Posted on 08/20/2004 5:43:21 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
Imagine that America had a Chief Justice of the United States who actually believed in enforcing the Constitution and, accordingly, issued an opinion that the war in Iraq was unconstitutional because Congress did not fulfill its constitutional duty in declaring war. Imagine also that the neocon media, think tanks, magazines, radio talk shows, and television talking heads then waged a vicious, months-long smear campaign against the chief justice, insinuating that he was guilty of treason and should face the punishment for it. Imagine that he is so demonized that President Bush is emboldened to issue an arrest warrant for the chief justice, effectively destroying the constitutional separation of powers and declaring himself dictator.
An event such as this happened in the first months of the Lincoln administration when Abraham Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney after the 84-year-old judge issued an opinion that only Congress, not the president, can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln had declared the writ null and void and ordered the military to begin imprisoning thousands of political dissenters. Taney’s opinion, issued as part of his duties as a circuit court judge in Maryland, had to do with the case of Ex Parte Merryman (May 1861). The essence of his opinion was not that habeas corpus could not be suspended, only that the Constitution requires Congress to do it, not the president. In other words, if it was truly in "the public interest" to suspend the writ, the representatives of the people should have no problem doing so and, in fact, it is their constitutional prerogative.
As Charles Adams wrote in his LRC article, "Lincoln’s Presidential Warrant to Arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney," there were, at the time of his writing, three corroborating sources for the story that Lincoln actually issued an arrest warrant for the chief justice. It was never served for lack of a federal marshal who would perform the duty of dragging the elderly chief justice out of his chambers and throwing him into the dungeon-like military prison at Fort McHenry. (I present even further evidence below).
All of this infuriates the Lincoln Cult, for such behavior is unquestionably an atrocious act of tyranny and despotism. But it is true. It happened. And it was only one of many similar constitutional atrocities committed by the Lincoln administration in the name of "saving the Constitution."
The first source of the story is a history of the U.S. Marshal’s Service written by Frederick S. Calhoun, chief historian for the Service, entitled The Lawmen: United States Marshals and their Deputies, 1789–1989. Calhoun recounts the words of Lincoln’s former law partner Ward Hill Laman, who also worked in the Lincoln administration.
Upon hearing of Laman’s history of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass arrest of Northern political opponents, Lincoln cultists immediately sought to discredit Laman by calling him a drunk. (Ulysses S. Grant was also an infamous drunk, but no such discrediting is ever perpetrated on him by the Lincoln "scholars".)
But Adams comes up with two more very reliable accounts of the same story. One is an 1887 book by George W. Brown, the mayor of Baltimore, entitled Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1887). In it is the transcript of a conversation Mayor Brown had with Taney in which Taney talks of his knowledge that Lincoln had issued an arrest warrant for him.
Yet another source is A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Judge Curtis represented President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate; wrote the dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case; and resigned from the court over a dispute with Judge Taney over that case. Nevertheless, in his memoirs he praises the propriety of Justice Taney in upholding the Constitution by opposing Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. He refers to Lincoln’s arrest warrant as a "great crime."
I recently discovered yet additional corroboration of Lincoln’s "great crime." Mr. Phil Magness sent me information suggesting that the intimidation of federal judges was a common practice in the early days of the Lincoln administration (and the later days as well). In October of 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia Provost Marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason was that the judge had issued a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the Provost Marshal, allowing the man to have due process. By placing the judge under house arrest Lincoln prevented the judge from attending the hearing of the case. The documentation of this is found in Murphy v. Porter (1861) and in United States ex re John Murphy v. Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal District of Columbia (2 Hay. & Haz. 395; 1861).
