On their tours of monumental Washington, summertime visitors often stand in awe of the Supreme Court. The gleaming white building, with its oath of “equal justice under law” proclaimed above its grand west entrance, suggests solidity itself. Yet far from living up to that promise, the current Roberts Court has begun to tilt the scales against ordinary Americans while undermining the… return to article
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Reader Comments (25)Page 1 of 1 pages*In the school diversity cases from Louisville and Seattle, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas again seemed to taunt the nation’s legacy of overcoming hate and division through effective state action. They all but insisted that public servants confronting segregation become complicit by ignoring racism altogether or pretending it doesn’t exist.”
This is actually a very good thing. This ruling will help end racial discrimination once and for all. The basis of helping others should not be centered on race, but rather on economic status. To provide extra help for rich blacks (or their children) is absurd. But to provide help to those who are actually disadvantaged - of whatever race - will help those in the lower classes rise up to the middle class.
Posted by wolf on Jul 5, 2007 at 2:16 PM It’s difficult to add much to such a brilliant piece on the erosion of our rights, so let me just say this: my 92-year-old uncle lived in eastern Europe all through the rise of the Nazis, the war, and the aftermath. A staunch Republican, he switched about four years ago and said, “America feels like Berlin in 1929.” His sense of fear about the rise of an American fascism has grown worse since then, and he notes each erosion by giving us an example from Europe which he believes is comparable. This is a man with a Master’s Degree who was a distinguished engineer for Bell Labs for decades, and he is distraught to be coming to the end of his life in fear for his beloved America.
Posted by julianalisa on Jul 5, 2007 at 5:33 PM Political consultants tell us that the general public does not find the composition of the Supreme Court a compelling enough reason to pick a particular Presidential candidate, leaving it behind in favor of more “bread-and-butter” types of concerns. I didn’t grow up eating bread and butter at my immigrant family table, so I reject that metaphor, and I reject this small-minded view of how discerning the American voter can be.
If done strategically and smartly, raising the real implications of what the Court can do to our pockets, our bank accounts, our bread/ butter/ rice/ poi/ etc., can and will be a winning argument in favor of a progressive vision of America.
Posted by bdeguzman on Jul 5, 2007 at 11:23 PM This court seems to reflect the substance of the content that is filling the vacuum left by the demise of the “progressive class” in America.
In America a new revolution is being born in the cublicles of our i,t .corp. giants and fueled by a new era of workers need for basic fairness.
Great article Hans!!
Posted by t.bird on Jul 6, 2007 at 1:03 AM “This is actually a very good thing. This ruling will help end racial discrimination once and for all. The basis of helping others should not be centered on race, but rather on economic status. To provide extra help for rich blacks (or their children) is absurd. But to provide help to those who are actually disadvantaged - of whatever race - will help those in the lower classes rise up to the middle class.”
This argument assumes that racism no longer exists and does not operate in society on any level. This is far from true anywhere in America. Racism is entrenched in the very fabric of our culture and most certainly has an effect on the educational and economic prospects of our children. “Colorblindness” is really a refusal to see this truth, and only whites have the “luxury” of being able to “ignore” color. Yes, we need to provide assistance to schools based on economic level as well, but fairness and equal opportunity require that we also offset institutional racism, which operates regardless of economic level (e.g. the black Harvard Law professor who was turned down when he tried to purchase a house in Newton, MA subsequently sold to white folks.) The facts are that non-Asian non-whites have lower enrollment and lower achievement test scores in school than whites and Asians. This is clearly not because of disparities in intellectual ability.
Quote from Jonathan Kozol’s latest book:
“In 48 percent of high schools in the nation’s 100 largest districts, which are those in which the highest concentrations of black and Hispanic students tend to be enrolled, less than half the entering ninth-graders graduate in four years. Nationwide, from 1993 to 2002, the number of high schools graduating less than half their ninth-grade class in four years has increased by 75 percent. In the 94 percent of districts in New York State where white children make up the majority, nearly 80 percent of students graduate from high school in four years. In the 6 percent of districts where black and Hispanic students make up the majority, only 40 percent do so. There are 120 high schools in New York, enrolling nearly 200,000 minority students, where less than 60 percent of entering ninth-graders even make it to twelfth grade.”
Posted by Matt W on Jul 6, 2007 at 3:33 PM God - And Progressives - Save This Honorable Court!
