'Scalia Constitution' is scary

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 6/30/03 | Jay Bookman

[Puddleglum]

So you believe slavery required a constitutional amendment to end it? You don't believe that the presumption of personal liberty except for a compelling interest by the state was enough?

I think the Constitution required a Constitutional amendment to end it, since the founders clearly knew about slavery when the document was written and still thought the document expressed their beliefs on individual liberty. I think the issue was recognizing slaves as full humans beings, not property. I think this "evolution of the zeitgeist" and understanding of human nature and liberty as applied to slaves needed to be resolved by an amendment, not judicial fiat - because the Constitution spoke ambiguously on the issue.

If it was the intention of the Federal government to federalize the issue, and dictate to states, then yes, it needed an amendment to justify the federal intervention, since the Constitution and the intention of its drafters was at best ambiguous, and at worst expressed tolerance for slavery.

The slavery analogy applies to the growing acceptance of sodomy as a state of human being, which the court has decided to resolve by fiat, rather than defering to the constitutionally-proscribed amendment process.

Let me add as a caveat that this is my own, non-Constitutional lawyer opinion. That said, an education in Consitutional Law does seem to always sharpen a person's wits much.

[coloradan]

Some people depend on the police for their protection. In fact, one reason Nazi Germany was as successful as it was at what it did, is because personal grudges could be settled by having one of the parties to the dispute call the Gestapo, who would jutifully and "lawfully" haul the other party away to jail. Lots of busybodies, lots of informants, and the trains ran on time. I wonder if anyone today pines for that sort of world again.

[stop_fascism]

Did the founders ever mention a right to privacy? Was the right to privacy ever mentioned by the spreme court before Griswold?

[Cultural Jihad]

It is not cowardice to point out one of your fellow moral-liberals who comes to preach and to proselytize sodomy on Jim's server. But then the infantile anarchists do call for a ban on consequences to actions, eh?

[Dead Corpse]

How about, instead of trying to right an Amendment to ennumerate all of our Rights, we just NOT give the power to legislate in that area to our Government? A lot easier don't you think? At least as long as we can keep our legislators on the up-and-up.

[Dead Corpse]

Some people depend on the police for their protection.

52%, and growing, of our population is on some form of government assistance. How long do you think we can survive on that trend before hitting "Galt's Gulch"?

[tm22721]

Our society is laissez-faire, ie, we will not act against the homosexuals until a substantial subset of us have been victimized.

Then the bloodbath will begin.

BUMP

[BlackbirdSST]

9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Right to Privacy didn't have to enumerated according to the 9th. I have a right to discourage busy bodies, whether that be my neighbor or my local thug complete with gun and badge!

I'm not surprised many don't get this. Blackbird.

[F16Fighter]

" Forget the arsenic cocktails, Dr. Kevorkian; just prescribe sodomy to your patients, in the privacy of their own homes of course."

...And don't forget the cyanide-tipped payload...

[dirtboy]

He did not call into question a few of our rights, or some of our rights, but most of our rights.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor for the AJC - which editorialized in FAVOR of campaign finance reform. Funny how the AJC can want to limit an ENUMERATED right - while getting after Scalia for trying to stick to only those enumerated rights. What a bunch of rank hypocrites.

[StriperSniper]

we just NOT give the power to legislate in that area to our Government?

The Constitution already enumerates the powers of the Federal Government, and prohibits it from infringing on citizens rights(e.g. 2nd Admd, gun rights), see how much good it has done.

This 'living document' nonsense will just let it grow beyond any new limits we try to impose. It has passed the point where the government recognizes the citizens as the sovereign, that is the problem.

[Cultural Jihad]

The state has a compelling interest to secure its money supply.

As if self-inflicted diseases do not bleed the national treasury.

[aristeides]

Hmmm, this column comes out the day after David Broder's broadside against Scalia, The Scalia Model. Is somebody trying to prevent Scalia's being made chief justice?

[Servant of the Nine]

Never did a law against sodomy harm anyone, whereas homosexual sodomy has killed over 500,000 American men

And Your complaint is?

So9

[MissAmericanPie]

"Moral codes can and in fact must be legislated when the behavior in question harms another party. That harm makes the behavior a legitimate state interest. Child sexual abuse and child pornography, for example, clearly meet that test.

But what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is not even a legitimate interest of their neighbors, much less of the state."

The author deliberately misses the point here. Homosexuals never keep it in the privacy of the bedroom. They will tongue lash each other in the public mall, the theater, the steak house and at the PTA meeting. They already show their intentions in their gay pride parades. Is that kept in the bedroom?

Kids that don't even see their parents embrace are treated on the news to two hairy legged, bare butted men in black leather trying to shove their tongues down each other's throat, is that what the author calls private?

Amoung the rights and freedoms retained by the people, is the right to pass laws that ensure a healthy society, and acceptable sexual behaviour. It's is the right of society, made up of the individual citizen, to determine was is deviant behaviour and protect society from such behaviour.

The court has over stepped itself big time, and yes Scalia is scum. But the law over turned was proper and correct.

[aristeides]

You don't have to approve of sodomy laws to believe that the Supreme Court was quite wrong to find them unconstitutional.

[Cultural Jihad]

My complaint is that the laws against sodomy do not harm the dignity of homosexual people; rather it is homosexual acts which cause great harm to them. If people had no inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness then this all wouldn't matter.

[puroresu]

Slavery **DID** require a constitutional amendment to end it. The 13th amendment does just that.

The 9th amendment was designed to stop the federal government from interfering in areas not covered by the Constitution. It doesn't apply to the states, and was never intended to. If it did, it would nullify the 10th amendment, which was written by and ratified by the same people who wrote the 9th.

I've asked this question before, and no proponent of an expansive 9th amendment has been able to answer it. Why did it take a constitutional amendment (the 19th) to give women federally encforced voting rights? This was decades AFTER the 9th amendment was ratified. And decades AFTER the 14th amendment was ratified.

Under the 9th amendment, the federal government cannot interfere if states and voters, via the political process, recognize additional rights to those spelled out in the Bill of Rights. It gives the feds NO power to force states to recognize any particular right. The 14th amendment didn't change that.

The same Reconstruction Congress that gave us the 13th amendment (abolition of slavery) and the 15th amendment (black voting rights) gave us the the 14th. Yet, modern "liberals" interpret the 14th in such a broad manner that it negates the reason for the 13th & 15th. If the 14th is as broad as people today claim it is, it was the only amendment needed. But it wasn't. Obviously, its authors didn't think it would even ban slavery or give blacks the vote. And it didn't. It took additional amendments to do that. The 14th amendment was designed to guarantee blacks equal access to state courts and other institutions of justice. It didn't grant them any additional rights such as a right not to be enslaved or to vote. It didn't authorize federal judges to federalize the 9th amendment.

So, matters upon which the Constitution was silent, such as female suffrage, were just as much left to the states after passage of the 14th amendment as before. Judges couldn't announce a federally enforceable right of women to vote, found in the 9th & 14th amendments. That's why the suffragettes had to amend the Constitution, about 130 years after the 9th amendment was approved and about 60 years after the 14th amendment.

The 9th & 14th amendments **DO NOT** authorize the federal courts to strike down state laws banning abortion or sodomy. Those are matters retained to the people to decide via the ballot box and electoral process in their states or localities. Unless and until the pro-aborts amend the Constitution to guarantee abortion or sodomy "rights" (as the Reconstruction Congress and the suffragettes did with their respective amendments) the courts will be operating in an outlaw manner in these "privacy" rulings.

These "privacy" rulings are federal tyranny, a seizure of power by the federal courts which they were never granted.