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Posted on 09/15/2003 11:22:29 PM PDT by tallhappy
That the Federal Government has cancelled a constitionally mandated State Gubernatorial election seems unprecedented.
Arguments in print and in broadcast media have begun and will go on about whether or not the court made the cxorrect decision.
Either argument misses the larger issue which is a federal court cannot cancel an election.
Third world dictatorships cancel and postpone scheduled elections.
There is rule of law, which is, and has been, integral to our nation and our freedoms.
There is also rule by law which is employed by autocratic governments to further their power and agendas.
This decision is rule by law, not rule of law.
The election is mandated by the California constitution to take place at a given time. In free societies and democracies elections are not cancelled.
Fascist or communist dictatorships cancel or postpone elections.
If the voting means are unfair, then a fair way is to be determined by the election date and the elction carried out, even if it means everyone voting with ink pen and counting the ballots by hand for weeks to determine the vote counts and winner.
But elections are not cancelled and postponed in free democratic societies and nations.
The seriousness of this decision (and its audacity) are yet to be fully comprehended.
Next time it will be a presidential election.
This is a crisis of the type we have only seen one time prior in our history.
Of course. That's beside the point.
-PJ
Elections are not cancelled in free societies.
We aren't cancelling this election, and we have a free society. It's a mistake to invoke totalitarianism every time the courts do something we don't like, so I am arguing against that. Let's make sure there's an appeal and find out what the supremes say. We're going to be fine, democracy is alive and well, and the sky isn't falling. When the sky falls, no one will believe us if we keep saying so when it isn't.
Don't get too worked up yet. It's highly likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the 9th Circuit Court. The 9th Circuit Court stayed its own decision for a week to provide time for an appeal. That means that at least for the next week (or until the USSC rules) the recall election is still officially on for October 7th.
"Judicial tyranny" is the phrase that is appropriate.
You did hear about the judges, I assume. Totally consistent with Clinton's appearence into the scene.
You see, Clionton deserved the impeachment trial but everyone moved on, leaving us this mess to clean up on our own.
Keep righting.
Of course.
Beside the pount.
The supreme court will be judging the decision as stated -- the arguments having to do with fairness in election methodology.
The authority to cancel or postpone an election is not addressed.
To my knowledge the federal government ordering a Constitutionally mandated State Gubernatorial election to be postponed is unprecedented.
Dictatorships do such things all the time. We are not a dictatorship. And the decision to order an election postponed for nearly half a year is a major decision and most likely not legal.
This is a serious crisis.
It hasn't sunk in yet.
You can't be serious?! The Republicans have control of the House, of the Senate, of the White House, and 7 of 9 Supreme Court justices are Republican nominees. The problem is hardly that leftists are at all time high levels of power; the problem is that the GOP has misplaced about 300 sets of balls......
I've been hearing a lot of this lately and I'm just not convinced. Superficially, some of these decisions look arbitrary, but when you look at them more carefully, there is something useful about them. I seriously differ with the 9th's ruling on the second amendment, so I just want you to understand that I'm not in total support of them. However, they appear to be going along with the national tide when they rest at that position. It will finally be up to the supreme court to state one way or the other. And if they rule against the clear meaning of the second amendment on that issue, then I will concede that you are correct.
The encrustation is so complete that plainly unconstitutional opinions like Roe v Wade not only become a bullwark against original constitutional meaning, they become themselves an independent justification for further mischief, such as the sodomy cases.
I am firmly on the privacy side of these two issues, so I can't support you in that vein.
1. The battle over states' rights, 138 years after Appomatox and 49 years after the court ordered school integration, is finally, conclusively, over. There are no more states' rights and it is only a matter of time until the court gets around to picking off the remaining vestiges of states' powers one by one.
It is always instructive to bring up the Civil War when it comes to states' rights. Generally it comes down to a right of an individual that is being protected when people differ on it. The federal government does indeed protect the black man's right to be free, his right to vote, and it should protect our second amendment rights as well.
2. The idea of the written constitution as a social contract is dead. It has now morphed into a manifesto which can accomodate groups' rights as they come into favor.