A rose is a rose is a rose ...
And a Progressive is a Liberal is a Socialist is a Communist.
This is the third iteration of the Progressive theme and meme in the last century. The original manifestation of Progressive thought had a genuine concern for social welfare in a more primitive economic environment. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican President, was a leading political embodiment of the Progressive movement in the early Twentieth Century. Much progress was made in social justice during this period.
The Great Depression was a time of stress and strife, and serious consideration was given to radical political solutions for the problems, not only in the USA, but world-wide. In America, fascism attracted adherents (Charles Lindbergh, notably) and Socialism/Communism had a wide following among the usual suspects; the media, academics, and politicians. Communists/Socialists tried to hijack the government in America as they had done in Russia a few years before. Mindful of the mass murder and destruction that marked the early years of the Soviet Union, the American people firmly rejected Socialism as a model for their polity.
Henry Wallace was FDR’s Vice-President during FDR’s third term. Wallace actively promoted Communism as Vice-President. Wallace’s policies were controversial and unpopular, and Wallace was taken off the ticket for the 1944 elections to be replaced by Harry Truman.
Wallace ran for President in 1948 on the Progressive Party ticket (the second iteration of Progressivism in the USA), and was soundly defeated and repudiated, taking no Electoral College votes, and showing modest strength only in (where else?) New York and California.
“American radicals and socialists began calling themselves `liberals’.” - F.A. Hayek, 1960.
Having failed to impose their Collectivist philosophy on the American people as Communists, Socialists, or Progressives, the Collectivists adopted a new name: Liberals. As practiced by the Collectivists, the Liberalism of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s was extremely illiberal.
Liberal values originated in Europe during the Enlightenment, and grew to fruition in the founding of the United States of America; the finest statement of liberal values is contained in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States of America, the first ten Amendments.
So why do Collectivists, until recently known as “Liberals”, campaign so hard against free speech (First Amendment, talk radio) and self-defense (Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms)? Because you can’t impose Collectivist policies on people who are free to say what they want and who can defend themselves and their values. The Collectivists want to impose social controls (and do not mind who they kill or destroy in the process), as Lenin did in the early Soviet Union, and as the Socialist bureaucrats are doing now in the EUSSR.
Communist, Socialist, and Liberal have become terms of disapprobation in the United States over a period of decades, and the Collectivists are desperate for a new term without negative connotations. The best they can come up with is a revival, for the third time, of tired old “Progressive”, apparently.
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweetJuliet, in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, 1594
And by whatever name they call themselves, Collectivists are rotten and depraved enough to gag a maggot. Collectivists actively seek the destruction of the individual and individual values in favor of a universal set of values that subsume the individual in rules and bureaucracy, as envisioned in the concept of the “New Soviet Man”.
The corruption and inefficiency of Socialist efforts everywhere should have destroyed Socialism as a viable political philosophy, but it has not. Communism/Socialism/“Liberalism”/ Progressivism must be confronted anew in each generation if human freedom is to prevail.
Or maybe the Collectivists will run out of names. Perhaps they could call themselves “Know Nothings”, a name with historical validity in the United States, and which aptly describes their philosphy.
Posted by scorp on Jul 6, 2007 at 5:54 PM Matt W on opines: “This argument assumes that racism no longer exists and does not operate in society on any level.”.
The argument he wishes to refute is that we should end racism by becoming less race conscious, really by becoming colorblind to race. Thus he seems to believe that only by racist policies can we fix the racism problem. Odd logic that has been tested for several decades yielding not only a lack of success, but dismal failure instead.
I argue that race should be irrelevant to policy makers. Our efforts are much better focussed on providing help to people who actually need it (i.e., the economically challenged). By Matt’s reasoning above, since a disproportionate number of non-whites are lower class, a disproportionate amount of aid will end up in their hands. Apparently this is insufficient - we also need to ensure that whites (or is it really just non-blacks?) are somehow penalized for their supposed “privilege”, which they do not actually possess (being poor themselves).
I suppose the biggest difference i see in using class rather than race is that while class can change (and in fact frequently does) race cannot. If blacks (or whites) are indeed inferior, then perhaps we should give them special aid based on their race. If they are comparable, we should seek out those **who need help** and provide it as best as we can.
