Hey Hey, Ho Ho; Roe v. Wade has Got to Go
For the record, I agree with you about
Roe. This decision created the worst sort of judicial purgatory. Which, ironically, is where aborted babies go when they die.
But really, what options do you have if you no longer buy into the sanctity of the political process? I am sincerely terrified of the Constitution's potential inability to withstand an assault from fundamentalist "Christianity".
Yet
Roe doesn't present a fully unresolvable case of cognitive dissonance quite the same way
Brown did. With
Brown, the legislative process was doomed to fail for decades to come and the judiciary was the only feasible remedy. Thus the proper question here cannot, by definition, be whether or not a certain quantity of what the hysterical right has dubbed "judicial activism" is a morally good thing. I mean, what is the democratic process worth when it perpetuates a blatant evil? And why on earth is the only functional remedy for the grossest injustice in American history the idea on trial here?
Abuse of state power, that's why. And it's a damn good why, most of the time. It's certainly not a power I'd cede willingly to our contemporary Order of Apollo, run by the deceptively congenial Dr. Dobson. This question--and its theological cousin, the appropriate tolerance for inter-temporal flexibility in defining "sin"--is the lynchpin of most modern political tension. The third party that makes tangible progress in squaring this circle will permanently alter the philosophical landscape of the country as much as the Republicans did in 1860.
Bush's Mussolini Moment?
While I appreciate your willingness to call "moonbat" on my bullshit, the
Unitary Executive Theory is not about whether or not the Secretary of the Interior has the right to carve out an independent fiefdom within the executive branch. In the current political climate it's about one thing and only one thing: dictatorial powers. It's the brainchild of freeper Trotskyites, and they are explicit in their support of an unconstrained President. A toast to monarchy, plain and simple.
A week ago I thought that, if George Bush beat up an old woman up on national television, the believers would have jumped through hoops making excuses. After Portgate I'm not so sure. To be honest, I sort of doubt this congressional outrage is anything more than a racist play to peoples' worst instincts. This sort of herd justice usually produces good arguments for an enlightened monarchy. In a deliberative system, shitty hysterical solutions--like the mindlessly cruel drug war and the profoundly unneccesary PATRIOT Act--are nearly impossible to undo once they've been put in place.
But I'm not entirely sure I do support handing over control of our ports to an oil-rich Arab sultanite either. So instead of taking sides I'm just going to enjoy watching the GOP finally--finally--start to cannabalize this inexcusable administration. The Bushies set this xeno-mongering tone, and their manufactured outrage is hopelessly transparent. People needed to believe that some things were not for sale with this crowd. People were wrong.
Justice Birch, I Presume
Doing work at work?!? Garbage. If you were more of a lefty you could join a union and take a stand against that sort of occupational tyranny.
Boaz is absolutely correct--there is nothing divinely ordained about the balance of the court. But honestly, Bush supporters have no place criticizing the media at this junction in history. Conservatives have internalized the idea of "liberal" media bias, and no amount of factual deconstruction seems adequate to dislodge this faulty sense of victimization.
The two towering boogeymen haunting the collective subconscious of William F. Buckley's intellectual progeny--the New York Times and the Washington Post--couldn't do a better job of carrying water for the Bush Administration. The Times let it's star Washington bureau reporter publish an unverified stream of White House war propaganda. The Post just went to the mattresses defending the GOP's easily disproved Abrahamoff-containment talking point. And since these distortions come from "liberal" bastions like the Times and the Post, their impact is magnified many times over.
Besides, you should be grateful that the media's only anti-Alito focus is that he would disrupt the balance of the court, and not on more legitimate concerns--like the fact that he's an extremist wacko. The country is roughly 70% pro-choice, but for some reason (probably the liberal media), this man is being portrayed as a mainstream bulwark against "activist" judges. You're pro-choice, why do you support Alito?
