“I don’t have to prove [it’s] perfect. The question is whether it’s better than everything else”It’d only be godless leftists that think humans can achieve perfection by themselves . . .
Thank God for men like him.
The Constitution is old and outdated, just ask Ginsburg.
Flexible and adaptive as defined by who?
It is a pact by the American people describing how they want their government to operate.
It is not up to the government or any of it's branches to redefine the instructions. Just follow them as written.
I agree with much of what Scalia says-—except really-—he thinks there is a “right” to kill a baby in the womb when science tells us it is a human being and has an inalienable right to life by its very existence in the US.
Even the Founders KNEW there was no “right” to abortion—and all our laws prove that. Where is the “new” insight?
Also, that there is a right to sodomy if a majority of people vote for it-—when it denies the “general welfare” of a society and children to have their biological parents do their Duty (reason for social contracts) and RAISE THEM? He thinks “JUST LAW” can consist of such bizarre and unnatural “reasoning” and logic when our Supreme Law of the Land is seeped in Natural Law Theory.
Geeeeshhhhh and he is a “conservative” justice. He should look up what Just Law is. It certainly isn’t using the force of government to force unnatural urges as a “right” and force the ideas as “moral” to children. It destroys reason and the Christian paradigm-—destroys freedom of religion for an imagined “right” to demean and debase other human beings is disgusting, destructive and force people to claim the Bible “Hate speech”.
Scalia-—you must know the quote of all the Founding Fathers and all philosophers prior to John Austin and Bentham-—who stated that Virtue was a fundamental necessity to Freedom and a Republic. Sodomy can NOT be good-—just because a majority vote it to be so. We have our Rights from God-—not Barney Frank——His standards are at the basis of ALL OUR RIGHTS and sodomy is NOT a RIGHT. Wake up.
If you wrote a contract, wouldn’t you want it enforced per its original meaning? You certainly wouldn’t want the other party to modify it at will, would you? Well, the US Constitution is a contract between We the People and the federal government. It even contains an agreement on how it can be modified by mutual consent. It could even be rewritten to include whatever the left wants if they can convince enough people. That’s too difficult of course. It’s far easier to simply reinterpret the contract to mean whatever one wants. The left, unfortunately, has a big advantage here, because the right wants to hold to the original contract, while the left wants to expand it.
I defy him to find any historical documentation that would support that. There are reams of documents that support the originalist view.
Some phrases in the Constitution, such as “cruel and unusual” criminal punishment, are too broad to be interpreted as a specific permanent rule that does not allow for interpretation, critics of originalism say.
So sometimes it would alright to use cruel and unusual punishments? Sounds like a liberal's mind.
Only if you're an idiot and deliberately ignore the IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING Tenth Amendment, which categorically limits all other legal "innovations" to the states unless their boosters can get a new Amendment added.
Scalia is right, the United States Constitution is the law of the land, by which all other laws are ultimately derived from, and must be abided by. The language of the Constitution is very clear about this, except to those who want to try to make an end run around it.
It was meant to be flexible and adaptive. That's why Article V was included.
Article V - AmendmentTwo thirds of each house of Congress and more than half of the legislators in three quarters of the states is a lot higher bar than five lifetime political appointees.The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
The original (pre-14th) Constitution is itself dependent upon a spiritual premise - that of the definition of a human being as created innately free by God.
So the Constitution isn't the "start" of American legal theory - it is a derivative effect of a legal logic which stems from that original spiritual premise.
That is why the imposition of administrative law via the 14th is fundamentally indefensible, because it imposes a government-created-and-controlled "corporate existence" upon these free people, and even worse, fraudulently and brazenly declares its power to do so as derived from a document which is based on the acknowledgement of fundamental human freedom.
The 14th Amendment, and all it's associated law, is therefore an abomination to the original Constitution, and thus has no derivative validity. It is imposed by force and fraud alone, by people who are quite knowledgeable about that fact, but who are also quite content with it, and even determined to expand its application as much as possible.
That's just the flat-out truth, depressing though it may be. What's even more depressing, though, is that so few people are interested in how the whole thing works. It literally doesn't matter if the details are openly published - if they even bother to do anything, Americans just shrug and move along.
This endemic indifference to the legal mechanisms which bind us, IMHO, is the root of what is harming America - not particular political or religious differences. And though it is heavily rewarded by all the power factions, that really is not the reason it is so universally enacted. Rather, people are failing a spiritual test on their own personal decision, a turning away from what they know they should apply themselves to. And this applies to both the elite and the plebes.
It's crazy. it;s like a watching a bus full of people careening down the highway, and no one wants to drive, but rather they fight over the seating and the snacks.
/end sermon
Bump for later reading
The Supreme Court nominees - the biggest reason to oust Obama on November 6, 2012.
Both Silberman and Sutton cited Scalia’s opinion in 2005 upholding strict federal regulation of marijuana in the case of Angel Raich, a Californian who used home-grown marijuana to relieve her pain. “If Congress could regulate Angel Raich when she grew marijuana on her property for self-consumption,” Sutton wrote, “it is difficult to say Congress may not regulate the 50 million Americans who self-finance their medical care.”
http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?a=rp&m=b&postId=1165037.