Posted by wolf on Jul 6, 2007 at 6:51 PM scorp,
I’m not sure what your rant has to do with the content of the article. In a typical libertarian fashion, you’ve erected a liberal strawman, ripe for demolition. I have never met a liberal who didn’t fully support civil rights, including free speech. I have, however, heard several conservative talking heads who ramble about how those “damn Hollywood liberals need to keep their mouths shut.” or how, “if you don’t want to say ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance, you can move to Canada.” (I feel that a Pledge of Allegiance itself is a disturbing totalitarian concept.) With the GWB administration and Roberts Supreme Court, liberals today have their hands full with merely trying to agitate to preserve rights enshrined in the Constitution (habeus corpus, due process, and illegal search for instance) without getting into the collectivism you’re decrying.
2nd Amendment rights have been rendered moot by the advent of the modern military industrial complex. No citizen militia, no matter how large or well organized could ever hope to overthrow an oppressive U.S. Government backed by the full strength of the U.S. military. That said, most (but not all) liberals support gun ownership rights. We just want to keep guns out of the hands of persons who have previously used them for criminal violence, hence background checks and waiting periods. I’m not sure why the same conservatives who are perfectly fine with denying voting rights to ex-cons are so willing to put guns in their hands.
Posted by Matt W on Jul 6, 2007 at 7:41 PM “Thus he seems to believe that only by racist policies can we fix the racism problem. Odd logic that has been tested for several decades yielding not only a lack of success, but dismal failure instead.”
Forgive my repetition, but here’s another Kozol quote:
“The achievement gap between black and white children, which narrowed for three decades up until the late years of the 1980s—the period in which school segregation steadily decreased—started to widen once more in the early 1990s when the federal courts began the process of resegregation by dismantling the mandates of the Brown decision. From that point on, the gap continued to widen or remained essentially unchanged; and while recently there has been a modest narrowing of the gap in reading scores for fourth-grade children, the gap in secondary school remains as wide as ever.”My point being that you’re putting the cart before the horse. It’s not the policies that have failed, but the slow dismantling of them over several years that has contributed toward worsening equality.
You argue that race should be irrelevant to policy makers. Maybe so in an ideal world, but then how do you construct policies that take into account the very real racism of school administrators, apartment complex managers, police, store clerks, retail business owners, bank loan officers, city planners, etc etc etc? Not to mention the structural racism that creates the ghettos and barrios with their substandard housing, terrible schools, worse healthcare facilities, and toxic environment. Policy makers need to see race because everyone else does. A case in point is the FDA’s food pyramid, which promotes dairy as an entire food group for a well balanced diet despite that fact that most of the world’s population (including 75% of African Americans, 90% of Asian Americans, and 100% of Native Americans) are not lactose tolerant, but most people of European descent are.
Posted by Matt W on Jul 6, 2007 at 8:07 PM Matt -
Sorry my comments went so far over your head. I will try to clarify some of your misperceptions.
Straw man? To the degree that Collectivists are able to take control of a state, the people suffer. This is true of the total control exercised by the corrupt, inefficient Communists in the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cambodia, and it is also true of the EUSSR, which is corrupt, inefficient, and disintegrating. Tens of millions of victims of Communism are dead men, not straw men.
If your mental faculties are not well developed, Collectivism can be very seductive. The Constitution of the USSR was big on freedom and human rights, so where did all the Gulags and dead people come from? A Pollyanna political document is useless when the operating principles are depraved genocide, as in the Communist countries.
God - And Progressives - Save This Honorable Court!
The irony and contradiction contained in this statement is mind-boggling. Progressives are acitvely trying to destroy the influence of religion in our society, most visibly in the repeated challenges by the ACLU. If and when the Collectivists succeed in destroying the values that made this country the strongest and most stable democracy in the world, we will no longer be the strongest and most stable democracy in the world. We will, in fact, be the USASSR.
The Constitution does not guarantee Constitutional protections (habeus corpus, due process, and illegal search for instance) to people who are making irregular war on us. On the contrary, the Geneva Conventions specifiically exclude irregular non-umiformed combatants from any protections. We are well within our rights under international law to try, and, if convicted, execute everyone in Guantanamo. It is the Progressive agenda to destroy our courts and system of laws, in order to take control of the polity. Then we will discover what the real Progressive agenda is. But we already know what the Progressive agenda is; just look at the USSR and Communist China.
I have never met a liberal who didn’t fully support civil rights, including free speech.
