicity," and saying, "don't eat farmed Atlantic salmon because my God says so."
There is also a difference between saying, "if you have premarital sex you run several risks, including unwanted pregnancy and STDs including HIV/AIDS," and saying, "... because my God says so."
But the biggest difference of all is between saying, "Don't do X because my God says so," and "I don't do X because my God says so."
I have nothing but respect for people who abide by what their God tells them. Those who refuse to recognize that subscription to a particular God is purely voluntary really cannot be taken all that seriously. Can they?
The only obligation we have to each other is to respect each others' rights, including the right to follow the dictates of some other God or none at all (to the extent that doing so does not violate anyone else's rights). When it comes to wealth, many people participate in creating the infrastructure and producing the goods that help some of us accumulate it. So, it is hard for me to assess for certain where exactly all the profits should wind up. That is an accounting matter and a policy matter, which means that in general it is up to us all to sort out together via the mechanism that we have in place for making such collective decisions--a representative legislature. Personally, I have never experienced a day of want. I have nothing to complain about.
When it comes to the sense of entitlement exhibited by the fat cats vs. the sense of entitlement exhibited by the have-nots, I suspect right there is where you find the root cause of both extremes.
You might want to ignore the history of who dictates what to whom, but until people are called on their domineering behavior, they do not even recognize that they are doing it. So when I respond to blatant mischaracterizations of the liberal agenda, I hope you'll have patience with it. Does your desire for solace extend to those who make such mischaracterizations also, or just those who call them out?
In other words, am I just the kid who gets punished for hitting back?
And more to the point, is my portrayal of the conservative agenda inaccurate? If so, somebody please correct me! | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 7:25:17 PM |
And more to the point, is my portrayal of the conservative agenda inaccurate? If so, somebody please correct me!
Ok, you've been corrected.
And...would someone bury that poor little dead horse already?
 | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 7:52:46 PM | Cute ATC,
So what _is_ the social conservative agenda? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 8:16:31 PM | Eugenics might have been part of a progressive ideology
There's no "may have been about it." It was all the rage--the subject of hundreds of papers and books for decades. On the Progressive agenda, eugenics was right up there with women's suffrage and prohibition.
True conservatives have no interests at all in controlling other people's private sexual practices. I certainly don't. But if a majority of people in a particular state believe a certain practice is immoral, I strongly support their right to prohibit it by law--however wrong-headed or ridiculous I may think that is. Those who find the restriction too hard to live with can move to another state--and that's just what Americans have always done.
Now, if 49 states had repealed their laws against fornication, say, I can understand how an equal protection claim by a fornicator in state 50 should carry some weight. Of course they could go to one of the sinful neighboring states to do their fornicating, but that could mean hotel bills, long drives, and the end of any spontaneity.
But when 15 or 18 states have changed their laws, I think it's completely improper for the Court to hear a challenge and say, in effect, "OK, there's a clear trend here, so all you other 30-odd states have to fall into line." Even a decade ago the Court didn't do that, and it explained why it should not. But now, it ignores its own policy and goes right ahead.
In an nutshell, the liberal agenda is about a government that protects the rights of the weak.
From where I'm sitting, the statist agenda of concentrating power in a national government threatens the rights of *all* of us. It is the conservative view that we should protect everyone's legal rights at least to the extent the Constitution recognizes them.
Both Ms. Palin and Justice Thomas appear to favor a roll-back to a time when only the rights of wealthy white men of the proper religion counted.
What time, exactly, was that--and what do you mean by "counted?" Religion has never been a legal basis for discriminating against anyone in this country. With the one exception of suffrage in national elections, neither had sex before 1919, and then that inequality too was eliminated. And it's been a very long time since any state could make unfair racial discrimination legal.
Let me get this straight. Something Sarah Palin has said makes her appear to favor the repeal of several major rights guaranteed by the Constitution. What?? And even if, somehow, she did, neither she nor anyone else could even begin to do that anyway! And even to imply that Justice Thomas, an originalist if there ever was one, favors ignoring some of the most major guarantees in the Constitution is so silly you must be joking. One of my Con law professors (a lifelong Democrat) considered Thomas one of the finer thinkers on the Court. I agree. If you doubt it, read his dissenting opinion in Thornton, the term limits case. Then read Roe, if you can stand to.
when rights conflict and the legislature cannot reslove the matter, it is up to the Courts to protect those rights.