I understand this sentiment, but again, I think most of these rights have indicated progress in our society.
3. The idea that law, constitutional law, should be dominant in ordering the affairs of men is now dead and in its place we will governed by a coctail of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and pop culture.
There is some truth in what you're saying, but Americans have become polarized on the subject of what the constitution means. I'm a firm believer in separation of church and state, and like it or not, I take that interpretation from the first amendment. Many opponents of the second amendment use the same attack used on the first amendment by the Christian right to attack it: the English is twisted around to mean something else. For the most part, I agree with the courts.
4. The unwritten Confession of Faith shared by our Justices for generations in which they conceive themselves in spirit to be LEGAL arbiters operating within a LEGAL system and according to its rules has been tacitedly abandoned, although its vocabulary has been retained to conceal the metamorphis, and the Justices now have assumed a new role as Shamons, Priesters, Oracles or something quite different which has yet to be fully revealed.
I believe that our founding fathers knew we would converge on a secular form of government. I don't think they worried about it very much. What they did worry about was that one denomination or another would take over. We're very well protected against that. I won't give those protections up for anything.
5. The legal system will cease to be a place where rights are vindicated and become a source for the establishment of INTERESTS. To attain the establishment of his interests, the clever advocate will see that the Gods of the new system will have to be propitiated. Theis means that sucessful advocates will have established their cause as the flavor of the month in a ever changing menu of fads, movements, and the like.
Hillary Clinton thinks the courts are conservatively activist. I'm happy they stand between us and her ideologies, personally.
I view this venal corruption as the inevitable result of the intellectual, proceedural and constitutional corruption which the left has insinuated into our legal system.
There is an interesting dilemma here. A lot of this "leftist activism" on our courts has been beneficial to our personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, religion, education, and so forth. It may be that we're overlooking an aspect of judicial activism that has more of an impact: what is going on with the economy, corporate law, and so forth? I'm no expert in those areas, but I suspect they have just as much of an influence on our daily lives. In any case, our society is changing. Moral conservatives often want to use the law to prevent that. It's not democratic to use the law in that way, however.
It has established favored groups and disestablished other less favored Americans not only as they interact with their government but privately, as in matters of free association or job quotas. They have used judges to accomplish this.
Job quotas are frustrating, but I agree with O'Connor's opinion in that we may need another 25 years of them.
The left has corrupted the process of selecting judges. First, by character assination as against Bork and then Thomas. Now, by filibustering their way to a super majority. It is not original to observe that this was the predictable result of politizing the judicial system. Maybe. But it seems to me that justice has to rise above politics to a large extent. When both sides can't agree on a candidate, it's a good sign that politics will enter into the candidate's rulings as well.
Now we see venal corruption. This was also to be foreseen. Why should greed stand as the lone taboo in a sea of sin and political opportunism. Just where should the whore say, "no, that far I will not go.
I can't agree. I think we have a variety of viewpoints represented in our courts and they don't all serve our desires equally. But I actually see a defense against oppression in their rulings.
In short, I fear the rot is so pervasive, so institutionalized, that not even nominating the right horses can retrieve the situation. I sincerely hope I am wrong. My pessimism does not imply that we should not try your solution, it is all we have left before the barricades.
This is a great country. It can be better, but I think we are heading in a positive direction. I think the problems you and I both want to solve are somewhat different, but in 100 years our grand children will look back at what the courts, the congress, the president, and the press did with these challenges and decide that it was for the best. I may be unhappy tomorrow, and you may be happy. Laws are about averages; blind justice sometimes makes mistakes. It's the trend that matters. I support the status quo.
The bottom line is this: you believe you are right, and you demand change, or "revolution" to reform our courts. I believe I am right and the courts agree with me except on the issue of the second amendment. However, I accept that we are debating that issue right now and our legal system is still digesting it. I may have less to object to regarding our government than you. But we both have to work within the system to make it function, otherwise we are lost. If you want to have a different outcome than what we have today, you'd need to change the constitution and the very structure of our nation's government.
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