Posted on 10/26/2005 7:54:50 PM PDT by USAConstitution
...when you hear the Courts blamed for activism or intrusion where they do not belong...Stop and examine what the elected leadership has done to solve the problem at issue and whether abdication to courts to make the hard decisions is a not too prevalent tactic in today's world....
Where else do we hear a lot today about the Courts.[sic] The law and religion... Abortion clinic protestors have become synonymous with terrorists and the courts have been the refuge for the besieged... The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion. Questions about what can be taught or done in public places or public schools are presented frequently to the courts.
The law and religion make for interesting mixture but the mixture tends to evoke the strongest of emotions. The underlying theme in most of these case is the insistence of more self-determination. And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes the most sense. Legislating religion or morality we gave up on a long time ago. Remembering that fact appears to offer the most effective solutions to these problems once the easier cases are disposed of... Where science determines the facts, the law can effectively govern. However, when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If she can't stand the heat, she should get out of the kitchen. She is missing a few ingredients and is a recipe for disaster. Cheers,
Bump -- exactly. Nowhere in this speech does she state that the courts have no authority to craft solutions for society's real or percieved ills. She said that it's preferable for the legislature to do it, but if they won't, then the courts must, for the good of society.
Well, instead of being indifferent to her, or blase about opposing her, I believe she must be stopped. Must be stopped.
She might not be, but the situation has gone from a slow tragedy to an impending disaster.
"i think i railed against you...and surely others while i was pro-miers.
please accept my apology! "
That's ok, I'm pretty good at taunting people anyway. So I'm sure I gave as well as a I got.
"What a friggin' commie, social engineering child sacrificer she turns out to be!""
I doubt she is quite that bad personally. The real problem is that the adled thinking processes she exhibits would lead to her getting eaten alive on the court. The net effect would be much worse than O'Connor
"This is how I wrote in college, when I didn't have any idea what I was talking about. We called it "BS". Was sometimes good for a "B" if you were lucky."
Yup. Good A- work in Freshmen English class down at the aggie.
Not much, except she seems to be tolerant of individual exercize of (or shunning of) religion in a school setting.
What does it mean "chooses to express him or herself in religious terms?"
I take that as an overt display or utterance. But she balances that against "oppresively require a student to participate in religious activities against their will."
You do raise good questions about her 1st amendment jurisprudential philosophy. I haven't dug that far in, in that area, but am biased toward thinking she may actually be a traditionalist in that regard.
I think we can both agree that SOME anti-abortion protestors did act like terrorists. But Miers tars them all with the same brush. That is not accurate.
My comments were motivated not by any love for Mr. Rudolph and his ilk, but by my knowledge, as a lawyer, of how statutes like RICO have been perverted to attack NON-VIOLENT protestors, and how those who merely speak against abortion have been hit with huge damage awards to silence them.
[[I think we can both agree that SOME anti-abortion protestors did act like terrorists. But Miers tars them all with the same brush. That is not accurate.]]
What I think you miss is the context and politics that existed in 1993, when the comment was made. There actually was a clear delineation made between pro-life and anti-abortion. The pro-life label was attributed to the peaceful and law respecting side of the opposition to Roe v Wade, anti-abortion was the label put on extremist groups and individuals, like Rudolph, that advocated and participated in violence and other criminal activity in the name of their cause.
I apologize if you thought I was insinuating you supported anti-abortion violence, in general, or Rudolph, in particular, I was merely pointing out what I believe was clearly the context of her comment and how it was being interpreted/distorted in this forum was wrong. With her withdrawal, any more commentary on Miers is pretty much moot.
Dear Cicero,
"But apparently that second split infinitive bothered her at some unconscious level, so she used the word 'to' twice, thus commiting a grammatical solecisim, 'or to . . . to decide.'"
I thought the second "to" was part of the infinitive "to guarantee," which only has four words splitting it.
sitetest
Yes, you're absolutely right. I think I got lost in the wandering maze of her prose. I didn't even mention the mind-numbing effect of the first seven or eight words which open that sentence, a sentence that simultaneously shocks me with its inhuman brutality and puts me to sleep with its fuzzy banality:
"The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual women's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion."
Dear Cicero,
It was easy to miss. As you point out, this is not precisely tight, succinct, clear prose.
However, if you read it aloud, and imagine it as a speech being given to a certain type of audience, it isn't as bad (or as unintentionally funny) as if you're reading it as a formal written document. I can imagine it as the work of a mediocre speaker trying to sound "off the cuff," and "unrehearsed."
Personally, though, I'd be embarrassed to give such a speech.
sitetest
Me, too.
There was a period of my life when I was condemned to give banal speeches, but I tried to keep them short and sweet.
It doesn't apply to everyone.
How many of those 40 million or so abortions are you responsible for ?
In any event, we are now back to having Sandra Day O'Connor decide the cases Harriet Miers would have decided had she been confirmed unless and until the President is successful at getting another nominee confirmed. Luttig is my preference.
The typical emotional debater. All I ever see from you is insults and name calling. The fact that you claim to be a conservative, then go off attacking other conservatives, is really disappointing since I have always believed that as a whole, conservatives were of a higher quality than you appear to be. There are exceptions to every rule, and now I believe you're nothing but a worthless troll.
Impossible. Even Blackstone admitted that people are only going to be bound to truth if they have fear and respect for a Supreme Being.
The underlying behavior, however, needs faith, morality, "something more." Society needs something more than law in order to obtain stability. Law provides dispute resolution structure and criminal remedy; but it cannot create morality of its own force. The law best serves an otherwise moral people. Law cannot create morality, and it is barely able to enforce it.
Ok I read it. First off, that was outstanding!
Second, Blackstone and Rope are in perfect agreement.
I love this one:
This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other-It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.
And this one:
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. There are, it is true a great number of indifferent points, in which both the divine law and the natural leave a man at his own liberty; but which are found necessary for the benefit of society to be restrained within certain limits. And herein it is that human laws have their greatest force and efficacy; for, with regard to such points as are not indifferent, human laws are only declaratory of, and act in subordination to, the former. To instance in the case of murder; this is expressly forbidden by the divine, and demonstrably by the natural law; and from these prohibitions arises the true unlawfulness of this crime. Those human laws that annex a punishment to it, do not at all increase its moral guilt, or superadd any fresh obligation in foro conscientiae to abstain from it's perpetration. Nay, if any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and the divine. But with regard to matters that are in themselves indifferent, and are not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws; such, for instance, as exporting of wool into foreign countries; here the inferior legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose, and to make that action unlawful which before was not so.
BTW
Blackstone's
law of nature = 10 commandments
I like it.
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