What specific *legal rights* are you claiming were in conflict? And please don't refer to some abstract moral right, because the Constitution doesn't authorize the Court to decide those. Also, what legislature are you referring to, and what couldn't it resolve? The main issue in Roe was whether a state law limiting a woman's ability to get an abortion violated the U.S. Constitution. There WAS no constitutional right to abortion before the majority fabricated one in its decision.
It is NOT the Supreme Court's job to resolve public debates about any issue. That's what legislatures are for, and it violates the separation of powers for *any* court to enter that arena. Courts have developed doctrines like abstention, ripeness, and standing to make sure they don't improperly interfere with the legislative branch by acting like a legislature themselves. It's called judicial restraint, and the fact the Supreme Court recently has gotten in the very bad habit of ignoring it doesn't mean it *should.*
What we do dispute is her view that she is entitled to impose them on others by constraining their choices in violation of their rights.
Please tell us where Governor Palin ever expressed any such view. I doubt she ever has. The only thing I've ever heard her say is about her religious beliefs is that she lives her *own* life by them. So did George Washington--so what?
If Sarah Palin opposes the notion that there's a constitutional right to abortion, well, so do I and tens of millions of other Americans. I don't do that on religious grounds at all, but because I know it to be something several arrogant Justices wrongly--and I believe unlawfully--imposed on the whole country. Each state legislature should restrict abortion as it sees fit, as it was before 1973. I doubt the practical result would be much different from what we have now. But it would correct a serious mistake that continues to undermine the rule of law. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 8:30:40 PM | Ace, everyone has something that makes them what they are, who they are, experiences, teachers, Priests, athletes... who knows? people influence our lives. There are a lot of different religions... and non-religions... and ways people find influence in what makes them what they are. Your argument is always that if some admits to being Christian, then they don't have a mind of their own and only do what God tells them what to do... Sure, there are some people like that. Some people who do nothing other than what they think God wants them to do, and go verbatim by the Bible. But people gain moral fiber by learning the values of God, what he stands for... and then take those values and live their lives... just like an Atheist learns his values from where ever he may... and takes them and lives his life.
Anyone that goes to church learns something, and takes something from that experience that might even be different than the person that was sitting next to them. Sure, the person that goes to one church and has done this for many years will experience a lot from what is said in that church.
Example.... Obama... and Wright.... Just saying.... So Rev. Wright surely has inspired President Obama... But is Obama Rev. Wright? no... not any more than any other Christian going to church. Does a devote Catholic think differently than a devote Mormon... Very much so. They get morals and values from being taught principles about God... But these teachings are no different than where an Atheist picks his up... My point is, both are still individuals who have their own mind.
You keep saying "because my God said so".... Well, the same for the Atheist, only the difference is... because my Non-God says so.
OK... so you have an issue with Christians or people of Faith... But their views are just as much their own as an Atheists views are theirs. And just because in general Conservatives are more religious... it's still wrong to put people in a box. Their are plenty Liberals and Democrats that are Christian... But you seem to try and make the argument that they have their heads screwed on and don't listen to God.... so when they have an opinion it is theirs... that they are not doing it because their God told them to.
Now, I'm not attacking anyone here, Atheist, Liberal.... no one... I believe everyone has their right to their opinion... and it is their opinion... I'm not knocking you Ace... only trying to get you to understand what I am saying... That I am not bashing Liberals... Yes... I will have issues with individual topics and points of view... But I'm not saying all you liberals do things because your Non-God told you to... See how silly that is!
I wasn't going to respond to this thread again... but it just seems like this gets hashed out in ever thread. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 8:55:39 PM |
OK... so you have an issue with Christians or people of Faith... But their views are just as much their own as an Atheists views are theirs.
My issue is not with people of faith. It is with people who use faith as a justification for imposing their will on others.
When an atheist attempts to impose his or her understanding of justice on others, the basis for doing so is on the facts, the likely consequences, and the rights of those most likely to be harmed. Some Christians do that too, and God bless them! | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 6/30/2009 9:17:17 PM | Please tell us where Governor Palin ever expressed any such view. I doubt she ever has. The only thing I've ever heard her say is about her religious beliefs is that she lives her *own* life by them.
