Posted on 04/15/2005 4:56:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Chief Justice Roy Moores new book So Help Me God is a captivating and unflinching first-hand account of a man on the front lines of the battle between religious freedom and judicial tyranny. This Alabama Supreme Court Justice embodies the true definition of patriotism, inasmuch he has risked his career and reputation to stand by his oath of office and refuses to deny his allegiance to the Constitution and the laws of nature and natures God for the mere sake of catering to the frenetic, deep-seated anti-religious paranoia of the uber-secular left.
It was on June 9, 1993 that ACLU member Joel Sogol wrote to then-chief justice of Alabama Sonny Hornsby, threatening to sue anyone who continued the time-honored tradition of praying in court. After Roy Moore took office in 1994 and refused to bring a halt to the tradition, the ACLU stepped up their threats of suit over the prayer and, in addition, began hyperventilating over the Ten Commandments plaque Justice Moore had placed in his courtroom. At the beginning of the third month of Justice Moores first term of office on March 31, 1995, the ACLU filed suit in U.S. district court against him on the basis that he had illegally imposed his religious beliefs on others in the courtroom, denouncing the prayer as a religious test.
The ACLU apparently didnt feel up to suing all 550 members of Congress and all nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court who have always begun their daily proceedings with prayers. It may even be a sobering revelation to them that our very first president noted in his inaugural address, no people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that such words would bear much significance to a pathetic, subversive gang of rogue lawyers who have nothing better to do with their time than to bully public officials out of acknowledging their creator and to throw childish temper tantrums over harmless little plaques.
In a priceless act of civil disobedience, Justice Moore erected a 2½-ton granite Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the State Judicial Building. Moore would later write in his book that [t]he display of Gods law was not done to make any bold statement, to intimidate or offend anyone, or to push any particular religion. It was simply a reminder that this country was established on a particular God and His divine, revealed laws; it reflected the Christian faith of our founders.
Flabbergasted, on Halloween 2001, the ACLU ganged up with Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center to file suit over the monument. Demonstrating what loving people liberals can be, in a letter to the legal director of Americans United, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to Justice Moore as a religious nut in partnership with a fanatical church. (And showing how smart liberals can be, the letter was accidentally sent to Justice Moores attorney, Steve Melchior. Whoops!)
The case was set for trial on October 15, 2002. Less than a month after it ended, on November 18, 2002, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled against the Ten Commandments display, declaring it unconstitutional. In his ruling, Judge Myron stated: [W]hile the Chief Justice is free to keep whatever religious beliefs he chooses, the state may not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God and attribute to that God our religious freedom. Perhaps Judge Myron would be compelled to rethink his words if he actually bothered to read the Alabama State Constitution which Moore had sworn specifically to uphold, inasmuch as it reads in the preamble: We, the people of the State of Alabama, in order to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution and form of government for the State of Alabama (emphasis added).
On March 2, 2005, the New York Times expressed its disapproval of similar displays in between the Capitol and the State Supreme Court in Texas, and in county courthouses in Kentucky, accusing the displays backers of not accepting the separation of church and state while explaining that [t]he Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws respecting an establishment of a religion. If nothing else, at least these circumstances have given liberals yet another excuse to evince their maniacal infatuation with the separation of church and state, a phrase which we are supposed to believe is somewhere in the Constitution.
If a liberal sneezed and you said God bless you he would begin spastically whining about the separation of church and state. To appreciate this situation from the perspective of the judicial supremacists, the ACLU lawyers and the New York Times editors, we will just have to pretend for a moment that a) the separation of church and state exists in the Constitution, b) Congress is somehow responsible for the placement of the Ten Commandments monuments, and c) the monuments in effect represent an establishment of a state religion.
There. Now it sort of makes sense.
To the contrary, however, the lefts beloved separation of church and state mantra originated not in the Constitution, but in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 (11 years after the First Amendment was incorporated into the Constitution) regarding their concerns that the Congregationalists may abuse their power to attain a favored position. Explicitly, Jefferson wrote: [the] wall of separation between church and state is a one-directional wall. It keeps the government from running the church, but makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.
The self-styled progressive elites have typically justified their anti-Christian bigotry by insinuating that religion must stay away from government, and any case in which it does not is an irrevocable step towards theocracy. Their interpretation of the language of the First Amendment demonstrates how little understanding they have of its actual implications.
By including the establishment clause in the Constitution, the framers were preventing the prospects of theocracy such as that which the Pilgrims purportedly fled from in England before settling on the North American shores. However, there is a reason why Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness (emphasis added). What Jefferson was taking into account was the imperative necessity of our leaders and authorities to recognize their inferiority to the divine laws of the solar system and their subordinance to a Higher Power, so as not to confuse themselves with that Higher Power and in due course assume a despotic, tyrannical precedence.
