Justice Roberts Gets it Right
March 12, 2010
Scene at State of the Union Very Troubling
Barack Obama is the second Democrat president in a row to fail to understand the appropriate dignity and decorum required of the office of the Presidency. There are things you just don’t do and say, out-of-bounds and inappropriate, and it was altogether wrong for the President to call out the Supreme Court merely because he didn’t like one of their rulings. Chief Justice Roberts is to be applauded for saying what he did (a couple months after the fact, by the way, and only in response to a question). I’d be tempted, were I in his shoes, to skip that dog-and-pony show when next January rolls around.
Constitution Schmonstitution
November 9, 2009
So the U.S. House passed the monstrous Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 (if that’s not an Orwellian name, there has never been one). Of course it’s an awful bill; of course it places in the hands of our utterly inept federal government and its bureaucratic wonks a level of oversight that is far, far beyond their capacity to administer; of course it will push us further down the path toward economic catastrophe. But beyond this, it further illustrates the fact that the Constitution of the United States matters not at all to liberals, except of course in one instance: let someone perceived as a “conservative”, or a Republican, play fast-and-loose with it (in a way that said liberals can’t stomach), and the self-righteous liberals will scream bloody Jeffersonian murder. And the frank fact of the matter, of course, is that a whole lot of Republicans don’t themselves really give a rip about the Constitution either.
Bob Barr illustrates all of this well in today’s column in the AJC. For Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller, to name two mentioned in Barr’s column, the Constitution is a joke.
Can anarchy–or totalitarianism–be too far distant, when we’ve divorced ourselves increasingly from any notion that the law matters?
Uganda’s Terrible, Deadly War against Homosexuals
November 2, 2009
Evangelical Christians have a difficult time, sometimes, knowing where to come down on the subject of homosexuality. When I was back in my old stomping ground of Grove City recently, my successor at Fellowship Community Church, Pastor David Harstine, delivered an exceptional message dealing with the subject, noting correctly that professing Christians typically fall off the beam on either the side of accepting/justifying homosexual behavior–which the Bible clearly labels sinful–on the one hand, and on the other, hating the sinner as well as hating the sin. Neither approach, it ought to go without saying, is Biblically-faithful.
One way we as evangelicals might demonstrate true love to people–yes, to homosexuals–is to rally for legitimate rights and protections. Now, readers of this blog know that I do not believe that the radical redefinition of marriage (making “gay marriage” legal) falls under this category, and I’ve given my reasons in detail; I don’t care to turn this into a long discussion of such. But I supported (and still do, by the way) Bill Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” policy back when most conservatives and evangelicals were denouncing it. I believe that homosexuals ought to have the right to bequeath their property to whom they please and to have at their bedsides whomever they choose as well; this seems fundamentally right and fair.
Now, we have an opportunity as Christians to speak out against injustice toward homosexuals in the nation of Uganda. A terrible bill has been proposed in the Ugandan parliament, a bill that would in some cases even mean execution for homosexuals–and the sad thing is that the bill is drawing the support of professing evangelical Christians. This is clearly wrong, clearly unChristlike, and ought to be clearly and strongly opposed by believers everywhere.
Let me thus invite you to join a Facebook group that is seeking to combat this awful piece of legislation. It is entitled Speak out Against Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009–and if you are a Facebook member, it deserves your support. Let’s do the right thing, Christ-followers!
A Radical President Selects a Radical Judge
May 26, 2009
Raise your hand if you’re shocked.
So much for the whole “govern from the middle, build a consensus” baloney that we kept hearing during the campaign. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans believed that nonsense. We knew better–but now we’re stuck with him for 4 years (and with this “Justice” for who knows how many). Two silver linings? One, she replaces the awful David Souter, so it’s a wash in that sense, and two, they’re saying she’s pretty cantankerous and much more likely to be a loose cannon than to be a consensus builder, so hopefully she’ll not be very influential in leading others down her radical path.
Quick Political Catchup
May 2, 2009
Well, since I’ve been pretty much out of commission for several days, I thought I’d just voice a couple of political opinions.