The second ruling contained a letter from Judge W.M. Merrick, the judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, explaining how, after issuing the writ of habeas corpus to the young man, he was placed under house arrest. Here is the final paragraph of the letter:
After dinner I visited my brother Judges in Georgetown, and returning home between half past seven and eight o’clock found an armed sentinel stationed at my door by order of the Provost-Marshal. I learned that this guard had been placed at my door as early as five o’clock. Armed sentries from that time continuously until now have been stationed in front of my house. Thus it appears that a military officer against whom a writ in the appointed form of law has first threatened with and afterwards arrested and imprisoned the attorney who rightfully served the writ upon him. He continued, and still continues, in contempt and disregard of the mandate of the law, and has ignominiously placed an armed guard to insult and intimidate by its presence the Judge who ordered the writ to issue, and still keeps up this armed array at his door, in defiance and contempt of the justice of the land. Under the circumstances I respectfully request the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court to cause this memorandum to be read in open Court, to show the reasons for my absence from my place upon the bench, and that he will cause this paper to be entered at length on the minutes of the Court . . . W.M. Merrick Assistant Judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia
As Adams writes, the Lincoln Cult is terrified that this truth will become public knowledge, for it if does, it means that Lincoln "destroyed the separation of powers; destroyed the place of the Supreme Court in the Constitutional scheme of government. It would have made the executive power supreme, over all others, and put the president, the military, and the executive branch of government, in total control of American society. The Constitution would have been at an end."
Exactly right.
August 19, 2004
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold Story of Our Country’s History, from the Pilgrims to the Present (Crown Forum/Random House, August 2004).
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
[Chip 'n' Dale chipmunk voice] Let's!
Oh, wait -- they didn't say they wanted to play that game!
[cr #519] But then again, if it was decided in 1860, what bearing did it have on Dred Scott, first argued in 1856? (You refer to it as an 1857 case)
[cr #526] I remembered Lemmon was a sojourn and transit case regarding New York. And I recall there was SC case that foreshadowed. When I have time, I'll figure out which one that was.
The initial Lemmon case was The People, ex rel. Lewis Napoleon v. Lemmon, 5 Sandford (N.Y.) 681 (1852).
In 1857 a New York appeals court upheld that result in Lemmon v. The People, 26 Barbour (N.Y.) 270 (1857).
In 1860 New York's highest court affirmed the result in Lemmon v. The People, 20 N.Y. 562 (1860).
Lemmon was decided on where the slaves were when they brought suit. As they were in a free state, the law of said free state applied, and they were set free. Had they been in a slave state, such as Missouri, the law of the slave state would have been applied. When Dred Scott brought suit, he was in a slave state.
In Scott v. Sandford, Justice Nelson wrote the original Opinion of the Court but this was reassigned to Chief Justice Taney when Justice Robbins insisted on addressing all possible issues in his dissenting opinion. What had been intended as the Opinion of the Court was filed as Justice Nelson's Concurring Opinion.
The last paragraph of Justice Samuel Nelson's concurring opinion in Dred Scott appears to refer the Lemmon case, which was then winding its way through the New York courts.
A question has been alluded to, on the argument, namely: the right of the master with his slave of transit into or through a free State, on business or commercial pursuits, or in the exercise of a Federal right, or the discharge of a Federal duty, being a citizen of the United States, which is not before us. This question depends upon different considerations and principles from the one in hand, and turns upon the rights and privileges secured to a common citizen of the republic under the Constitution of the United States. When that question arises, we shall be prepared to decide it.
With regard to the case of The Slave, Grace, this is also discussed in the opinion of Justice Nelson.
Lord Stowell, in communicating his opinion in the case of the slave Grace to Judge Story, states, in his letter, what the question was before him, namely: "Whether the emancipation of a slave brought to England insured a complete emancipation to him on his return to his own country, or whether it only operated as a suspension of slavery in England, and his original character devolved on him again upon his return." He observed, "the question had never been examined since an end was put to slavery fifty years ago," having reference to the decision of Lord Mansfield in the case of Somersett; but the practice, he observed, "has regularly been, that on his return to his own country, the slave resumed his original character of slave." And so Lord Stowell held in the case.Judge Story, in his letter in reply, observes: "I have read with great attention your judgment in the slave case, &c. Upon the fullest consideration which I have been able to give the subject, I entirely concur in your views. If I had been called upon to pronounce a judgment in a like case, I should have certainly arrived at the same result." Again he observes: "In my native State, (Massachusetts,) the state of slavery is not recognized as legal; and yet, if a slave should come hither, and afterwards return to his own home, we should certainly think that the local law attached upon him, and that his servile character would be re-integrated."
