Posted on 10/26/2003 1:46:38 PM PST by moneyrunner
I don’t want to brag, but I had dinner with Ann Coulter last night.
The event was the gala celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Regent University. To celebrate, we were treated to a debate pitting the lovely and gracious Ann, David Limbaugh and Jay Sekulow against the evil trio of Alan Dershowitz, Barry Lynn (Americans United for Separation of Church and State) and Nadine Strossen (head of the ACLU).
The subject of the debate was “Has the Supreme Court Overstepped it Authority.”
There was some excellent back and forth and all had a good time. More on that issue later.
However, my wife and I were excited to find that Ann Coulter would join our table for dinner after the debate. She was charming, gracious with all her fans, and passionate about her views.
She had her ever-present can of Diet Coke, didn’t eat much and needs to put on a few pounds, but hey, she’s Ann. She can do what she likes.
During part of the debate, panel members were allowed to ask each other questions. One that our side could have handled better – I think – was proposed by Alan Deshowitz. He asked about a decision handed down by the Supremes in the 1920s that allowed for the mandatory sterilization of idiots. His question was: do you agree with that decision?
Our side ducked. Modern sensibilities don’t allow us to forcibly sterilize idiots or anyone else for that matter.
We are allowed to kill babies, but that’s another issue.
Based on the debate topic the answer we should have given is: Yes. We agree with the decision.
This is one of those topics in which justice, social policy and the law collide. Today we do not sterilize imbeciles. Many, perhaps most, would make the case that such a policy is morally or ethically wrong. But is it unconstitutional?
Amendments 1 – 13 do not seem to cover this issue. Neither do amendments 15 through 27. We then come to the 14th amendment. A thorough reading of this amendment makes it clear that it is intended to deal with the aftermath of the Civil War. However, just as a person will confess to anything if put to enough torture, the courts have tortured the 14th amendment, section 1, to cover literally any social policy they wish to impose.
The primary evil of a Court system that arrogates to itself the power to right every wrong, to heal every hurt, and to impose it’s view of a just society, is as much of a dictatorship as any that has been seen in history. It undermines the fabric of a healthy republic and is ultimately the cause of the decline of freedom in this country.
The specific reason was this: Drudge got Drudged by FR and he was very upset about it.
The story was the Jesse Jackson Love Child. Drudge had the page coded on his site but hadn't linked it to his main page yet, and was teasing it all week. Some Freeper figured out Drudge's naming convention and was looking for a file like jj.html on his site, found the story, and linked it on Free Republic before Drudge had a chance to reveal his scoop.
That was the day that Drudge removed Free Republic from his site.
-PJ
Unfortunately, this was a very bad decision. If they wanted to execute her, they should have given her a lethal injection. Idiots are on the bench because the state is comprised mostly of snowbird/carpetbagging democrats. I happen to like my state and get offended when people disrespect it because Democrats could'nt figure out how to punch a hole in a piece of paper.
Don't disrepect our state because we are the minority, go out and help us get it back!
OK, so you don't like the 14th Amendment. But do you really think the gov't ought to be in the business of deciding who is an 'imbecile'?
What about the 4th Amendment... "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
What's the probable cause for seizing a person of low intelligence, if they have committed no crime?
BWAHAHAHAHA!
7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern!
Well, since you asked, the government has a positive duty to decide who is and who is not capable of exercising normal, responsible and mature judgment. For example, if you are a minor, you cannot enter into an enforceable contract. A guardian must be appointed to act on your behalf. Minors can argue that this is blatant age discrimination and – under your interpretation of the 14th amendment – should be unconstitutional. So far, no court has found it so, but I’m sure that interpretation will be argued to exist somewhere in the emanations and penumbras of the constitution. That same discrimination is exercised in the case of the mentally incompetent, the comatose and the dead. I know- I know it’s discriminatory, but that’s the way our society oppresses the insane, the unconscious and the expired.
”What about the 4th Amendment... "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
What's the probable cause for seizing a person of low intelligence, if they have committed no crime?
Well, here again you have some people who will take words that the government can’t bust into your house without a warrant and say that means that we they can’t stop two imbeciles from producing more imbeciles. I’m not sure that I see the connection, but I’m sure that you do.
Your concern for the insane is widely shared, however, by the more enlightened among us who decided a few decades ago that we were depriving these poor creatures of their constitutional rights by warehousing them in (what an older generation called) insane asylums.
So we closed the asylums. You will now find the freed former inhabitants exercising their constitutional rights as they roam the our cities with their belongings piled into shopping carts and sleeping under bridges, using the public bathrooms to procreate and the public streets to defecate.
But getting back to the issue of judges and the courts, the point I have been trying to make is that these are rightfully public policy decisions to be decided by legislatures and city councils, not judges who wish to exercise some Olympian power over the rest of us. Even the wackiest city councils eventually get it. Los Angeles just passed a law making it illegal to empty your bladder or your bowels on the public street. Civil libertarians are up in arms over this denial of their constitutional rights.
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