Posted on 01/09/2003 3:57:53 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
I've been talking with Bob J, the impresario of Radio Free Republic, and in response to an overwhelming demand (Bob asked nicely), I'll be back on the air with RFR.
The dates we're looking at are 18 February for sure, and perhaps 28 January as a "pre-CPAC" show. I know, better'n most, that constitutional law is stupefyingly dull for most folks. It can be made lively, as I'm now doing with Jerry Agar, 50,000 watts out of Raleigh, North Carolina, every Monday at 5 p.m. We'll do a similar work nationally on RFR, again, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity.
FreeRepublic is chock-a-block with bright and able people (not limited to lawyers, some laymen are sharp cookies also). We will have guests on-air. We will also welcome FR callers on all subjects -- this is not strictly limited to con law.
Please do two things: recommend FReepers who would be great guests. Don't be shy, you can nominate yourselves. Also, feel free to recommend the subjects for these shows. The idea, as always, is to discuss conservative issues with brevity, intelligence, and humor.
Have at it.
I'm trying to organize the FRN Voter Fraud project (along with Di, SweetLiberty and Nick Danger). Perhaps an interview about the project would be a good topic.
From: Mathew Staver, Esq.
Petition to the President of the United States and Members of Congress :
The recent decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco where the Pledge of Allegiance was ruled Unconstitutional is an attack on America by way of the legal system. We are indeed "One Nation Under God."
To declare that anyone who pledges allegiance to the Flag of our Country is breaking the law is to declare the President of the United States and every member of Congress to be law breakers.
It has become abundantly clear that the two judges that voted for this must be impeached and removed from office. Please use the authority that you have been invested with and immediately vote to impeach judges Stephen Reinhardt and Alfred Goodwin.
The Ninth Circuit has always been a radical, left-leaning court. A recent survey showed that 80%-90% of the Ninth Circuit's decisions are reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In one recent term, the Supreme Court reversed 24 of the Ninth Circuit's decisions, and 16 of those decision were reversed by a 9-0 opinion by the United States Supreme Court. It's hard to find the United States Supreme Court unanimously agreeing on anything, but one thing it has agreed on is that the Ninth Circuit is in left field.
It is time for Congress to take action and impeach the two judges on this Federal Court.
One of the two judges in the majority, Stephen Reinhardt, is a holdover from the liberal judges appointed by President Carter. This judge is even left of the Ninth Circuit Court. Judge Reinhardt once issued an opinion that the United States Constitution guarantees the right to assisted suicide. This decision was overruled. During one term of the Supreme Court, this same judge was unanimously reversed 5 separate times by the High Court on 5 separate cases. Obviously a judge like this does not belong on a Federal Court.
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1. To pass a Constitutional amendment that absolutely protects all innocent life—from conception to natural death. |
Overturning Supreme Court Decisions with Constitutional Amendments
The Supreme Court's power of judicial review allows the court the power of interpreting the Constitution and determining whether any act of the Congress, the executive, or the state governments is in violation of the Constitution. Four of the twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution have overturned Supreme Court decisions. Two other proposed but unratified amendments also sought to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court.
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States with respect to the right to life. (Introduced in House)
HJ 20 IH
107th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. J. RES. 20
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States with respect to the right to life.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Mr. OBERSTAR (for himself, Mr. AKIN, Mr. ARMEY, Mr. BAKER, Mr. BARCIA, Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland, Mr. DEMINT, Mr. GREEN of Wisconsin, Ms. HART, Mr. HAYES, Mr. HULSHOF, Mr. LIPINSKI, Mr. LUCAS of Kentucky, Mr. PICKERING, Mr. SHIMKUS, Mr. SHOWS, Mr. TANCREDO, and Mr. TERRY) introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States with respect to the right to life.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein),
That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to be valid only if ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of final passage of this joint resolution:`SECTION 1. With respect to the right to life, the word `person' as used in this article and in the fifth and fourteenth articles of amendment to the Constitution of the United States applies to all human beings irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their biological development.
`SECTION 2. No unborn person shall be deprived of life by any person: Provided, however, That nothing in this article shall prohibit a law permitting only those medical procedures required to prevent the death of the mother.
`SECTION 3. The Congress and the several States shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'.
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2. A Supreme Court that acknowledges the personhood of the unborn, thus guaranteeing their protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. |
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3. Transforming the culture: From one of death to Life. |
What the "pro-choice" American does not believe is that a human fetus is as fully a human life as Uncle Charlie.