With regard to Strader v. Graham, again Justice Nelson addresses that case:
We come now to the decision of this court In the case of Strader et al. v. Graham, 10 How. p. 82. The case came up from the Court of Appeals, in the State of Kentucky. The question in the case was, whether certain slaves of Graham, a resident of Kentucky, who had been employed temporarily at several places in the State of Ohio, with their master's consent, and had returned to Kentucky into his service, had thereby become entitled to their freedom. The Court of Appeals held that they had not. The case was brought to this court under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act. This court held that it had no jurisdiction, for the reason, the question was one that belonged exclusively to the State of Kentucky. The Chief Justice, in delivering the opinion of the court, observed that "every State has an undoubted right to determine the status or domestic and social condition of the persons domiciled within its territory, except in so far as the power of the States in this respect is restrained, or duties and obligations imposed upon them by the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States, he observes, that can in any degree control the law of Kentucky upon this subject. And the condition of the negroes, therefore, as to freedom or slavery, after their return, depended altogether upon the laws of that State, and could not be influenced by the laws of Ohio. It is exclusively in the power of Kentucky to determine, for herself, whether their employment in another State should or should not make them free on their return."
Wow! That's quite an indictment.
With a sharp mind like yours, you ought to think about going into law.
You shouldn't bother. You should consider studying something less challenging. Rocks perhaps.
When the one quotation is an admission that the central thesis of his thinking is rejected by "every living soul who has written on original intent" it matters. That would be quoted from Original Intent, copyright 1994. That would sum up 40 years of his career.
But as you want more quotations, I shall provide a few. If you need more, just ask. There is no end to them.
Lincoln did not then say who were the whites excluded from the privileges of equality. However, in one of the earliest announcements of his political views, in he Sanguamo Journal on June 13, 1836, Lincoln had said, "I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, (by no means excluding females)." Certainly the largest class of excluded "equals" were women, and Lincoln at the age of twenty-seven is on record as favoring female suffrage.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 21
This is not Lincoln "on record as favoring female suffrage." This is sexist Lincoln engaged in male humor. Women neither paid taxes nor did they bear arms.
Aristotle said that the intention of the legislator is the law.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 86
Harry needs to jump into his wayback machine and move to ancient Greece. The written law is the law, not the intent of the legislator. At least, that is the way it is in the United States of America.
It is an axiomatic premise of all written law, as explained by Aristotle, that if circumstances arise in which the letter of the law negates the intention of the lawgiver, then the intention must be preferred to the letter.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 363
As I said, the written law is the law, not the intent of the legislator. At least, that is the way it is in the United States of America. If the written law negates the intent of the lawgiver, somebody better amend the written law.
In 1981 President Ronald Reagan, in his inaugural address, declared that the states had made the Union, showing that Calhounianism, even at the highest levels, was still alive and well. I am confident that Reagan, a native of Illinois, had no idea that he was contradicting Lincoln. His entourage, from which the speech emerged, like the conservative movement generally, was, however, filled with disciples of Calhoun.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 520
I am confident that Reagan was correct. Only a nutcase would agree that the Union created the States.
As we shall see, Rehnquist's "original intent" has less in common with the intent of those who ratified the constitution than with the intent of those who "de-ratified" it in 1860-61.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 87
Chief Justice Rehnquist has it all wrong. So sayeth Jaffa.
We believe that we have examined, and found wanting, every serious argument of contemporary historical scholarship to deny or disparage the intrinsic significance or validity of Lincoln's assertion that the United states was founded upon and dedicated to "an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times."
