Please use this thread to post what you like, for as long as you like, with whomever you like. Self-linking is like a vanilla sundae with hot fudge, broken pieces of oreo and those little rainbow colored sprinkles — and who wouldn’t want that?
Elephants March Through Hotel Lobby After It Was Built On Their Migration Trail. So cool! Apparently it’s become quite the tourist attraction. Curtsy: Attempts.
When capitalized, "Sie" is the formal way to address adults of either gender in polite German. I majored in the…
If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to "work", by…
Ob sie wirklich Deutsch spricht. Normalweise, kommt die US Soldaten nicht ins Stadt und spricht nicht so oft mit denn…
As for being a Nazi, ich spreche fliessend deutsch und wohnte in Deutschland fuer drei Jahre mit der americanishe Luftwaffe…
And of course this "incentive" only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of…
That’s the house I was going to build when I started up my elephant preserve.
“Do we say we saw the elephants at Jake’s house?”
“Yes! Yes, we do.”
Another cartoon controversy involving a cartoon depicting Benedict Arnold in blackface. In an ironic twist, however, it seems that the ones doing the condemning are other cartoonists.
http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2008/10/21/powell-traitor-cartoon-receives-condemnation/
I can see why. As the saying goes, “That’s Racist!”
The most surprising thing I’ve seen in the news today: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th Circuit, a onetime possibility for a Bush nomination to the Supreme Court and a fairly stalwart social conservative (his views on gay rights probably would make most people on the site see red), declares that the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller to strike down DC’s gun ban was an instance of judicial activism comparable to Roe v. Wade. Among conservative judges, he’s pretty much saying, “Yo decision so subverting of democracy…”
I really appreciated his scorn for Scalia’s saying that of course certain gun restrictions, like on ownership by felons and the mentally ill, are still OK, even under this view that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Which part of the Bill of Rights no longer applies to you once you’ve got a felony record? I’m sure someone would be interested in taking away G. Gordon Liddy’s apparent First Amendment right to advise his radio show listeners to kill ATF agents.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1079546/Rape-victim-finally-closure-25-years-attacked-accused-lying-cover-extra-marital-affair.html
“Rape victim finally has closure 25 years after she was attacked and accused of lying to cover up extra-marital affair”
“…Michelle’s case highlights how the treatment of rape victims has changed over the years, with police now having specialist counselling services to deal with distressed women…”
So, how much has it changed?
Black Men and the Coolness factor: A look at the ways in which coolness is associated with black men and why it is yet another in the long line of bad social constructions.
Angelina Jolie: The World Greatest Mother: A look at the way in which Jolie is upheld as the ideal model of motherhood and why this is problematic. Her meteoric rise as earth mother to all blinds us to the struggles that women of color that are poor go through on a daily basis to raise their children.
Flies, Honey and Bullshit: Why telling a person of color that their tone is hostile is problematic.
PG:
But this is no criticism at all. The Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular are deliberately subversive of democracy. Being subversive of democracy is a critical part of every judge’s job. There are certain things the government simply isn’t allowed to do, and when the legislative and executive branches fail to respect those limits, as they usually do nowadays, the judiciary is the last line of defense.
Trying to discuss the fat thing, with as much intelligence as I can muster, open minds only.
WARNING: I am not an intellectual.
Brandon,
Certainly, but among conservative judges, subversion of democracy is considered a serious problem. It might be necessary to engage in such subversion where a democratically passed law is an open and obvious affront to the Constitution (for example, Justice Scalia reluctantly agreed that flag-burning bans violated the First Amendment), but Wilkinson’s point is that D.C.’s handgun ban seemed a far more debateable question, and when there is uncertainty about the existance and scope of a right, courts should default toward democratic judgments about it.
I don’t think I agree with him, but it’s interesting to see the kind of “oh no, judges substituting their opinions for the will of the people!” criticism so often made of “liberal” judges now being applied to “conservative” judges.
[deleted by author]
The most surprising thing I’ve seen in the news today: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th Circuit, … declares that the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller to strike down DC’s gun ban was an instance of judicial activism comparable to Roe v. Wade.
As Judge Wilkinson points out, though, there are some very substantial differences between Heller vs. D.C. and Roe vs. Wade. Guns are talked about in the Constitution; abortion is not. I also disagree with his analysis of the meaning of the prefatory clause and how it relates to the rest of the amendment. He does recognize that the idea of ensuring that the States had militias was so that they could counter any use of the Federal standing army to oppress the people. But he fails to note that Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution already required the Congress to arm the militias (it’s towards the end of that section). So why, then, would you need the 2nd Amendment to ensure that the militias would be able to be armed?
Because that’s NOT the intent of the 2nd Amendment. It’s intent, as I read Federalist Paper 29 (which is not a direct reference to the 2nd Amendment but speaks to the issue), is to ensure that the people in turn could defend themselves from the militia should the government seek to use IT against the people. In short, a well-regulated (i.e., well-trained) militia is necessary to ensure the liberty of a free State – meaning one of the individual States, which is how the word is used everywhere else in the Constitution, and not as a reference to the United States as a whole – against a threat of force from the Federal government. But since the existence of a well-trained and equipped militia is in turn a threat to the liberty of the people (just as the existence of a Federal standing army is a threat to the liberty of the States), the people in turn must have the right to arm themselves.
I really appreciated his scorn for Scalia’s saying that of course certain gun restrictions, like on ownership by felons and the mentally ill, are still OK, even under this view that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Which part of the Bill of Rights no longer applies to you once you’ve got a felony record?