Me, neither. But the liberals that wrote the Constitution and founded the United States are not the same so-called “Liberals” that have recently had to change their name to “Progressives”, because no one believed that they were really liberal any more. These Progressives, including many Democrats in the Senate and House, are trying to restrict free speech by limiting talk radio.
Talk radio and the Internet are the only media which are not overwhelmingly leftist; newspapers, network TV, and Hollywood are passionately left-wind. That is why Diane Feinstein thinks that talk radio must be controlled. It is gratifying that the House voted down FCC restrictions on talk radio last week, 309-115. It is disturbing that over one-quarter of our elected representatives clearly do not understand the simple concepts expressed in the Constitution. Or maybe they are working against these simple concepts.
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Since you claim to understand this, what are you doing about the 115 leftist Representatives that do not? What are you doing about Senator Feinstein?
Posted by scorp on Jul 8, 2007 at 6:34 PM “Tens of millions of victims of Communism are dead men, not straw men.”
Indeed - you illustrate my point. The straw man you’ve erected is this notion of a Collectivist hiding out in American society - someone who harkens for totalitarian state control of all property. This corrupt and grasping fictional person is an easy target. What you have not done is actually look at what real progressives are actually saying and address their arguments in a rational way. It’s easy to dismiss the boogey-man, or use him to scare little kids. Somehow you assume that when progressives offer a critique of some aspect of capitalism (or of completely free markets, whatever that means), that it is the same as championing violent communist revolution.
“We are well within our rights under international law to try, and, if convicted, execute everyone in Guantanamo.”
This is no doubt true. What we cannot do is hold someone indefinitely without trial. Habeus corpus represents a fundamental right for someone to contest their imprisonment. It is one of the most basic rights that provides a check on the abuses of government. I certainly don’t want to see Taliban thugs released - I’d much rather see them tried and put away. The fact, however, that some Guantanamo inmates were picked up merely because they were “in the area”, some were delivered to U.S. forces for bounties, and many have already been released to their countries suggest that we do not have the evidence to prove that these men were combatants in any but a kangaroo court. This both undermines the credibility of our justice system and suggests that our intelligence gathering operations are ineffectual.
“The irony and contradiction contained in this statement is mind-boggling. Progressives are acitvely trying to destroy the influence of religion in our society, most visibly in the repeated challenges by the ACLU. . . . These Progressives, including many Democrats in the Senate and House, are trying to restrict free speech by limiting talk radio.”
Please don’t suggest that right-wing talk-show creeps like Rush Limbaugh do anything but pollute the waters of public discourse. These aren’t some champions of the public good we’re talking about here - this is The People vs. Larry Flynt. The original impetus behind Fairness Doctrine was that the airwaves represent a scarce resource that shouldn’t be monopolized by one political viewpoint. The question is whether the government should endorse (through licensing) one viewpoint (characterized by personal attacks, vehement vitriol, factual misrepresentation and out-and-out bigotry) over all others, and whether an attempt to present some balance is actually a restriction on Free Speech. You are trivializing the debate, and your patronizing tone merely makes you seem like a boor.
The ACLU is relentless in insisting that government live up to its obligation to follow both the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment right to religious freedom. I’m not sure how this represents an assault on the influence of religion except to say that Christianity shouldn’t be privileged above all other religious practice (including no religious practice.) To be honest, I’m not sure how to interpret the Constitution as requiring anything else, though indeed this issue too is complex and nuanced.
Posted by Matt W on Jul 9, 2007 at 2:20 PM Matt -
The straw man you’ve erected is this notion of a Collectivist hiding out in American society - someone who harkens for totalitarian state control of all property.
That is nonsense, of course. I have not referenced nor inferred economic Communism nor “totalitarian state control of all property” at all.
As you are undoubtedly aware, Antonio Gramsci, in Italy before WWII, criticized classical Marxism for its emphasis on economic aspects in the world struggle for Collectivist domination. Gramsci advocated a cultural Communism, rather than an economic Communism, whereby institutions (schools, churches, courts, social organizations, political parties, not just workers) were to be subverted in order to impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This cultural Communism is the struggle we are now witnessing as Progressives attempt to subvert and gain control of the courts and other institutions:
God - And Progressives - Save This Honorable Court!