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 121
Harry is writing, of course, about "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."
Those words are attributed to slaveowner Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was tended to by one of his slaves as he wrote that all men are created equal, and he remained a slaveowner until he died. (George Washington died a slaveowner also.)
Haiti fought for 12 years against the French to gain independence. It is the only case of a successful slave uprising resulting in the former slaves forming their own state. "Haiti remained unrecognized by Jefferson, who urged Congress to suspend commerce with the nascent republic, declaring its leaders 'cannibals.'" Time, July 5, 2004, article by Edwidge Danticat, Ignoring the Revolution Next Door, p. 61.
Lincoln said, "Negroes have natural rights, however, as other men have, although they cannot enjoy them here, and even [Chief Justice Roger] Taney once said that "the Declaration of Independence was broad enough for all men." But though it does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social position, yet no sane man will attempt to deny that the African upon his own soil has all the natural rights that instrument vouchsafes to all mankind. (CW 3:79)
Lincoln said, "in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom" (CW 2:276)
Lincoln said, "I have said that I do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.... Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color -- perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black" (CW 5:520)
Lerone Bennett, Jr., wrote, "Most of the new lincoln defenders stake their case on Lincoln's dissembling discovery of a heretofore unknown colored inalienable right, "the right to eat the bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns" (CW 3:16). Why is it dissembling? It is dissembling because Lincoln's alimentary intuition, based on the inalienable right to put bread into one's mouth, was a mirage and had no meaning apart from the right to earn bread to put into one's mouth. Lincoln knew this, for when he made this statement he was supporting a slave system in the south which made it a crime, punishable by death, for a slave to arrogate to himself the right to earn his bread."
In fact, however, the leading feature of the union before independence was its denunciation of slavery.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 371
Really. Harry has me convinced. (What the hell were all those slaves doing there in 1861, anyway?)
Appealing to the law of contracts, he [Lincoln] denied that even then there would be a right of secession, since a contract can be broken by one of the parties but can be lawfull rescinded only by all. This argument was sufficient to assert the legal perpetuity of the Union.
-- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 368
Between sovereign states, this argument is nonsense.
In February 1860, Senator Jefferson Davis introduced a resolution that read, "That in the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the states adopting the same acted severally as free and independent sovereignties, delegating a portion of their powers to be exercised by the Federal government." This resolution pass the Senate by a vote of 36 to 19 -- Senator Andrew Johnson voting for it. The senators from California, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania voted for it. Delaware and Illinois did not vote. (See Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man, p. 371-2)
[Daniel Webster said], "Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential difference between a compact, a confederation and a league. They all equally reason on plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league or confederacy, is but a subsisting or continuing treaty. If in the opinion of either party it be violated, such party may say that he will no longer fulfill its obligations on his part, but will consider the whole league or compact at an end, although it might be one of its stipulations that it should be perpetual." Reserved sovereignty includes the power to break the league whether the reason be good or bad, or none. The other party to the league can do nothing about it except to kill men for breaking it. (Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man, p. 342-3)
Bank of Agusta v. Earle, 13 Pet 586.(1839).
In January 1839, in the case of Bank of Augusta v. Earle, Daniel Webster addressed the court: "But it is argued, that though this law of comity exists as between independent nations, it does not exist between the states of this Union.... In respect to this law of comity, it is said, states are not nations; a sort of residuum of sovereignty is all that remains to them. The National soveriegnty, it is said, is conferred on this government, and part of the municipal sovereignty. ... Suppose that this Constitution had said, in terms after the language of the court below -- all national sovereignty shall belong to the United states; all municipal sovereignty to the several states. I will say, that however clear, however distince, such a definition may appear to those who use it, the employment of it, in the Constitution, could only have led to utter confusion and uncertainty. I am not prepared to say that the states have no national sovereignty. The laws of some of the states, maryland and Virginia, for instance, provide punishment for treason. The power thus exercised is certainly not municipal.... The term sovereignty does not occur in the constitution at all. The Constitution treats states as states and the United states as the United States; and by a careful enumeration, declares all the powers that are granted to the United States, and all the rest are reserved to the states.... The states of this union, as states, are subject to all the voluntary and customary laws of nations." (Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man, p. 334-5.)