Besides, the man is either crazy, or he's a liar. Alito is on record saying that the unitary executive theory "best captures the essence" of the Constitution. Right, and
The Family Guy best captures the essence of life in Rhode Island. "Unitary executive theory" is just a fancy way of saying that the President is above the law so long as he doesn't get his dick sucked. And don't get me wrong, Alito is fully entitled to believe that the President should be granted dictatorial power for the duration of his time in office. But he cannot do so and still pretend to be an "originalist". While we can't ever be sure exactly what the intent of the Framers' was, we can be sure that the unitary executive theory is roughly antithetical to it.
The fact that he's brilliant is irrelevant. Can you honestly tell me that you can't think of one person at Swarthmore who was fully decent at heart and chock full of intellectual firepower, but who you wouldn't want within 100 miles of the Supreme Court? I can think of a handful who were way too far left for my taste. Is there no potential for reciprocity?
"No man is above the law" -- Rep. Henry Hyde (1998)
Interesting. Where you see "tactical stupidity", I see mountains of circumstantial evidence. The President is up to no good, and I can prove it. At the end of the day, we really don't have to get into a technical debate on the 4th Amendment to know that what Bush is doing is wrong. Why? Because every single one of his explanations fails miserably.
The "NSA Program" has not made us any safer. "But we haven't been attacked since 9/11." Great, and this rock keeps tigers away. Besides, we have been attacked. If you don't consider what happened in London an attack on us, and on some level a failure of American leadership, you don't understand the nature of the war we're fighting. We're fighting a new kind of war.
Exposing this program has not, in any way shape or form, made the US less safe. Everyone worth their salt in a terrorist organization assumes they are being monitored. And anybody who's so stupid he needs a front page story on the NY Times to put two and two together wouldn't be worth monitoring in the first place. And on the off chance someone that stupid was worth monitoring, there was a 100% chance that the necessary warrants would have been approved.
It's also patently ridiculous to equate the Plame leak with this one. And forget about the disclosure of her identity for a minute. Dismantling a CIA front operation is serious business. The government can't exactly setup energy consultancies with offices in strategic countries around the world on a moment's notice. Especially ones which specialize in intercepting WMD on the black market. How many of those do you think we had before Novak sold what was left of his soul? Brewster Jennings was lost to an act of Benedict Rosenberg-magnitude treason.
Now, before we muddy the debate any further acknowledging the GOP's welcome embrace of moral relativism, I would like to clarify, as fact, that this NSA business
very obviously violates the "original intent" of the 4th Amendment. I mean, just read it...
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'
We both know I don't have your legal training, but I simply fail to see how the fact that they're not using the fruits of their "total information" campaign as evidence in criminal proceedings is the issue at hand. The current Republican interpretation of the 4th Amendment--that in the good old days a government acting in good faith could practice unfettered law enforcement until Earl Warren rode roughshod over the country on the back of a forked tongued dragon while smoking pot and drinking babies' blood--is a delusion with no roots whatsoever in the Constitution.
The War on Trust
Don't you think the fact that the Secretary of State felt the need to use the word "authority" approximately 7.5 times per minute on Meet the Press is a Freudian confession that she doesn't, in fact, think that the President has the authority to eavesdrop on anyone he damn well pleases?
This is illegal, this is frightening, and this is the precise moment history will judge Conservatism. At what point do you admit to yourself, quietly, in your gut, that you cannot pretend to support a deranged man with a God complex any longer? You can't look yourself in the mirror after trying to spin this 1984 business in public for a paycheck. Yes, he means well; at least in some "nice to dogs and children" sort of way; but so what?
There are no
good reasons for this. At all.
There are two reasons for this. One, obviously, is that he's spying on people he shouldn't be. I wouldn't be the least bit shocked to find out that Bush has authorized, supported, and lusted after the the illegal survelliance of peaceful anti-war groups, newspapers, think tanks, TV news stations, universities, the DLC, and anyone else who may question His wisdom. These are the only people the FISA court would ever deny warrants for; although that court has been Astoundingly hospitable, all things considered. You don't even need to get a warrant until 72 hours
after you've started the spying for crying out loud.