If this is true, then I will happily stand corrected with respect to her. Perhaps I was thinking of Anita Bryant--a conservative spokesmodel if there ever was one.
If Sarah Palin opposes the notion that there's a constitutional right to abortion, well, so do I and tens of millions of other Americans. I don't do that on religious grounds at all, but because I know it to be something several arrogant Justices wrongly--and I believe unlawfully--imposed on the whole country. Each state legislature should restrict abortion as it sees fit, as it was before 1973. I doubt the practical result would be much different from what we have now. But it would correct a serious mistake that continues to undermine the rule of law.
Well, when it comes to the fundamental right to control over one's own body, leaving it up to legislatures populated at the time by those who felt that the state had the right to dictate women's reproductive choices, the Court appeared to find that your preferred solution was no solution at all. Given the history, I tend to agree with them.
You yourself answered about the time when only the rights of propertied white men counted--when only their votes counted. And let's not forget the need for the Voting Rights act of 1964. If you were Catholic prior to Kennedy, you could pretty-much forget holding public office of any significance. That discrimination is now illegal and has been for quite some time is good. But that doesn't mean there aren't still those who would go right back to it in a heartbeat if they could.
As far as "eugenics" goes, I was acknowleging its association with progressivism, not minimizing it. My point was that it is no longer part of the liberal agenda. I believe you'll find that it is the dreaded liberals who stand up for the rights of the mentally ill to refuse forced warehousing and other measures to control them that would violate their rights--incovenient and disturbing though that is to the rest of us.
True conservatives have no interests at all in controlling other people's private sexual practices.
Please. You mean "fiscal conservatives." If you're going to tar liberalism with eugenics and socialism, then you have to accept the moral majority as a conservative core constituency. And even those who don't particularly identify as part of that crowd don' like the idea of gay marriage because they don't want to give equal place to people who "do that." Ewwww.
It's called judicial restraint, and the fact the Supreme Court recently has gotten in the very bad habit of ignoring it doesn't mean it *should.*
When fundamental rights are not involved, I agree with you. But some issues go beyond debate.
From where I'm sitting, the statist agenda of concentrating power in a national government threatens the rights of *all* of us.
A government that is not at least as powerful as the private interests it must regulate cannot protect individuals from corporations or other private combinations. Do you really think that the oil and railroad trusts did a better job when it came to protecting the rights of workers and small business owners? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 12:18:37 AM | But it would correct a serious mistake that continues to undermine the rule of law.
Just a follow-up on this point. If the basis of all law is the protection of individual rights, then please tell me what rights an unself-aware, nonviable embryo can claim that would override the right of self-determination of a unwilling mother?
What you object to is not the consequence to the rule of law, because the only way to undermine the rule of law is to use the law to arbitrarily deny individuals their rights--forcing them to take the law into their own hands--as women in so many states were forced to do before 1973--often with tragic results.
No. What you object to is the short-curcuiting of a procedural form. You find it arrogant that the Court asserted its jurisdiction to protect the rights of women without waiting for foot-dragging legislatures to do so. But I contend that it was that very foot-dragging in the name of "family and religious values" that undermined the rule of law, and that what the Court did was send a message to everyone that when it comes to protecting fundamental rights, the Court not only has jurisdiction, but will use it.
That is what is meant by an "independent judiciary." There is a time and a place for judicial restraint. I will concede that it is most of the time and almost every place. However, in certain cases, judicial action is necessary to preserve the rule of law, and Roe v. Wade was one such case. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 12:49:49 AM | Well, when it comes to the fundamental right to control over one's own body, leaving it up to legislatures populated at the time by those who felt that the state had the right to dictate women's reproductive choices, the Court appeared to find that your preferred solution was no solution at all.
and that what the Court did was send a message to everyone that when it comes to protecting fundamental rights, the Court not only has jurisdiction, but will use it.