The Supreme Court, in passing on the case which [Daniel] Webster had thus argued, said: "It has, however, been supposed that the rules of comity between foreign antions do not apply to the states of this Union; that they extend to one another no other rights than those which are given by the Constitution... and that the courts are not at liberty to presume, in the absence of all legislation on the subject, that a state has adopted the comity of nations toward the other states.... The Court thinks otherwise. The intimate union of these states, as members of the same great political family; the deep and vital interests which bind them so closely together; should lead us, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to presume a greater degree of comity and friendship and kindness towards one another, than we should be authorized to presume bewteen foreign nations. And when (as without doubt muct occasionally happen) the interest or policy of any state requires it to restrict the rule, it has but to declare its will, and the legal presumption is at once at an end. But until this is done, upon what grounds could this court refuse to administer the law of international comity between these states? They are sovereign states.... We think it is well settled that by the law of comity among antions, a corporation created by one sovereignty is permitted to make contracts in another, and to sue in its courts; and that the same law of comity prevails amont the several sovereignties of this Union." (Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln the Man, p. 335.)
[lg #558] If you want to examine southern bigotry, we have to have a standard of comparison, whereby to measure it. How about northern bigotry? Do you really want to have a contest? With the words of Lincoln the Emancipator ringing in your ears, about transporting black people beyond the seas and preventing miscegenation, you want to keep pushing that line?
There is no need to go back to Lincoln.
When did prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination get wiped out in the North? Remember when Jesse Jackson referred to New York as Hymietown? How about when Senator Alphonse D'Amato called current Senator Chuck Shumer a putzhead? I seem to recall a minor riot in New York a few years back between Blacks and Jews. And then in 1997 there was Abner Louima who was sodomized with a broom handle in the police station, resulting in a torn bladder and intestine. The Louima case resulted in an $8.75 settlement, the city paying $7.125 and the PBA $1.625.
I guess if they wiped it out, they must have done it within the last month.
LINKShame On You: Harari Realty's Racial Discrimination
A CBS 2 Special Report
Aug 5, 2004 11:00 pm US/EasternRenting an apartment in New York City is tough enough. But what happens if a broker doesn't like the color of your skin? Shame On You goes undercover.
CBS 2's Arnold Diaz reports.
"I wanted to ask you about the charges your firm is discriminating again black renters," Diaz asked. "God forbid, we never discriminate," Dan Harari said. "You never do?" Diaz asked. "Never," Harari replied.
Dan Harari, owner of Harari Realty in Forest Hills, does discriminate against blacks according to a city Human Rights Commission investigation.
"Each time our white testers were shown apartments and our black testers were refused," says Patricia Gatling, Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission.
The Commission's probe was triggered by a black man's complaint that Harari Realty told him by phone there were apartments available in a well-kept complex on 85th Road in Briarwood, Queens.
But when he went to the office, Harari Realty "declined to show (him)...any apartments in the Briarwood complex."
The same thing happened twice to the Commission's black investigators.
"How outrageous is that, that in this day and age, in New York City a black man with means can't get an apartment where he wants to live in Queens. It's outrageous," Gatling says.
Harari Realty, which is the exclusive rental agent for the 500-unit Briarwood complex, denies the charges.
"The Human Rights Commission has served you with two notices," Diaz said. "I know, it's a mistake," Dan Harari said. "A mistake?" Diaz asked. "Yes," Harari said.
But there was no mistaking what happened when Shame On You conducted its own hidden camera investigation of Harari Realty.
We sent in a white and black tester -- each with the same financial qualifications -- seeking a one bedroom apartment in that Briarwood complex.
Maybe we should try California. Surely, there is no discrimination going on there.
