Posted on 01/09/2006 8:26:54 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Would that mean that Vatican City is some sort of linguistic Galapagos?
That phrase was in a private letter from ONE of the numerous authors of the Constitution, is not part of the Constitution, and cannot be used to define the First Amendment EXCEPT BY ACTIVIST JUDGES.
The phrase Wall of Separation is NOT from any author of the Constitution. Thomas jefferson was not an author of the Constitution. He was not even in the United States when the Constitution was written. He was serving as the US Ambassador to France. The phrase separation is from a Letter written in 1802 by Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association when he was President of the United States. This is the text of the letter for anyone who is interested. As you read it ask yourself if the meaning of a Wall of Separation as used in this letter is the same as it is used today:
Mr. President
To messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem & approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful & zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more & more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
(signed) Thomas Jefferson
Jan.1.1802.
How can science ever say something is impossible?
But they're still languages.
All it takes is one example of speciation to show speciation occurs. All it takes is one transitional form to show transitional forms exist and one organism from one higher taxon can evolve enough to occupy another higher taxon.
Although this isn't a direct answer to your question it is an answer for your implied assertion that any question of source or lack of information automatically negates any and all related conclusions.
I didn't imply it negated anything, only that it would be open to interpretation, as is all science.
Why?
"We can choose to accept that ZERO is eternal or that SOMETHING is eternal.
Am I correct in assuming you are using 'zero' to denote the nothingness before the BB? If so, how does 'eternal' fit in to it?
There is no "before" the Big Bang since time itself started with the Big Bang.
With all due respect to professor Fairman, I read the Congressional debates surrounding the ratification of the 14th Amendment, I mean the actual primary source documents, for a research paper I wrote at Columbia. The people who actually wrote the Amendment, including John Bingham, were crystal clear that they intended the Amendment to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. They made it abundantly clear the Bill of Rights were the privilidges and imunities referred to in the first clause.
Having read the actual primary source documents, I also became appauled at the degree to which people like Fairman and Raoul Berger mine quotes and rip them out of context to argue against incorporation. That the framers intended the Amendment to incorporate the bill of rights is so obvious from the text, that I can only conclude Berger and Fairmen are either deliberately duplicitous or blinded by their ideology.
When it achieves effective genetic isolation from the *original* parent species.
When did proto-Indo-European become English? Or German? Or Spanish?
and why is any such transitional form not a separate species?
They can be. Old English is transitional between proto-Indo-European and modern English, but it's also a separate language in its own right.
And none of ths even addresses the problem evolution has explaining how one classification of life can be transformed into another classification.
What "problem" would that be? Enough accumulated change eventually reaches the point where people decide to give it a new classification. But such classifications are human constructs, not nature's.
An example would be how did a cold-blooded animal get transformed into a warm-blodded animal?
Why is this a "problem"? Be specific. Endothermy is not a big leap from ectothermy. It's a matter of degree, not kind. But don't just take my word for it:
"Many elements of mammalian and avian thermoregulatory mechanisms are present in reptiles, and the changes involved in the transition to endothermy are more quantitative than qualitative."Even ectotherms have regulatory systems to handle excess heat or cold, and generate internal warmth from their body's metabolism. The transition to endothermy only involves cranking up the internal metabolism, and fine-tuning the temperature-regulation mechanisms to maintain a more steady internal temperature.
-- The evolution of endothermy and its diversity in mammals and birds, Grigg GC, Beard LA, Augee ML, Physiol Biochem Zool. 2004 Nov-Dec;77(6):982-97"Avian and mammalian endothermy results from elevated rates of resting, or routine, metabolism and enables these animals to maintain high and stable body temperatures in the face of variable ambient temperatures."
-- The evolution of endothermy in terrestrial vertebrates: Who? When? Why?, Hillenius WJ, Ruben JA, Physiol Biochem Zool. 2004 Nov-Dec;77(6):959-81.
There are animals even today that serve as a good example of how things would look partway through the transition from classic ectothermy to modern endothermy. They have sort of a "half-assed endothermy", and they function just fine. Google for "homeothermic", especiall on pubmed.com, to come up to speed on the subject. Echidnas are just one example.
ROFL!
Yes, but what is the cause of such behavior?
1. lack of information, or confusion due to misinformation,Can you suggest any others?
2. bewilderment, possible feeble-mindedness,
3. cognitive blockages implanted during child abuse,
4. insanity, derangement,
5. dishonesty,
6. demon possession
Apparently connectthedots is having a little problem connecting the dots!
That's because the court blatently disregarded the original intent of Bingham and the rest of the authors of the Amendment right from the beginning, starting with the slaughterhouse cases. The court in the 1920's was only undoing the bad jurisprudence of earlier courts.
But, if the intent of the 14th Amendment was to so fundamentally alter the American system of federalism, it seems kind of cryptic to do so with the language..."no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law"...no?
Agreed. That's because they were intending to incorporate the BofR with the "privilidges and immunities" clause. Unfortunately, the Slaughterhouse Cases blatently disregarded the framers' intended meaning of this clause. Later courts wanted to restore incorporation, but didn't want to overtly overturn slaughterhouse, so they invented the substantive due process doctrine. This was kind of silly, I admit. They should have simply overturned slaughterhouse, but at the end of the day, the effect was the same.
In the case of the Estalishment Clause, there is almost irrefutable proof that the 14th Amendment did not make it applicable to the states...specifically, the Blaine Amendment of 1875
It's very refutable. A lot happens in 7 years. The composition of Congress was vastly different when the Blaine Amendment was being voted on than it was when the 14th Amendment was being voted on. Therefore, what Congress rejected in 1875 has no bearing on what it passed in 1868.
Furthermore, Blaine's motivation for pushing his Amendment was the fact that SCOTUS had already set a precident about the meaning of the privilidges and immunities clause that was at variance with Blain, Bingham, and other framers had clearly intended back in 1868. We know that because they explicitly said so. Therefore, the Blaine Amendment is actually evidence in favor of incorporation, not evidence against it.
Professor Charles Fairman wrote a Stanford Law Review...
Professor Fairman was full of it, and if you go and actually look up his quotations of Bingham and others, you will see it for yourself.
After experiencing many crevo threads on FR, I think I know just what he is referring to.
That's been a while, I'm gussing.
If the ACLU has thier way, those will not be allowed either. Without the research at hand, I would bet they are already gone in some districts. You aren't naive enough to belive the ACLU did this all in the name of higher learning.
Again I ask (though not of you specifically) , in what year? You CAN'T say the word Jesus in school, at least in Connecticut, in 2006.
I graduated high school in 1994.
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