You're putting the cart before the horse. No such legal right already existed for the Court to protect. If you disagree, please tell us exactly where the Court had recognized a fundamental right to abortion before Roe. Maybe you're one of the few people in the U.S. who's studied the line of cases from Griswold to Roe and Casey and buys their results. I hope you realize they mark the modern reemergence of the "substantive due process" doctrine. SDP first appeared in a big way in the Dred Scott case. Its big run, though, was from Lochner in 1904 to West Coast Hotel in 1937, where the Court kissed it goodbye. Or so everyone thought, until the mid-'60's.
Voting is unquestionably a "fundamental" right, because, as the Court's noted, it secures so many other rights. Due process has usually referred to procedure--particularly the issues of fair notice and a fair hearing. But in *substantive* due process cases, the usual question was whether a state law unfairly deprived someone of some liberty or property. After 1937, the Court used to explain that it had come to appreciate that in the bad old days, its SDP decisions had unfairly infringed the majority's will by striking down democratically enacted laws. Your readiness to disregard the will of the majority when you don't happen to like the result suggests that you, too, don't much respect the fundamental right to vote, and have that vote mean something.
To say abortion is an absolute, unquestioned liberty interest--as if it were no more than having a tooth pulled--is simplistic. States regulate and restrict thousands of our minor liberties all the time, without ever violating the Constitution. You're misstating the situation to say there was a "problem" that required a "solution," and that the Court found that letting each state decide the question was no solution. That's like saying that the fact states restrict gaming, with some of them prohibiting it entirely, causes a problem the Court just must solve. And so it decides to hear a challenge to some state's gaming statute in order to concoct a fundamental constitutional right to gamble.
The Court was under no obligation to take the Roe and Doe cases, which it decided the same day. It *chose* to take them because several of the Justices were determined to to create a constitutional right to abortion. That's nothing but fiat--the exact opposite of the rule of law. Apparently you don't have a very high regard for the rule of law, as long as you like the result. That's how Judge Sotomayor sees things, too. I don't.
I don't know who you include in the "moral majority." But if you mean religious Americans, I don't consider most of them politically conservative. I don't know their concerns in detail--but I know that many of them want the federal government to intervene in social issues in a way they favor. Conservatives don't want the federal government to be involved in Americans' personal lives nearly as much as it already is.
For example, I more or less favor the *result* of Lawrence v. Kansas, which invalidated "public morals" laws. What I don't like is that by torturing it into a constitutional issue--which it never was--the Court overstepped its authority and fabricated a right. Every time it does that, it damages its credibility and so undermines the rule of law. By deciding the case when it didn't need to, the Court also foreclosed individual states from just repealing those laws as and when their voters saw fit, without raising any constitutional issue at all.
And by saying issues that involve "fundamental rights" go beyond debate, you're giving the Court carte blanche to make law.
That's the sort of unchecked power than the Framers, from all the evidence, never meant it to have. What's to prevent the Court from staking an exclusive claim to decide any question it wants to steal away from the other branches, by the simple expedient of finding that the question concerns a "fundamental right?" Nothing. And that's exactly what the Burger Court did in Roe. You might want to research what rights the Court considers "fundamental," and why.
Why is bringing up eugenics "tarring" liberals? Why do want to disown your philosophical forbears? The progressives pushed for eugenics then; now, liberals/statists champion free access to contraception and abortion. To he!! with the fetuses involved, and to he!! with those irritating moral questions about late-term abortions--just keep the line moving. And today, about 36% of the women who receive abortions are black. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 1:18:02 PM | You're putting the cart before the horse. No such legal right already existed for the Court to protect.
You mean that no such right had previously been enumerated. However, any and all rights not specifically enumerated are "reserved to the people and the states." So, if the Supremes have, upon further examination, found that such a right exists, even though the founders failed to enumerate it, they are within their mandate to find in favor of the individual as against the states, and to assert federal jurisdiction when they do so.
I believe that is what they did in Roe v. Wade, and in general, as a liberal, I lean toward any finding that asserts individual rights over state control. That is why I wholeheartedly agree with you about that recent and atrocious eminent domain decision that said governments could condemn and take private property for another private use. What do Roe v. Wade and the eminent domain case have in common? Both were brought in response to unjustified government meddling in private affairs, and both should have been decided in favor of the citizens rather than the governments.
A lot of conservatives claim to favor individual rights, until it comes right down to the hard cases that challenge their traditionally and unquestioningly held "values." At that point, all bets are off. For most conservatives, certain favored traditions trump rights every time. Even you, Match, cannot see that the traditional definition of marriage is just a social convention that is rooted in religious tradition and not rights.