Are unborn children human beings? Are they persons? No doubt about it. The following essays argue the pro-life case...
Federalism Project: Supreme Court
Are State Sodomy Prohibitions Unconstitutional?
Lawrence v. Texas No. 02-0102
In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court will review a Texas law that criminalizes homosexual (but not heterosexual) sodomy. The inconveniences of democratic, decentralized decision making will be pitted against the charm of judicial fiat. Judicial fiat will win. For those who don't remember Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), it's just as well; the decision, and its cautionary approach to finding new constitutional rights, is about to be discarded.
That is too bad. The country has enjoyed a rough consensus on sodomy statutes. Most states don't have them. A few-increasingly few-still do but don't enforce them. (Lawrence, like Bowers, is a trumped-up test case.) That legislative-driven outcome is both a bit hypocritical and dissatisfying to fanatics on both sides. But the formula has allowed states to reflect their citizens' varied moral sentiments. It has allowed the liberalizers to make progress. Above all, it has spared us a national, first-principles debate about, of all things, sodomy.
What possessed the Court to yank up this made-up case from a Texas criminal court? Likely answer: the four liberal Justices, who think they can pick up a fifth or sixth anti-Bowers vote from Justice Kennedy or O'Connor. Nor is it far-fetched to surmise that the cert granters in this case had their eyes on the prospect of a judicial nomination fight, where the homosexual rights issue will be very awkward for the administration and its prospective nominee.
The Supreme Court recognizes minority status only for those groups which 1) have suffered a history of discrimination, 2) are powerless to help themselves and 3) are defined by immutable characteristics.
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986)
After being charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of his home, respondent Hardwick (respondent) brought suit in Federal District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights.
Held: The Georgia statute is constitutional. Pp. 190-196 .
(a) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court's prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable. Pp. 190-191 .
(b) Against a background in which many States have criminalized sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" is, at best, facetious. Pp. 191-194 .
(c) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily would take upon itself further authority to govern the country without constitutional authority. The claimed right in this case falls far short of overcoming this resistance. Pp. 194-195 .
(d) The fact that homosexual conduct occurs in the privacy of the home does not affect the result. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 , distinguished. Pp. 195-196 .
(e) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to support the laws. P. 196 .
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986) BURGER, C.J., Concurring Opinion
As the Court notes, ante at 192 , the proscriptions against sodomy have very "ancient roots." Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization. Condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards. Homosexual sodomy was a capital crime under Roman law. See Code Theod. 9.7.6; Code Just. 9.9.31. See also D. Bailey, Homosexuality [p*197] and the Western Christian Tradition 70-81 (1975). During the English Reformation, when powers of the ecclesiastical courts were transferred to the King's Courts, the first English statute criminalizing sodomy was passed. 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 6. Blackstone described "the infamous crime against nature" as an offense of "deeper malignity" than rape, a heinous act "the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature," and "a crime not fit to be named." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *215. The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies. In 1816, the Georgia Legislature passed the statute at issue here, and that statute has been continuously in force in one form or another since that time. To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.
This is essentially not a question of personal "preferences," but rather of the legislative authority of the State. I find nothing in the Constitution depriving a State of the power to enact the statute challenged here. ++++"Rejuvenating Blackstone"
The Ninth Circuit has always been a radical, left-leaning court. A recent survey showed that 80%-90% of the Ninth Circuit's decisions are reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In one recent term, the Supreme Court reversed 24 of the Ninth Circuit's decisions, and 16 of those decision were reversed by a 9-0 opinion by the United States Supreme Court. It's hard to find the United States Supreme Court unanimously agreeing on anything, but one thing it has agreed on is that the Ninth Circuit is in left field.
It is time for Congress to take action and impeach the two judges on this Federal Court. On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), letter to Judge William Johnson, (from Monticello, June 12, 1823) The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary, as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction, and no excuse for interpolation or addition. - Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat 304; Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat 419; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet 10; Tennessee v. Whitworth, 117 U.S. 139; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662; Hodges v. United States, 203 U.S. 1; Edwards v. Cuba R. Co., 268 U.S. 628; The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U.S. 655; (Justice) Story on the Constitution, 5th ed., Sec 451; Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, 2nd ed., p. 61, 70.
Congressman Billybob
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