The functionality of our democracy is contingent upon the Hobbesian doctrine that man is inherently corrupt and therefore in need of some degree of governmental supervision. The notion of human fallibility is quintessential of the Judeo-Christian doctrines with which our founders specifically harmonized their vision of a free republic. The acknowledgement of that fallible nature is what distinguishes our system from communism a system which presupposes that man is basically good, and therefore capable of upholding and preserving a utopian, Edinic society. It distinguishes our system as well from that of monarchism and fascism, both of which presuppose that there is such a thing as Divine Right, or human infallibility; that it is possible for a human leader to take on a godlike authority over his people and govern them in a flawless manner. But because our system recognizes that there is no such thing as human infallibility, our branches of power are balanced, and our leaders are appointed through a democratic process by which the majority of citizens decide who gets to represent them, and for how long.
Secularist liberals tend to accuse Christians of seeing things too much in black and white, yet they themselves have adopted a black and white perspective by declining to consider the fact that not everything boils down to the two options of theocracy and secularism. A system of government that is religious in nature does not automatically take on the form of theocracy. It does not mean that its subjects must be coerced into submission to a certain designated religious faith. Whether or not we as individuals decide to subject ourselves to personal dependence on religion, we must recognize that our freedom to do so or not do so at our own will is dependent on our democratic system, and our democratic system is dependent on religion.
It is on account of this brand of narcissistic judicial hubris, this denial of subordinance to a Higher Law that an innocent woman was allowed to be inhumanly starved to death recently, that activist judges have been able to recklessly redefine the institution of marriage, and that an unremitting fetal holocaust has been sanctioned by the highest levels of government for 32 years and counting. The more we forget that we are one nation under God, the more we will become one nation under the State. If this becomes the case, then our rights will become conditional and susceptible to abuse, rather than God-given and immune to meddling. As many could argue, resting our rights solely on the state is like building a house on sand. (Note to liberals: Please pardon the biblical reference.)
It is in some states & it would be foolish not to recognize the direction that these thing go.
The original basis for protected classes was women, minor children & "the incompetent", since the laws originally precluded any of them from voting. The special protection for women should have been worked out of the system after the 19th became the law of the land.
I know the 14th has been expanded to mean that race was a viable basis for the creation for another, new special class, but it took the Civil Rights Acts to actually do so. I'd like to stuff the 14th genie back into it's bottle again, but know that it will take a mighty sledge hammer to do so.
I could be wrong but I think that some court declares an act of Congress or a state legislature unconstitutional on a shocking average. I'd love to know the rate.
I heard some bytes of the Scalia, Breyer and O'Connor exchange (it seemed to me that O'Connor was uncomfortable being forced to be unflatteringly compared to Scalia and Breyer was blissfully unaware). Scalia mentioned his confirmation but at that time, the general perception was that you replaced conservative with conservative and liberal with liberal. At least, that is what we are told when people ask about what happened with Clarence Thomas.
In any case, judges are becoming a huge issue and I stand by my proposal to limit lower court Federal judges to 10 (or maybe 15) year terms.
Originally, there was no cloture. One senator could prevent a vote under original senate . But you are right, it was not done to stop legislation. But then, orginally, there was not much legislation.
That is why we have voting, especially on very devisive issues. One thing we do not do is allow 5 oligarchs to arbitrarily become social engineers.
But there also wasn't the Onanistic filibuster either. The Senators actually had to debate continuously.
I don't recall saying that the law is contradictory. The law is never contradictory in an absolute sense, just sometimes in a state of tension. Something always is found to trump something else. Judges always decide.
With modern communications, it would not take many to keep a filibuster going around the clock until the supernova. That is a red herring.
No, it's not a red herring. Because when they actually filibuster, all business in the Senate stops.
I stand for some things too, no matter what, so I admire that. But in this case, your proposal has zero chance of happening. It would take a Constitutional amendment. So, we must work with the cards from the deck which have been played.
Some call it social engineering from the court, but those who inherited favoritism from the constitution as it stood, would never vote to change the constitution in order to lose their built in advantages.
Stopping Senate business is a piece of cake. I am not sure where that leads one.
I actually think that this is an amendment that actually stands a reasonable chance of passage.
(Sheesh!)
It must be horrible to be so pessimistic about the public square. What kept the fundies in place before SCOTUS got active, or if they were not in place, what did they do that was so horrible?
From a psephological prespective, in any event, your assertions are ludicrous.
I actually think that actually, it is actually impossible that actually two thirds of the Congress and actually three fourths of the state legislatures would actually, ever, actually, actually do such an actual thing, actually.
I keep odd hours, so am looking for entertainment in the middle of the night. ;o) Besides, with the CSpan cameras rolling 24/7, anything funky on the floor when we're all asleep will get prime time coverage eventually. Shine the light of day on the debate & let it roll until it's resolved. Speachifying about minority rights are going to go look flat, if any of them goes to the fallback position of old & tries to read the phone book into the record.
I could propose a Constitutional amendment permitting the flogging of errant judges and it would pass. Restraining judicial power is certainly a populist position.
And here I thought you were good at maths. A little Britishism for you. :)
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