LINKBlack Children Denied IQ Tests in California
Friday, July 02, 2004SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The United States may have come a long way in the fight against institutionalized racism but in California, black children are still being denied access to an important educational tool.
Pamela Lewis wanted to have her 6-year-old son Nicholas take a standardized IQ test (search) to determine if he qualifies for special education speech therapy. Officials at his school routinely provide the test to kids but as Lewis soon found out, not to children who are black, due to a statewide policy that goes back to 1979.
At that time, many black kids performed poorly on the IQ test and wound up in special education classes. A lawsuit claimed the test was biased and a judge agreed -- banning public schools from giving the test to black children while allowing it for everyone else.
Lawyers for the New Haven School District (search) claim they assess black children through academic performance and other criteria.
The state is looking into Lewis' appeal but she said as a final insult a district official suggested if she changed her son's paperwork to re-classify him as white, as she is, he'd be able to take the test.
She refused and redoubled her commitment to fight for her child's right to be measured by the same standards as other kids.
I agree as well. He appears to have both attempted to extend Owens' quote to a wider, better known source and to conceal the fact that Owens is a well known Jaffa partisan.
I always thought truth was a valid defense.
The exception to the STAR testing requirement is if the child is on an "individualized education program" (IEP). An IEP is a "contract" between the school district and the child/parents to establish educational benchmarks and methods to assess progress. IEPs can be by the request of the parent, or they can be required by the district if the child has been identified with a learning or behavioral problem. (My wife is a special education teacher - all of her students have an IEP.)
The misleading article you quote, without understanding the history behind the court's ruling (and note here that this "discrimination" was court-ordered to avoid "discrimination"), incorrectly suggests that schools give "IQ tests." That is a misnomer. The schools take pre-K and kindergarten-aged students and used standardized screening methods to identify, early, potential learning problems or other disabilities. The purpose is so that "no child is left behind." Many years ago, a relatively high percentage of black (and immigrant) children were identified as being "at risk." It was a natural, but mistaken, conclusion that the children were "stupid." An activist judge got involved and decided that the schools could not screen black children, over the objections of educators.
If you had investigated the history of the issue you would have realized that the story was poorly reported.
I hate that the 4400+ thread was lost. I had posted some examples of Northern racism to #3Fan - one involved a black doctor IIRC, another housing discrimination, and multiple riots.
But, you well know, courts often look at "legislative intent" when making their decisions. On Constitutional matters, it is not unusual to find the "Federalist Papers" and other early supporting documents quoted for intent.
"As I said, the written law is the law, not the intent of the legislator. At least, that is the way it is in the United States of America. If the written law negates the intent of the lawgiver, somebody better amend the written law."
And how many times have we seen the law intended to do one thing, and end up bastardized in the courts to mean exactly the opposite? Wasn't it Hubert Humphrey who said that if his Civil Rights Act ended up as a quota system he would eat the legislation? He died of gluttony, no doubt.
"I am confident that Reagan was correct. Only a nutcase would agree that the Union created the States."
I believe the point I made was that the States never existed outside of the Union. The Declaration of Independence transformed colonies into states, and simultaneously created a union of those states. I have also made the point that American nationalism preceded, necessarily, the Declaration.
Reagan's underlying motivation was to transfer power and responsibility away from the federal government back to the states and localities - which is a very good thing.
"Chief Justice Rehnquist has it all wrong. So sayeth Jaffa."
Jaffa is about to discuss the point. Read the discussion, rather than mischaracterize it.
"Those words are attributed to slaveowner Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was tended to by one of his slaves as he wrote that all men are created equal, and he remained a slaveowner until he died. (George Washington died a slaveowner also.)"
Nobody, with one exception, is perfect. Being a slaveowner was not dissimilar to being a crack addict. Both Jefferson and Washington spent much of their adult lives as part of the "landed poor." To them, the slavery question was a conundrum. There is no moral justification for human slavery. When Jefferson wrote "All men are created equal" he did not mean "all white men" (which is your implicit, racist reading).
