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 ...
ping
I was prepared to jump all over her on the grounds that she was squishy on abortion and other things, however I have read this speech three times, and I cannot for the life of me find much that I can disagree with as a Conservative..
Clearly she mocks the elected governance for abdicating their responsibility to the courts, as we all should and she says it clearly. She mocks the way that the abortion protesters are now characterized as terrorist.. Who can argue about that?
For what it's worth, I've just been radicalized.
Yep. But I was speaking more broadly.
Anyone who equates abortion clinic protesters with terrorists is making a violently moral judgment. It is the sick and twisted morality of liberal feminism, but it is an unequivocally moral judgment.
I was disappointed with Roberts as well, so I don't think it is the vetting. It has to do with the Gang of 14 and the perceived need for a stealth nominee. Of course, I don't know what really happened and what Cheney and Rove advised. Neither do I know Harriet Miers. That speech was bad, but does it reflect her now ? I prefer Luttig. I wish Bush had nominated him but he did not. I still trust the President's judgement until proven wrong. If he picked another Souter, his legacy goes like that of his father.
Perfect!
My impression is that GWB likes his hunches. He thinks he has great insight into the fundamental character of people.
However as he's only human, he's sometimes wrong. And boy when he's wrong, he gets it really wrong.
Exhibit 1: Vladmir Putin.
I plead . . . .guilty.
The truth can be ugly, but it ain't mean...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1509674/posts?page=43#43
JUDICIAL USURPATION AND LEGISLATIVE ABDICATION [Ramesh Ponnuru]Rich: I think you're giving Miers too much credit here, and the Post too little. There are a lot of ways to connect the themes of judicial usurpation and legislative abdication. You could adopt the argument that legislatures are to blame for not reining in the courts (an argument which I think is generally sound). You could go on to note that legislatures have not sought to reclaim their powers because they are perfectly happy to see the courts get the blame for tough decisions.
That's not the argument Miers makes. The argument she makes is that the courts can't be blamed when they are forced to step in to resolve problems that elected officials have failed to resolve (e.g., the problems of school funding and low-income housing siting). That is a very standard argument, usually associated with liberals. Eliot Spitzer, for example, often argues that it is necessary to pursue anti-gun policies through the courts because legislatures have failed to act. But it's hard to see how the courts are to distinguish between a) a legislative "failure to act," b) a legislative decision that there is no problem demanding solution, or c) a legislative decision that solving any problem would create new and greater problems. Any act of judicial usurpation can be described as a reluctant response to the legislature's failure to enact what the judges wanted them to enact
"I don't trust Brown."
I'd be curious to know why you say this.
It's certainly possible. She's obviously an accomplished networker and ladder climber, and one of her major networks is women's groups.
In point of fact, that seems to be what got her in tight with Laura Bush.
Bush has deliberately nominated this liberal in order to preserve the Court's ideological balance.
It IS a religious issue. Many animal rights activists think that all animals should have the same rights as humans. That's a belief system that contradicts the Judeo-Christian belief that humans are somehow special, set apart from all other living creatures, and thus entitled to a different set of legal protections.
Nobody is going to argue that an eight cell embryo isn't "human". But being "human" doesn't necessarily mean that it should be treated the same as a breathing baby or an adult person. The laws and social norms that have developed in human society were based on characteristics of humans who were born alive -- consciousness, ability to feel pain and fear, capacity for awareness of self in relation to others, etc. It is a huge jump to assert that those laws and social norms should be applied to early stage embryos which lack any of those characteristics, and a jump that can only be made on the basis of religious belief of some sort.
Likewise, some people oppose the death penalty, no matter how heinous the crime, and that is a position which is also based on religious belief of some sort, even though many anti-death penalty activists loudly protest that label. Personally, I don't ascribe any special status to humans. Generally, they are more thinking, aware, and have more long term perspective than any other species I'm aware of, but when creatures that are technically human don't have any of the characteristics that have been the basis for setting them apart from other animals, I don't see the need to treat them differently from other animals. If you see a pit bull viciously attacking a child, shoot it; if you see a human viciously attacking a child, shoot it. Both attackers are equally lacking in the characteristics that form the basis for human society and laws.
If a human embryo isn't wanted by its mother, and there are already millions of human children lacking decent homes and many lacking even food, then I see nothing wrong with allowing the mother to choose to euthanize it at a stage when it has no capacity for self-awareness. Before the third trimester, it has fewer human characteristics than a cat or dog.
She sounds like an idiot.
how many of the people you work with everyday - "know you". what do your co-workers really know about you? flip that around, what do you really "know" about the people you work with?
Miers is a "brown nose". Its in this context that Bush says he "knows her", "knows her heart". That's not the basis for a relationship between Bush and Miers that I want to see as being the controlling mechanism for her being sent to the SCOTUS.
Putin has not proven as "wrong" as Schroeder, Chirac, and Chretien.
If he is wrong about Roberts or Miers, his legacy is severely tarnished if not shattered. Yet it is his Constitutional choice to make as the elected President.
When you read her speeches and writings, it's hard to come to any other conclusion.
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