Except for left-wind soft-discipline colleges and universities, MSM, and some elements of the Democratic Party where Marxists and Gramscians hold sway, explicit awareness of Gramsci and the revolution he advocated is limited in the United States, in spite of the high visibility of the ACLU and the Episcopal Church. Not so in socialist circles world-wide, particularly in Venezuela and Argentina. So, why is murdering, repressive, subverting Chavez a hero among Progressives in the USA? And given the past and current history of Collectivists world-wide, do you really expect me to believe that Progressives will be benign if they take power in the USA?
What we cannot do is hold someone indefinitely without trial.
Why not? In every war in our history, we have held POWs without trial until the war was over. This is explicitly in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Only the grossest violators of human rights were tried, as at Nuremberg. The fact that the detainees in Guantanamo are not tried as non-uniformed combatants (thus illegal and subject to execution, according to the Conventions) does not change their status as POWs. Your argument is Gramscian smoke.
Please don’t suggest that right-wing talk-show creeps like Rush Limbaugh do anything but pollute the waters of public discourse.
Why, sure. And Dan Rather’s MSM forgery of Bush’s military records, timed for maximum effect just before an election, was SO noble and uplifting. For Collectivists, at any rate.
The original impetus behind Fairness Doctrine was that the airwaves represent a scarce resource that shouldn’t be monopolized by one political viewpoint.
Ummm, no. The term you are looking for is “rationalization”, not impetus. If you will search your radio dial, you will find that there are plenty of blank spots available. Consequently, left-wind broadcasters (Air America) could fill the air with their nonsense, if anyone was foolish enough to listen. So, why did Air America go bankrupt?
The practical effect of the original “Fairness Doctrine” was to limit debate, not to enhance debate. That was why the Fairness Doctrine was terminated. And that is why the Gramscians are trying to revive it.
You might note that the Gramscians are not trying to limit NYT, CBS, or ABC, or even Barbara Streisand. These Collectivist voices meet with Gramscian approval, and are not subject to Dianne Feinstein’s criticism. So, why are MSM and network TV losing readers, viewers, and revenues, while Rush Limbaugh prospers? Not democracy and the marketplace in action, surely?
You and your ilk invariably invoke your superior understanding as justification for your attempts to subvert American values. Since no one except yourselves believe your Collectivist nonsense, you can’t get far in a free society. Why don’t you just adopt the name “Communist” for what you are doing? This has the virtue of being truth in advertising, at the cost of being laughed out of the polity.
Posted by scorp on Jul 9, 2007 at 6:24 PM Although there are some interesting ideas in the discussion here, let me return to some of the points Hans Johnson makes in his splendid column.
First, he is absolutely right that “the need to rein in a radical court majority assailing precedents and basic fairness” is enormously important. His account of several recent Supreme Court decisions shows the power of the Court and the damage it can do.
Second and far less important, I have to confess that my own values may be a little different from Hans’. While he criticizes the “radical court majority assailing precedents,” I must say that I’m not a huge fan of precedent nor am I strongly opposed to radical change as such. In fact, there are several radical and highly disruptive Court decisions of the Warren Court (notably Baker v. Carr, the “one man, one vote” case, and Griswold v. Connecticut, which inferred a right to marital privacy from the Constitution and provided much of the intellectual foundation for Roe v. Wade) that I thought were terrific. My own objections to the current Court have less to do with the depth of its radicalism or its legal philosophy than with the social and economic effects of its decisions.
Third, I was delighted that Hans mentioned John Edwards’ criticisms of the Roberts Court and his commitment to restore balance to the Court. The good news is that Edwards is not alone. The record of all of the Democratic presidential candidates—and especially Edwards, Clinton, and Obama, who are highly accomplished lawyers—suggests that their federal court appointments would be reliably progressive.
As it happens, the only candidate from either party who has made a significant contribution to legal theory is Hillary Clinton, who is a widely respected pioneer in the area of children’s rights. Some of her writings, notably her Yale Law Journal article “Children’s Policies: Abandonment and Neglect,” are still landmarks in the field. But the more important point here is that when it comes to judicial appointments, there’s plenty of reason to expect that all of the Democratic candidates would be vastly better than any of the Republican candidates. (There may be one quirky exception to this rule. As the Village Voice has reported, many of Rudy Giuliani’s judicial appointments when he was mayor were quite liberal, which must be an inconvenient memory for him these days.)
