Posted on 02/17/2010 9:28:36 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
You've got to love that Antonin Scalia answered a letter from a screenwriter asking for tips on a screenplay involving Maine seceding from the union:
"I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.") Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.
I am sure that poetic license can overcome all that — but you do not need legal advice for that. Good luck with your screenplay."
Surely he knew Lincoln the Tyrant stacked the USSC with his sycophant Salmon P. Chase and came down with an activist decision that NO State had a unilateral right to secede in Texas v. White (1869)
Using the pledge to answer a Constitutional question should get someone impeached.
Yeah but, what if the other 49 states chipped in and asked Maine to ‘not let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya’?
Huh? The whole beginning of this country was based on the fact that states could withdraw if they felt they were getting that shaft by the federal govt. And the 'pledge of allegiance' has nothing to do with the constitution
How about can we kick some out? California sounds like a good start. I bet we would actually save a lot of money if we sold it to Mexico for a dollar.
Well then that only leaves us with Judge Napolitano’s opinion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b3Q89FZoY0
Maybe we need a Constitutional COnvention to offer amendments to the Constitution, one of which would be that the states each have an individual right to succeed from the union. It would be interesting to see everyone debate this and to examine all of the possible ramifications of that act. I can see blocks of states succeeding and forming a new country,no one wanting California, though.
The early abolitionists wanted the north to secede, as they believed the north ought not be “unequally yoked” with the slave states.
Now days its usually the green-left who romanticize the idea of an independent northwest, BC, Oregon, Washington, Northern California. The mainstream left don’t dream of secession, though, as they want to control it all.
I think Scalia would look at your comment, scratch his head, and declare that “the Civil War was not about the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Wait, wait. Only kick out Southern California. Northern California is totally conservative. Except for my neighbors and I can take care of them. We have Virginia and West Virginia. We have North Carolina and South Carolina. How about South California and North California? Split the State of California and you will see a totally different situation.
I abhor the thought of dissolution.
I am not an attorney.
But I don't believe the Pledge of Allegiance is a founding document.
It would seem to me that:
A) the States formed the Union, ergo, they have the right to dissolve their participation in it. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
B) the principles upon which our Federal Government are formed are actually based on those of an earlier document, the Declaration of Independence it states in part:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it...”
It would seem the judge's premise is in conflict with the basic ideas of the Founding Fathers as expressed in our most seminal founding document.
The Civil War settled only two issues: Slavery would not exist, and the North was militarily more powerful than the South. The legality or correctness of secession was not addressed.
Well maybe Justice Scalia just isn't blessed with your revisionist sense of history.
Why? It was just an allusion, not recital of the law that he was basing his opinion upon.
My comment wasn’t about the Civil War.
My comment is making decisions of Constitutional questions based on the pledge of allegiance instead of the... Constitution.
James Madison once posed the question that if a single state could secede without the consent of the other states then why couldn't the other states expel a single state against its will? Haven't found anyone on the Lost Cause side who could answer that.
Respectfully, I disagree Mr. Scalia.
Because it was dumb?
Maybe he should have based his answer on the latest children’s book? The last epside of “Bob the Builder” possibly.
...sorry you still owe us for giving you our governor...Ronald Reagan.
"--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government ... it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
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