Yes. Motives usually aren't as important to me as actions. If Bush wants an Amnesty and doesn't get it, then it's not an issue for me and I can focus on other things.
Posted on 07/07/2003 7:00:07 AM PDT by mrobison
LAW OF THE LAND
Justice: Can Constitution make it in global age?
On TV, Breyer wonders whether it will 'fit into governing documents of other nations'
Posted: July 7, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
In a rare appearance on a television news show, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism.
Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and his colleague Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a dissent in last month's Texas sodomy ruling, contended the views of foreign jurists are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution.
Breyer had held that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that homosexuals had a fundamental right to privacy in their sexual behavior showed that the Supreme Court's earlier decision to the contrary was unfounded in the Western tradition.
"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really – it's trite but it's true – is growing together," Breyer said. "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."
In the Lawrence v Texas case decided June 26, Justice Anthony Kennedy gave as a reason for overturning a Supreme Court ruling of 17 years earlier upholding sodomy laws that it was devoid of any reliance on the views of a "wider civilization."
Scalia answered in his dissent: "The court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is ... meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since this court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans," he said quoting the 2002 Foster v. Florida case.
Scalia's scathing critique of the 6-3 sodomy ruling was unusual in its bluntness.
"Today's opinion is the product of a court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," he wrote. Later he concluded: "This court has taken sides in the culture war."
Both O'Connor and Breyer sought to downplay antipathy between the justices – no matter how contentious matters before the court become. O'Connor said justices don't take harsh criticisms personally.
"When you work in a small group of that size, you have to get along, and so you're not going to let some harsh language, some dissenting opinion, affect a personal relationship," she said. "You can't do that."
Breyer agreed.
"So if I'm really put out by something, I can go to the person who wrote it and say, 'Look, I think you've gone too far here.'"
O'Connor, too, seemed to suggest in the ABC interview that the Constitution was far from the final word in governing America. Asked if there might come a day when it would no longer be the last word on the law, she said: "Well, you always have the power of entering into treaties with other nations which also become part of the law of the land, but I can't see the day when we won't have a constitution in our nation."
Asked to explain what he meant when he said judges who favor a very strict literal interpretation of the Constitution can't justify their practices by claiming that's what the framers wanted, Breyer responded: "I meant that the extent to which the Constitution is flexible is a function of what provisions you're talking about. When you look at the word 'two' for two representatives from every state in the United States Senate, two means two. But when you look like a word – look at a word like 'interstate commerce,' which they didn't have automobiles in mind, or they didn't have airplanes in mind, or telephones, or the Internet, or you look at a word like 'liberty,' and they didn't have in mind at that time the problems of privacy brought about, for example, by the Internet and computers. You realize that the framers intended those words to maintain constant values, but values that would change in their application as society changed."
In an unrelated matter, O'Connor indicated on "This Week" that she would likely serve out the next term on the court, dismssing speculation that she was about to retire.
The current court is split between Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Scalia, who tend to hold the traditional constitutionalist approach to rulings, and the majority of O'Connor, Breyer, Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, who tend to believe in the concept of a "living Constitution" subject to changes in public opinion and interpretation.
You're wasting your breath pointing out the obvious to these loons.
They despise and fear democracy and--to tell the truth--they detest the republican form of goverment we have, too. Many of them seem to believe that if you would just eliminate politicians and elected office, give every citizen a wallet-sized copy of the Constitution (with magnifying glass), and another card reading "initiate no force" a libertarian paradise would spring forth spontaneously from California to Maine.
In the final analysis, they are really trying to avoid responsibility. They shift blame to others for whatever lost or compromised freedoms are suffered and never once examine themselves to discover how their own ineptness, cowardice, slothfulness, greed, self-obsession and petty arrogance might have contributed to the decay and decadence in society and government.
Yes. Motives usually aren't as important to me as actions. If Bush wants an Amnesty and doesn't get it, then it's not an issue for me and I can focus on other things.
I'm bothered by people who take a bad situation and make it worse. In the '92 General Election, the people you are so proud of took a bad situation and made it worse. Millions of voters did far worse damage to our country than one man named Bush did and you can't hide from that fact and you can't mask it behind words like disaffected, accountable, ideology or anything else.
Politicians are accountable to their voters. Democrat politicians are very accountable to there voters. That accountability must make you very happy since accountability at any cost is so important to you. You have no choice but to give the Liberals a better accountability rating than their opponents and, therefore, you have to vote for them.
You're right, no excuses, attack of assholitis.
That would be a dark day. However, while I don't begrudge those who would part ways with the President over it, I don't see how we can all have a dozen tripwires that would trigger a non-vote for Bush.
Impeach Justice Stephen Breyer!
In the '92 General Election, the people you are so proud of took a bad situation and made it worse. Millions of voters did far worse damage to our country than one man named Bush did and you can't hide from that fact and you can't mask it behind words like disaffected, accountable, ideology or anything else.Unless they're politicians, particularly those surnamed Bush, then they appear to get a pass.
Politicians are accountable to their voters.I've never said I was proud of any of them, I simply said that I didn't blame them for not voting for a President in whom they'd lost confidence. President Bush 41 is to blame for his failure to retain their votes.
Democrat politicians are very accountable to there voters.Only if they fear losing their votes. There is otherwise zero accountability, because there is no price to be paid for poor performance.
Not to Blacks, their most loyal constituency, because the Democrats can take them for granted. The Dems can continue to pursue policies that are destructive to Blacks with impunity, because they believe they have nowhere else to go. The Dems count on that.
Perhaps we should let the governing document of a Communist nation decide what to do with you, "Justice" Breyer. Or how about making the impeachment rules just a little more flexible?
P.S. If Breyer had put that spoken sentence in writing, my English grammar teacher of bygone days would've written awkward in the margin. :-)
They should not even be referenced, whatever the ultimate decision was. Combine this with the comments in the article (read it again), and it certainly looks like a prima facie case of a Supreme Court justice stating clearly that the Constitution is not pre-eminent.
Such "opinions" on the part of a Supreme Court Justice(s) is/are impeachable offenses, at least inasmuch as the legal record is concerned.
Boym the more I read of his and O'Connors globalist tripe, the more I think they should BOTH retire or be impeached.
It's infuriating, and, let's be honest:
It's the sort of Tyrannical, Socialist thinking that will eventually lead this country to a new civil or revolutionary War. That will be the legacy of these Globalist Traitors!
I believe the biggest error the framers made was to give federal justices lifetime positions. It has given dangerous men like Breyer a chance to destroy this country from within.
There is NO WAY a man with this belief system should be judging anything more important than apple pies at the county fair.
The cites from the majority in Lawrence vs Texas have been posted several times on this thread alone. The majority actually cited specific cases of Eurotrash law as partial justification for their decision.
Breyer affirms above that it is his duty to fit the Constitution into international conventions.
Now, be an ideologue if you must but stop pretendting that the majority decision in Lawrence is Constitutionally sound and did not reflect the mores of the Europeans and Mary Robinson becuase it makes you look kinda dim.
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