(to be continued)
Posted by rarelysanguine on Jul 9, 2007 at 9:09 PM (this is the next installment…)
Finally, Hans says, “The challenge [for progressives] is to clearly articulate the dangers stemming from the court’s rulings and translate displeasure and distrust into allegiance and activism.” I enthusiastically agree, but I fear that this challenge may be insurmountable.
On a few occasions in the last half-century—notably the campaign against the Bork nomination that Hans describes very well, along with similar campaigns against the Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell during the Nixon administration—elements of the liberal and Democratic base have briefly mobilized to fight against specific judicial nominations and won. But that’s about as far as it goes. To my knowledge, there has been no presidential, senatorial, or gubernatorial race since the “court packing” debate of the 1930s in which a moderate or liberal Democratic candidate made judicial nominations or decisions a major issue and won.
With conservatives, it’s quite a different story. Time and time again, starting with the Nixon and Wallace campaigns in 1968, they have had stellar success at mobilizing their voters against “liberal activist judges,” as they describe them, and shifted America’s political discourse in a dangerous direction.
In this generation, Karl Rove is the master. As Atlantic Monthly has reported, Rove’s innovations include “a savvy use of language.” One of Rove’s former staffers explained that “the term ‘activist judges’ motivates different people for very different reasons. If you’re a religious conservative, he said, it means judges who established abortion rights or who interpret Massachusetts’s equal-protection clause as applying to gays. If you’re a business conservative, it means those who allow exorbitant jury awards. And in Alabama especially, the term conjures up those who forced integration.”
Maybe someone on our side could mine the same political ore, but I have my doubts. So far, the record is not encouraging. I do think we have a quite good chance of winning the 2008 election, but I’d guess that we’d win it on other issues. In the end, I’m for whatever works on election day. As Deng Xiaoping said in a slightly different context, it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white as long as it catches the mice.
Posted by rarelysanguine on Jul 9, 2007 at 9:11 PM “Second and far less important, I have to confess that my own values may be a little different from Hans’. While he criticizes the “radical court majority assailing precedents,” I must say that I’m not a huge fan of precedent nor am I strongly opposed to radical change as such. In fact, there are several radical and highly disruptive Court decisions of the Warren Court (notably Baker v. Carr, the “one man, one vote” case, and Griswold v. Connecticut, which inferred a right to marital privacy from the Constitution and provided much of the intellectual foundation for Roe v. Wade) that I thought were terrific. My own objections to the current Court have less to do with the depth of its radicalism or its legal philosophy than with the social and economic effects of its decisions.”
In other words you would just as soon have the court blatantly legislate from the bench rather than follow either precedent or original intent. At least you are honest enough to say so.
Contrary to what this article implies the conservative justices actually follow original intent when making decisions. Sometimes this does involve overturning precedent, but I don’t know of any legal theory that says precendent should always be slavishly followed. More liberal judges certainly haven’t done so.
Posted by chopper on Jul 10, 2007 at 2:37 AM This Supreme Court is what I was most afraid of before 9-11.
I believe that both Gore and Kerry were deprived of the presidency by voter fraud which includes voter intimidation, electronic vote tampering and voter rolls suppression, ala Choicepoint.
That being said, can a case be made for this Supreme Court being fraudulent?
If that does not work and it is long odds against, can the Court be expanded?
I know that in it’s history it has been larger than the current number of nine justices. Was a law passed preventing this?
Can anyone answer that?Tigertiger
Posted by Tigertiger on Jul 10, 2007 at 6:18 PM Pussycatpussycat -
I know that in it’s history it (Supreme Court) has been larger than the current number of nine justices. Was a law passed preventing this?
Can anyone answer that?The Supreme Court has always had nine Justices, as established in the Constitiution. FDR attempted to increase the number of Justices, in order to gain a majority to pass his programs. He was able to pass a lot of programs, but the American people firmly rejected messing with the Constitution and the Court.
All your other “facts” and opinions are wrong as well. I did an extensive study of voter fraud at the time of the 2004 elections, and every single conviction I was able to find was against Democrats, including destruction of property, assault and battery, and interference with Republican election campaigns and workers.
The profound ignorance of young people concerning our history and institutions is disturbing. There is a growing realization that people are not being taught in our schools, but are being indoctrinated. Choicepoint is now indoctrinating you with their political agenda, not with the knowledge you need to function in the world.
