Apparently there is talk of him running for the senate, where he can help ensure even more judges think as he does and help out with Republican efforts to undo everything progressives have done since the New Nationalism was a twinkle in Teddy Roosevelt's eye.
Griswold was a breathtaking fraud perpetrated by William O. Douglas and his cohorts on a liberal public only too willing, then as now, to win by any means necessary.
Griswold was a breathtaking fraud perpetrated by William O. Douglas and his cohorts on a liberal public only too willing, then as now, to win by any means necessary.
There is no constitutional right to privacy either in any
alleged penumbras or in the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment due process clauses.
One could point out the evident fact that federal efforts to
ban contraception would be efforts to enact into law the traditional Christian
religious view that their use is wrong and contrary to God’s will, and so run
afoul of the First Amendment disestablishment clause.
But to insist the First Amendment binds the states as well is
just more well-recognized liberal fraud.
I realize they prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, but
politicians who want constitutional protection for a right to privacy need to
pass a new amendment to the constitution that creates one and binds not only the federal
government but the states and inferior jurisdictions, as well.
And to legitimate anything, some things, or everything that
rests on tall tales about equal protection or due process or the various fictions related to the incorporation doctrine they need to pass suitable amendments making all those things real.
It’s not that they need to openly denounce, much less renounce,
the lies of the past.
But they need to create real constitutional foundations for
what today rests on baloney.
Until they do, decisions resting on fake or anyway questionable readings of the constitution are at risk of being overturned by a conservative majority on the court.
Roe and Griswold, of course.
But perhaps also the whole string of decisions resulting in the Fifth Amendment right to counsel becoming a positive rather than a merely negative right, as well as being read to bind the states along with the federal government.
Not to mention Miranda rights.
And then there is the alleged constitutional ban on religious qualifications for state or lesser office or for service as a witness or juryman in state courts.
For that matter, Brown vs. Board of Education could go and Plessy could be upheld.
Rehnquist was probably not the last conservative to think Brown was wrong.
And what about all that freedom of expression stuff extending a nearly absolutist reading of the First Amendment to the states and lesser jurisdictions?
What about the convention that freedom of speech and the press applies to electronic media or to artistic expression?
Perhaps even more frightening is the prospect of a conservative court emboldened to take a narrow view of the federal legislature's enumerated powers or a very strong view of the constitution's guarantees to the capitalist class.
You think Obamacare is in danger?
Then what about Medicare and Social Security?
And don't you recall that, once upon a time, the court held state or federal minimum wage laws unconstitutional?
George Will has recently written in support of Lochner and the jurisprudence of the Lochner era that claimed - with imaginative mendacity never to be exceeded by any liberal court - to legitimate exactly such decisions as those.
That should have sounded alarms.
By the way, the actual legitimate point of due process is to protect the people from the power of the executive.
It is to make the king - er, the president - use his power to kill them, to imprison them, or to seize what is theirs only in accordance with law.
It is a flat denial of royal - or presidential (Fifth Amendment), or gubernatorial (Fourteenth Amendment) - absolutism, and that is all that it is.
In the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, the point is to prevent the states or the governors of the states from such despotic tyranny toward any person and so, in particular, toward the freedmen or their descendants.
The rest is bullshit, for better or for worse.
Likewise, the guarantee of the equal protection of the law refers to what some have called the first duty of the state to use that very same power to kill, to imprison, or to seize property for the protection of it subjects or its citizens from physical attack, from being killed, from kidnapping, and the like, as well as for the protection of what is theirs from theft, robbery, and so on.
In the 14th Amendment it is no more - but also no less - than a demand that the states not withdraw or deny that protection from or to any person, and hence from or to the freedmen or their descendants.
Whatever more we were counting on it to do must seek constitutional support elsewhere, if need be.
PS. 01292013 0624 hrs. EST.
Roe and Griswold, of course.
But perhaps also the whole string of decisions resulting in the Fifth Amendment right to counsel becoming a positive rather than a merely negative right, as well as being read to bind the states along with the federal government.
Not to mention Miranda rights.
And then there is the alleged constitutional ban on religious qualifications for state or lesser office or for service as a witness or juryman in state courts.
For that matter, Brown vs. Board of Education could go and Plessy could be upheld.
Rehnquist was probably not the last conservative to think Brown was wrong.
And what about all that freedom of expression stuff extending a nearly absolutist reading of the First Amendment to the states and lesser jurisdictions?
What about the convention that freedom of speech and the press applies to electronic media or to artistic expression?
Perhaps even more frightening is the prospect of a conservative court emboldened to take a narrow view of the federal legislature's enumerated powers or a very strong view of the constitution's guarantees to the capitalist class.
You think Obamacare is in danger?
Then what about Medicare and Social Security?
And don't you recall that, once upon a time, the court held state or federal minimum wage laws unconstitutional?
George Will has recently written in support of Lochner and the jurisprudence of the Lochner era that claimed - with imaginative mendacity never to be exceeded by any liberal court - to legitimate exactly such decisions as those.
That should have sounded alarms.
By the way, the actual legitimate point of due process is to protect the people from the power of the executive.
It is to make the king - er, the president - use his power to kill them, to imprison them, or to seize what is theirs only in accordance with law.
It is a flat denial of royal - or presidential (Fifth Amendment), or gubernatorial (Fourteenth Amendment) - absolutism, and that is all that it is.
In the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, the point is to prevent the states or the governors of the states from such despotic tyranny toward any person and so, in particular, toward the freedmen or their descendants.
The rest is bullshit, for better or for worse.
Likewise, the guarantee of the equal protection of the law refers to what some have called the first duty of the state to use that very same power to kill, to imprison, or to seize property for the protection of it subjects or its citizens from physical attack, from being killed, from kidnapping, and the like, as well as for the protection of what is theirs from theft, robbery, and so on.
In the 14th Amendment it is no more - but also no less - than a demand that the states not withdraw or deny that protection from or to any person, and hence from or to the freedmen or their descendants.
Whatever more we were counting on it to do must seek constitutional support elsewhere, if need be.
PS. 01292013 0624 hrs. EST.
The privileges and immunities clause is sometimes selected
as a better foundation for insisting the states are bound by the Bill of Rights
than due process, the latter clearly doing nothing to the purpose.
But if those who proposed or those who ratified the 14th
Amendment had intended to bind state governments with the Bill of Rights they would surely have said
so, rather than saying this.
No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States[.]
So far as I am aware, no one in any of the discussions of
ratification ever said a word about the wisdom of binding the states to
observation of the Bill of Rights, or anything else to indicate such a thing
was contemplated.
On the other hand, so far as I know, no one at that time
said anything helpful in attempting to understand just what this clause could
mean.
It is a mystery without effect.
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