I am sorry, but the more I think of it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that "conservative" means "hypocrite." The only difference between one flavor of conservative and another is which traditions that go against individual rights they still cling to--while still claiming to stand for individual rights.
Bottom line: your supposed support for individual rights only goes so far.
And by saying issues that involve "fundamental rights" go beyond debate, you're giving the Court carte blanche to make law.
No. I'm giving the Court carte blanche to limit the laws that the state can make--such as laws that prohibit safe abortions during the first trimester. Actually, I'm not giving them anything. They already have that power. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 1:22:18 PM | Why is bringing up eugenics "tarring" liberals? Why do want to disown your philosophical forbears?
Because I know of no current liberal who still favors the idea. Unlike conservatives, we are willing to reconsider our positions when they are found to be in conflict with the idea of individual rights. Eugenics was no doubt a huge fad. My mother, a lifelong Republican, used to was poetic about how much better off we'd all be if our society practiced it. However, somewhere along the way liberals recognized that individual rights were more important and disavowed the idea of eugenics. Now the fad is diversity, though I must admit that diversity without meaningful integration is just an empty sop.
Your intention appeared to be to find the worst excesses of progressivism and socialism and characterize the liberal position as a whole with them. That is just as unfair as my previous remark equating conservatism with hypocrisy. Is it not? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 4:05:26 PM |
So, if the Supremes have, upon further examination, found that such a right exists, even though the founders failed to enumerate it, they are within their mandate to find in favor of the individual as against the states . . . I believe that is what they did in Roe v. Wade.
If so, you misunderstand the facts. Justice Fortas discussed the 9th Am. in his Griswold dissent--and it's often cited in debates about privacy rights. Roe did base one of her claims on the 9th Am.--but that didn't figure in the Court's decision at all.
In Griswold, the Court invalidated a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, or distribution of contraceptives to married people. It held that this law violated a right to privacy, and three justices suggested different parts of the Constitution they thought conferred this right. (Still to this day--and after much searching--no one knows just where in the Constitution the right to buy contraceptives is guaranteed.)
But Griswold's privacy right was plenty good enough for Justice Blackmun. In Roe, he extended it (don't ask how--as Judge Bork put it, the case contains not a single piece of legal reasoning ) from buying contraceptives to getting an abortion. The majority held that a Texas abortion law, by infringing Roe's right to privacy, unfairly deprived her of a liberty interest guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. That's why Roe v. Wade is a substantive due process case. It is NOT a 9th Amendment case.
They already have that power.
The Court has the power you refer to only because it arrogated it to itself, without any pretense of a legal justification. An embezzler has the power to take the bank's money for himself, too--but that's hardly a good reason for anyone to respect or defer to that power. You obviously haven't even read Roe v. Wade, so your opinion that the Court is right to make up laws to create the result you want is uninformed.
Again, you make it obvious how little regard you have for the fundamental right to vote. If the majority of voters in a state want a certain policy, you're glad the Court ignores their votes if you approve of the results, and the Constitution de d----d. You and the Court know better than all those hicks, and to the devil with their fundamental rights.
If I chose to take a personal tone, as you have, I might describe that attitude as dangerously intolerant and anti-democratic. You seem to have an elitist, supercilious view of many Americans as rednecks and religious bigots who can't be trusted to use their votes properly. There they lurk, grinning, their primitive brains churning with thoughts of beating up a "homo," a minority, or a bearded environmentalist, how much they hate all foreigners, how best to keep all women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, etc. Only in the movies.
Bottom line: your supposed support for individual rights only goes so far.
Yes, it certainly does, I'm glad to say. So does the Constitution's. And accordingly, for most of two centuries, so has the Court's. The notion you appear to have, that the Constitution protects individual rights--to anything--with perfect equality, favoring no one, is nonsense. The fact you think so tells me you don't understand the law very thoroughly. Nothing is perfect--read Dred Scott. or the Scottsboro boys' case, or Buck v. Bell, or Knauff v. Shaughnessy, or ex rel. Mezei, or a hundred other cases where someone got the shaft.