Convicted pedophiles are banned from peaceably assembling with children.
Having said that, I do recognize the danger that we have fallen into and that has been expressed for some time in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices. This may be a surprise for the younger posters here, but I can remember a time when such hearings were quite non-controversal. As noted in this essay, Roe vs. Wade really did open the gates for this. It turned the Supreme Court from a body that interpreted law into a legislature of last resort. I disagree with his representation that Heller was an example of this by the majority; I’m surprised that 4 Justices could seriously hold that the 2nd Amendment meant to insure that the members of a State militia could be armed and had nothing to do with the right of the people when they they themselves were named in it.
The overall issue is quite valid, though. If Prop 8 passes in California it may well be a clarion call to the State and Federal Supreme Courts that if they keep on this tack they may end up sparking people who are getting fed up with judicial activism to take more steps like this. The last thing that the Feds (whether judicial, legislative or federal) want is to see local referenda at the State level or see at the Federal level the Constitutional Convention call come from the State legislatures. That’ll introduce instability and could get some really malign changes made.
Convicted pedophiles are not allowed to be around children full stop, for the protection of the children. That’s extremely different from the generalized label of “felon.” The removal of rights from felons that was typical of English common law had nothing to do with protecting vulnerable citizens, and everything to do with indicating that this person who had committed a felony was beyond the pale. (From what I understand, a great deal of the removal of rights and privileges from felons did not come about until juries began revolting against giving the death penalty and other severe bodily punishments for non-violent crimes such as hunting in the king’s forests; the laws were changed to make punishment more palatable to juries, and part of the shift was to keep felons physically alive but dead in the life of the polity.)
As for the idea that Roe began the politicization of the judiciary, please. I admit I’m not old enough to remember it personally, but I grew up in the South and graduated from a high school that still was under court desegregation order; Brown v. Board created the notoriety of Supreme Court judges among a public that was extremely opposed to their decisions. (And of course many conservatives do not believe Brown v. Board was correct as a reading of the Constitution, even if it was a good policy outcome.) There was a good business in “Impeach Earl Warren” bumper stickers and such for years. Roe v. Wade simply spread this further geographically.
http://buckmire.blogspot.com/2008/10/prop-8-ad-hits-back-on-lies-about-kids.html
Good blogging on the new No on Prop 8 ad about education…
The civil rights decisions of the Warren court had a pretty solid basis in the 14th Amendment, IIRC. Sure, the South didn’t like it – hell, neither did South Boston when their turn came (and I was around for that). It wasn’t popular in some areas, but there was no wide-spread consensus that it was bad law.
The civil rights decisions of the Warren court had a pretty solid basis in the 14th Amendment, IIRC.
Um, wow. If you’re an originalist, as your reliance on the Federalist Papers seems to indicate, Brown v. Board does not have a solid basis in the 14th Amendment. Shortly after approving the 14th Amendment, Congress mandated racial segregation in D.C.’s schools (overturned at the same time as Brown, in Bolling v. Sharpe). Robert Bork’s SCOTUS nomination went down in flames because he said that under his theory of jurisprudence, he could not reach the conclusion that racial segregration was unconstitutional. He thought it was very very bad indeed, but as an originalist, he did not consider it unconstitutional.
Nor is there anything in the text of the 14th Amendment that refers to race at all.
I’m not clear on what you would consider a “widespread consensus.” Have you heard of massive resistance? Some areas of the South shut down their public schools rather than operate them under racial integration — Boston hated busing, but not so much that they closed the schools. Federal judges who tried to enforce the Supreme Court decision by ordering the schools to permit black students to attend had their houses firebombed. Governors declared that they would not allow integration. The President had to send the f***ing 101st Airborne and National Guard to Southern schools, which I haven’t seen happen for abortion clinics. The Southern Manifesto, declaring Brown an abuse of judicial power, was signed by 101 members of Congress. Does it just not count as “widespread consensus” if it’s in what are called the “flyover states”?
Brown included lawsuits from well beyond what is deemed “southern” today — the named case was from Topeka, Kansas precisely because they were making an attempt at “separate but equal” there, and there also were cases from Delaware, SC, Virginia and as aforementioned D.C. De jure racial segregation, not just the de facto type practiced in Boston due to housing patterns, was not confined to the Deep South. Florida’s legislature passed an Interposition Resolution denouncing the decision and declaring it null and void. (Interposition theory came back into popularity with Brown after having gotten squashed by the Civil War.)
You might want to ask someone who was an adult and attentive to the news in 1954 about whether there was a wide-spread consensus that the Warren Court had interpreted the Constitution correctly.
Whoops. I left out the 15th Amendment – sorry. And yes, there were areas of the South that had a big problem with it. But the South is not a majority of the U.S. A majority of people in the U.S. viewed it as the correct legal decision.
There was a pretty interesting aspect for Judge Garrity’s decision in Boston – he noted that the Boston Public Schools were already busing kids – taking black kids past white schools to put them in black schools. A lot of it was due to housing patterns, but by no means all. He figured that if the Boston schools were busing kids to achieve segregation, they could bus them to achieve desegregation. And just as in other public schools, many whites in the affected areas pulled their kids out by either moving out of the area or by putting their kids into private schools, which raised the percentage of black kids in the schools.
What does the 15th Amendment, a guarantee of voting rights, have to do with racial desegregation of schools? Does that mean you believe that the 19th Amendment prohibits sex segregation in schools?
Here’s some not so charming Obama “signs”.