1. Arlen the Wonder Senator has decided to switch parties. I lived in PA for 13 years, and Mr. Specter never received my vote, nor would he; the term RINO was coined with Arlen Specter in mind. He has always represented to me a lot of what is wrong with our government, and so there’s a big part of me that says, “good riddance”; his leaving is one more step toward clarifying the Republican Party’s mission (even though, as just about a full-fledged libertarian now, I’m not sure how relevant that fact is. Still, of course, of the two major parties, I’ll take the wimps over the Socialists.). Mr. Specter admitted that his move was almost entirely politically motivated; Pat Toomey was going to take him out in the Republican primary after he crossed the TARP Rubicon, and for the naked sake of his further political career, he decided to jump ship rather than have the Republican primary voters decide his fate. That’s just about exactly what you’d expect from this gutless wonder; after serving as a Republican senator for nearly thirty years, who better to decide his fate than the Republicans who supported his career for three decades? The downside, of course, is that in theory, the Democrats, once the Joke from Minnesota is seated, will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, though Specter may not be much more loyal a Dem than he was a Republican, and might vote with a filibuster if things go too far down the track (as, for that matter, might Democrats like Evan Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Kent Conrad, among others). But get ready for an interesting ride, and pray that there’s something left of our country to salvage by the time the 2010 and 2012 elections roll around.
2. Justice David Souter has decided to retire. “Good riddance” is definitely the term to use for this perfectly-awful Justice, one of the biggest mistakes of Bush I’s administration. If you remember, of course, in the highly-politicized world of the U.S. Senate, where the Democrat politicians have managed to turn every Republican president’s nominee’s confirmation hearings into a ridiculous circus, Bush wimped out and chose a guy whose judicial philosophy was almost totally unknown–and that fill-in-the-blank turned out to be another in a long line of folks for whom the written Constitution is a nice concept, but really pretty irrelevant to the actual matter at hand, that being social re-engineering according to the dictates of the contemporary (liberal) intelligentsia. It’s the whole “living Constitution” thing. I like the inestimable Robert Bork’s idea, that he has no problem with a “living Constitution”, but he has a massive problem with a wildly-mutating one–which is the exact vision that David Souter has for American jurisprudence.
Now, Comrade Obama has weighed in, and he pledges that he will name a Supreme Court justice who combines “empathy and understanding.” Great. As in other things, the man has no idea what he’s doing. “Empathy and understanding”? Please. I want that in my grandmother, but I couldn’t care less if the entire Supreme Court collectively underwent an empathotomy. Not a shred of “empathy” matters one whit when it comes to the task of serving as a justice, because it’s not one whit about the feelings of a particular Court member; it’s totally about one thing: what does the Constitution say (and then, how does it apply to a given case?)? Sure, people who take that approach may differ on the final answer to a given question, but when we inject bogus nonsense like “empathy” into the equation, we base our jurisprudence on the less-than-shaky foundation of sentiment.
And that, my friends, is a recipe for disaster.
3. Comrade Obama has instructed his top government dudes and dudettes to search high and low for 90 days and find a way to cut $100 million from the budget. Sound impressive? It’s a joke, an utter shell-game joke–as this wonderful video analogy, courtesy of my little buddy Don, illustrates:
Another Perspective on the Death Penalty
March 25, 2009
This from the AP:
After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation’s highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong. Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits. So an increasing number of them are considering abolishing capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of financial necessity. “It’s 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,” though most Americans believe the opposite, said Donald McCartin, a former California jurist known as “The Hanging Judge of Orange County” for sending nine men to death row. However, of the nine convicted killers McCartin sent to death row, only one has died—and not by execution, but from a heart attack in custody. “Every one of my cases is bogged up in the appellate system,” said McCartin, who retired in 1993 after 15 years on the bench. “It’s a waste of time and money. The only thing it does is prolong the agony of the victims’ families.” Death penalty trials are more expensive because they often require extra lawyers with specific experience requirements; security costs are higher; and evidence processing (such as DNA testing) is far more expensive than simple blood analyses.
I’m cool with doing away with the death penalty, for a variety of reasons, and this is just one more of them.
McCain/Feingold Takes a Hit (Thankfully)
June 25, 2007
More good news on the “thankfully at least GWB has put two people on the Supreme Court who actually believe that the Constitution is the law of the land” front:
Court Eases Rules on Political Advertising
Free speech: what a concept (a concept that threatens John McCain, Russ Feingold, and interestingly enough, Fred Thompson, quasi-conservative darling of the “conservatives” these days, who supported McCain/Feingold).
And another reason why, irrespective of GWB’s obvious mediocrity in most respects, it’s still a great, great thing that we didn’t elect John F. Kerry…
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