I repeat, what about the fundamental right of the majority of voters in a state to determine that state's policies, either directly, or through elected representatives? The point you just do not seem to understand is that it's the very nature of laws to discriminate. I don't care if some state's laws make me wince--the only relevant question is not whether I approve of them, but whether they infringe too far on a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
The group the laws favors wins; the group it disfavors loses. Too bad for nudists, say, that the majority doesn't want them to be able to walk around in public. Should the Court hear a claim by a 1,000-member state organization of nudists that the law prohibiting them from appearing in public nude is unconstitutional on some ground or another, and then fabricate a fundamental constitutional right to nudity? If not, *why* not, by your lights? Why should those five million uptight moral majority types be allowed to dictate to these one thousand? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 8:12:16 PM | three justices suggested different parts of the Constitution they thought conferred this right.
This is where you and I have a fundamental difference in outlook, and so of course many disagreements will follow. You believe that the Constitution confers rights. I don't. I believe that the Constitution was the first systematic attempt to recognize them and design a system of government to protect them.
It was a damned fine attempt that no one has been able to best. However, that doesn't mean that the Founders were exhaustive in their enumerations of the rights we are born with, that their implementation was perfect, or that all subsequent revisions. Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and the income tax clearly didn't. However, I think Roe v. Wade did.
And to get back on topic, I think that Palin stance against Roe v. Wade while serving as Governor is a kick in the teeth to all of those who worked hard to give her the opportunity to hold that office. So sue me.
Should the Court hear a claim by a 1,000-member state organization of nudists that the law prohibiting them from appearing in public nude is unconstitutional on some ground or another, and then fabricate a fundamental constitutional right to nudity?
Near as I can tell, nobody has ever died from sepsis after a botched, back-alley attempt to get their clothes off. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 10:36:10 PM | Your allusion to someone dying from a back-alley abortion is melodramatic and overwrought. The Texas law Roe challenged permitted abortions when necessary to save the life of the mother, and I'm sure the same was true in every state.
You've never even read Roe, and you don't have much understanding of why substantive due process is so objectionable. That means your conviction that it was wondrous is arbitrary. You have no reason to think the majority got anything right in its decision. But like lots of people, you want to believe it did, so you accept that on faith. Your belief in the rightness of that decision is no more rational than the belief that marriage must involve one man and one woman. And yet you've often attacked THAT belief for being irrational.
It's obvious (partly from your earlier mention of the first trimester) that you don't know about the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, either. When the Court decided to hear that case, almost everyone who follows its decisions expected it to overrule Roe. But in the end, the majority took cover behind the doctrine of stare decisis.
In plain English that means: "Yes, we all know Roe's a real turkey. They say Blackmun's clerks even called the thing "Harry's Abortion." But it's been around almost 20 years, and millions of people think it's the Be-all and End-all. It's too late to overrule it NOW. Why, it would be like overruling Miranda!" (Note: It's almost unheard of for the Court to ignore stare decisis when a statute's involved, and not some part of the Constitution. Yet in Rasul, when a majority of the Court was hell-bent on making up a right to habeas for the Gitmo detainees, it didn't think twice before reversing its earlier interpretation of the very same statute.)
So in Casey, the Court allowed Roe to live on--but only in a modified form. It scrapped Roe's arbitrary framework, in which states could ban last-trimester abortions in the if necessary to protect the life of the fetus; could regulate them in the second trimester to protect the health of the mother; and could not regulate them at all during the first trimester. After Casey, states can ban abortions to protect the fetus' life after it's viable--which it's taken to be at about 21 weeks. And during the first 18 weeks, states may regulate abortions if they don't place an"undue burden" on a woman's right to choose an abortion.
Casey is not the Court's finest work. How the Court came up with its "undue burden" requirement is anyone's guess. What standard should be used to measure this burden? Who knows? Requiring a 24-hour waiting period has been OK'd, but other restrictions have not. And if abortion's truly a constitutional right, why even ask whether a regulation unduly burdens it? As one commenter put it, would we ask if a tax on public speakers "unduly burdened" their right to free speech? (Of course not, because imposing ANY tax would violate that right.) | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/1/2009 10:58:19 PM | The way I see it, there is a balance to be struck between the rights of an unwilling mother and the rights of a self-aware, viable fetus. Prior to the emergence of self-awareness, we're really talking about tissue, to which no personal rights attend.