Victor Davis Hanson has a current article, Blissfully Uneducated, on this very subject. I assure you that Professor Hanson is a scholar, and not a political hack such as you are currently getting your information from. You would be wise to at least consider what he has to say.
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/blissfully y-uneducated
Posted by scorp on Jul 11, 2007 at 11:00 AM Scorp,
You sure do live up to your on-line nickname. A snotty rhetoric full of sound and wimpy poison signifying that you can type.I am soo reassurred that you have undertaken an exstensive study of the previous election cycles and discovered the evil doers among the Democrats. Yeah!
Hell! What could anyone worry about?
But you have shown me that bringing down these
homegrown Imperials won’t be accomplished by chatting with the likes of you.Do you work for Choicepoint or did they not hire you?
Tigertiger
Posted by Tigertiger on Jul 11, 2007 at 12:37 PM “I believe that both Gore and Kerry were deprived of the presidency by voter fraud which includes voter intimidation, electronic vote tampering and voter rolls suppression, ala Choicepoint.”
Beliefs are not evidence, Tigertiger. I’ve never seen any credible evidence to support any of your allegations. Scorp at least provides a link to Hanson’s article. Since you are the one making the allegations you should at least offer some supporting evidence.
My belief is that the charges of voter fraud were made by those on the left for partisan political gain. The Supreme Court made the right decision. See, two can play at this game.
Posted by chopper on Jul 11, 2007 at 5:19 PM Tigertiger -
Well, that is a response. Of sorts. I suppose.
You have not tried to verify my observations on the 2004 election. You certainly have not made your own observations. You just KNOW. Like you knew that the Supremes were “larger than the current number of nine justices”, but they were not.
Ignorance is bliss. I predict you will have a happy life, as long as some one else defends your right to ignorance, someone else preserves your freedoms. someone else makes the sacrifices that have made our country strong.
Enjoy.
Posted by scorp on Jul 11, 2007 at 5:42 PM The fundamental problem with the author’s critique is his notion that the job of the Supreme Court is to enforce fairness, when its role is to interpret law and the Constitution. Fairness is too subjective and vague a standard to allow tenured judges to wield when making decisions and interpretations. That vagueness appeals to those left of center when the judges share their values, because the left’s primary project is to overthrow tradition sometimes directly and sometimes by undermining language and the common understanding of words.
The left’s new-found worship of precedent, of course, is only emerging when the precedent’s being overturned are those they favor. Overturning precedent was OK in Brown, in Roe, in any case where the outcome was ideologically compatible with the left agenda. Of course, left and right are both prone to denigrate the process that leads to a conclusion they disagree with.
What the left is currently discovering with the Supreme Court is also something they are discovering with the Bush Administration: that their previous attraction to the undemocratic elements of American governance (a strong executive when LBJ was pushing civil rights; the overthrow of precedent when Earl Warren ran the court) is coming back to bite them when they are out of power, as conservatives predicted at the time.
Posted by Eric L. on Jul 12, 2007 at 1:41 AM “What the left is currently discovering with the Supreme Court is also something they are discovering with the Bush Administration: that their previous attraction to the undemocratic elements of American governance (a strong executive when LBJ was pushing civil rights; the overthrow of precedent when Earl Warren ran the court) is coming back to bite them when they are out of power, as conservatives predicted at the time.”
Eric, you’ve pretty much nailed it with this post. Your last paragraph (pasted above) demonstrates the pervasive double standards evident on the left these days. And your point about “fairness” is exactly right. A court that trys to enforce “fairness” is paving the way for all types of mischief.
Posted by chopper on Jul 12, 2007 at 9:39 PM re: the Ledbetter v. Good Year ruling
The House recently passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay act which will essentially overturn the Supreme Court’s unjust ruling.
If signed into law, companies that engage in discriminatory labor practices—like paying women less than men and then not having to compensate the worker if the worker discovers the practice after more than 18 months—will have to pay up.
Posted by Jean on Aug 1, 2007 at 5:26 PM Good for the House. Now if only the Democrats (and Jean) could remember that this is the way that the government is supposed to work: the legislature makes the rules and the court decides them, not on the basis of what current political fashion or the party in power considers to be “fair” or “just,” but on the basis of what the laws and the Constitution say.
Posted by Eric L. on Aug 6, 2007 at 12:45 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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