The other reason is that George W Bush is personally offended by the concept of "getting a warrant". A warrant is a permission slip, and he doesn't have to ask anyone's permission now that he's President dad. See, I can be president too dad. Look at me daddy. And so on.
Most likely he wanted someone spied upon, and couldn't even get a drunk John Yoo to sign off on it, so he orded the clandestine program. Because He can do whatever He wants.
Honestly, how is this ok to you? Do you have any reservations?
The War on Saturnalia
Why is the Fox News board room very obviously and very consciously whipping the conservative rank and file into this completely bogus and transparently invalid lather over Christmas? How Straussian. Intentionally liquoring up the masses with bile during the holiday season is a mightily unChristian endeavor. And to be honest, I see some Hotel Rwanda shit in our future if you guys are allowed to keep playing this game.
My friend, seriously, do you support this war on Christmas nonsense or do you see through it?
Besides, if your side really wants to pick this fight, then the good Dr. Dobson is going to find himself on national television explaining to me how, exactly, Easter’s not the continuation of an ancient pagan fertility ritual. Although I suppose he could always produce a lost gospel mentioning the epic battle between Jesus and the giant rabbit or something.
Original Intent: The Worst Way Except All the Other Ways?
Thank you for the birthday wishes. I had planned to take it easy this year--so much for my "original intent". Ha ha. Wow that sucked, even for a lawyer joke. Anyway, I agree with you about a lot of this, but draw different conclusions. I don't think outcome based judging is a healthy way to go about things either. But there are serious problems with Originalist thinking.
One, the Constitution is like the Bible--it means whatever you want it to mean (interesting that Antonin Scalia always knows exactly what God and the Founding Fathers were thinking). Two, a lot of people with a lot of differing ideas of what the Constitution "meant" converged in Philadelphia; consensus was an imaginary ideal from the onset. Three, how do you square a conservative judicial viewpoint with the civil rights movement? It appears self-evident that Alito & Co. would have voted with the majority in
Plessy and dissented in
Brown. On one hand, what's the alternative to original intent? If the Constitution's not anchored in something, then it's meaningless. On the other, as soon as you admit that there's no
one known correct interpretation, aren't you also admitting that conservatives could very well be wrong? Especially since the notion that liberal justices are somehow more likely to overturn legislatures is well documented rubbish. And it is, my friend, nothing short of dishonest to equate Scalia's quaint take on morality with that of the meaty middle of the bell curve of American populism.
Now, what of minority rights? Minority rights are the difference between pluralistic society and mob rule (and Republican leaders often sing their praises when lecturing other countries). There's a fine line between the democratic process and the tyranny of the majority.
Plus I don't think the 19th Amendment is a particularly illuminating example; as important as it was, it doesn't lend itself well to parallels. Woman's sufferage was an idea whose time had come. New Zealand led the charge and was soon followed by other successful western countries. America was simply keeping up with the times. Now, I'm not belittling the importance of Constitutional Amendments here, but the fates of other Amendments that the American public wasn't really ready to accept were markedly different. The 18th did wonders to help establish an Italian middle class, but was widely ridiculed (and ignored). And with the exception of turning corporations into human beings before the law, Amendments 13-15 didn't bear fruit until nearly a century after their inception.
Besides, do you really want a sodomy amendment, just so we can be clear that consenting adults can do as they please, whether or not they live among prudish fundamentalists? You're a conservative, would you be opposed to a privacy amendment? Would this be because it would infuriate social conservatives or because you genuinely don't think it is a good idea?
The religious right likes to do a little judicial ju-jitsu here, claiming that their rights are oppressed by a secular elite. One has to willfully ignore the distinction between public and private behavior to draw that conclusion. Although I do sense some compromise potential here--we'll allow religious symbols in public, but you have to allow sex in public.
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PS- Concerned Alumni for Princeton? Troubling.