With free speech, there are all sorts of regulations. If I want to have a parade, I have to get a permit. Once I have the permit, I have to let others of differing viewpoints march too. I can't deny them public accommodation even if their speech might completely contradict my own.
No rights exist in a vacuum. The circumstances that made safe, legal, abortion a necessity were those women who did die of complications from the unsafe illegal abortions that Roe v. Wade put an end to.
When it comes to restricting individual rights, I am right there with you on procedural rectitude. You bet. That is why I am so dismayed by the Bush/Cheney precedents. And if the Obama administration is overcorrecting in the aftermath, well, I'm actually much more afraid of a U.S. Government gone bad than I am of a bunch of mop-head brigands who have to travel a long way to get here.
When a more expansive understanding of individual rights emerges, I'm willing to be a lot more forgiving. Why? Because I believe that rights trump both laws and traditions, and that the rule of law is legitimatized by the rights the law protects. Laws simply mark the boundaries between one set of rights and another. They do not define or circumscribe rights. Only the rights of other individuals do. I believe that the rule of law is meant to support freedom, not suppress it--including the freedom to thrive even after making a mistake like the one Willow made.
Match, I was thinking about you on my way home and how much I appreciate you for helping me to clarify my own views. I only hope I've given you half as good a challenge as you have given me. I toast your brilliance and your perserverance. If I ever see you in court, I hope it won't be as an opponent! | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 1:39:56 PM | | The whole incident so upset her that she's leaving office, early! Oh dear, what will she do? A book, a job, Presidential candidate-in-waiting? Maybe the RNC has hired her to chaperone the male party members' members? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 3:10:52 PM | | ^^^^^She and her husband have had to pay a half-million dollars in legal fees to defend her against ethics charges, none of which proved true. And it's cost the state of Alaska another two million in wasted time and effort. Evidently, the attacks were designed to destroy her politically and personally. If I knew that kind of harassment was going to continue as long as I was on the job, I wouldn't stay, either. How many people could afford to? | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 4:04:42 PM | I would have to say that she was attacked pretty ferociously from day one of the announcement she would be McCain`s running mate and continued long after the election was over for the simple fact that the left and dems seen, felt and realized she was, is and would continue to be a threat to them politically. Yes, they felt threatened.
If someone is a non threat or a non issue, is there really any incentive to even bother with or waste time attempting to paint in a negative light ? Of course not. No one will waste time on a loser or someone who is a non issue. This simple fact alone simply shows she was and is a force to be reckoned with.......... and they know it....regardless of what your or my personal feelings are for the woman...
Peace | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 4:27:46 PM | she was and is a force to be reckoned with
Not any more. There's something fishy about the way this is going down. No one ever steps down just so they can "pass the ball." Everyone who has stepped down has either been indicted or skirting a scandal.
I don't see how she can be taken serious as a future candidate. She left an elected office just over half way through her first term. She just up and quit on the citizens who elcted her. Looks bad. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 7:04:33 PM | She's following MacArthur: She's not retreating, she's just advancing in another direction!
 | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 8:02:37 PM | skootch...... looks are deceiving. Politics is fishy business to begin with.
Political decisions are most often very, very calculated and deliberate strategic postioning....She is free now...... the force that is to be reckoned with is going to grow......
They ( the media) have had a microscope up her azz since it was announced that she would be McCain`s running mate. If there was some sort of a scandel brewing, the drive by news media would have been on it like a bum on a baloney sandwich... | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 9:29:37 PM | Romney/Palin 2012
I don't think the Repubs have the you know what..... to put that ticket out there... And The Dems think they would have fun with that one ... I could hear all the jokes and bashing already.... But I think that would be good for our country. | |
|
| Letterman v Palin
Posted: 7/3/2009 10:11:16 PM | It will be interesting to see what happens next. I wonder what McCain saw in her; I'm not seeing it.
Much as I dislike certain things about her, I'm sorry to see her step down this way. There is one time when I up and quit that it made sense and was the right thing to do. I've regretted it every other time. And oh the bridges I've burned. | |
|
|
| Page 10 of 11
|
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 |
|
Home
login 