"In fact, however, the leading feature of the union before independence was its denunciation of slavery. -- SOURCE: Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, p. 371
"Really. Harry has me convinced. (What the hell were all those slaves doing there in 1861, anyway?)
Professor Jaffa correctly points out, in his book, that their were, even at the birth of the nation, those who recognized the incompatibility of human slavery with the founding natural law principles.
I do like you "debating style." You set up a straw man and then punch holes it in. The only problem for you is that its punching back!
"Between sovereign states, this argument is nonsense."
There were no fully sovereign states, under any construction of the term "sovereign." The rest of your post is typical neo-reb screed.
Pretend we're stupid (you often do) and explain to us how this state of affairs invalidate's nolu chan's statement that included California in his examples of recent prejudice and discrimination against blacks.
The judge who ordered the minority kids placed on IEP's would seem to have agreed with nc, no?
And will you insist that his intervention measures do not amount to depriving kids on IEP's of a common progress benchmark with other children who are not subjects of the court's tuition?
Does the judge's order:
a) help the children by getting them the assistance they need in the form of IEP's, or
b) conceal the continued operation of certain problems, the problems that were causing the children to underperform on STAR's, and in effect palliating not fixing and therefore prolonging the problems?
If the latter, does the judge's standing order amount to "institutionalized racism"?
Or is it "institutionalized racism" to expect children "of color" to be able to perform to standards on tests designed for the children of a Caucasian American society? Or to expect that they won't?
"When did the white people stop beating their wives?"
Isn't liberalism great?
The moral foundation for slavery never existed. The legal foundation continued to crumble during the first century of our county's existence, not withstanding all the attempts to prop it up. It took time to build an abolitionist sentiment, but it was building as civil war approached. It scared the crap out of the racist southern leadership like Rhett and the other fire-eaters, and their apparatchik in the Supreme Court, Taney.
Taney and the other on the Court were not forced by precedent to rule they way they did. They chose to by presenting a "gross perversion of the facts." An intellectually honest evaluation of the case would have led to a decision that would have been, in retrospect, hailed by the world (outside of the deep south) as a classic statement of human rights, instead of being characterized as the worst Supreme Court decision ever made. By foisting the Dred Scott perversion on the country, they set the stage for increased sectional conflict.
Nolu's post implicitly supports the author of the article who contends that the State is discriminating by not screening young black children; the judge claimed the State was discriminating by screening young black children. It is a no-win situation.
Did Farber suggest that a jurisdictional argument can be made the would allow Lincoln to lawfully ignore Taney's temper Tantrum in Merryman? Yes. Did Farber also suggest that if the jurisdictional argument is not acceptable that Lincoln would have been required to follow Taney's orders, even if his ruling was mistaken. yes.
But I don't have to make the second point. You can make it in rebuttal. And you did. So put your thumb back in a suck.
I think the reviews all came from the dust jacket or the online reviews - verbatim.
Good one too. I'll let you ruminate on it for a while.
It is no or less "invidious" than comparing Lincoln to Hitler.
Taney's decision in Dred Scott gave enslaved AND free Negroes all of the rights of barnyard animals. "the effect of Taney's [Dred Scott decision] was to place Negroes of the 1780's - even free Negroes - on the same level, legally, as domestic animals. They possessed no rights that "a white man was bound to respect." That's not very complicated, is it?
Several colonies declared their independence unilaterlly before the DoI. The DoI served as a severance document ("these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States [plural]"), not a document that consolidated any states together.
Being a slaveowner was not dissimilar to being a crack addict.
ROTFLM*O!!!!!!!! So what do you say to God when he told his people to take captives of war as SLAVES?
There were no fully sovereign states, under any construction of the term "sovereign."
[I]t could have no effect to restrict the new state in any of its necessary attributes as an independent sovereign government, nor to inhibit or diminish its perfect equality with the other members of the Confederacy with which it was to be associated.
Justice Daneil, Withers v. Buckley, 61 U.S. 84 (1857)
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