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Don’t be so sure. I agree that conservtives are looking for a fight, but Bush refuses to give us one. He nominated Roberts who no reasonable person could dislike (witness the large # of votes against him, though, for an indication of who a reasonable person is and isn’t) then he gave us Harriet Miers, a crony with no background in Con Law, etc. Now we have Alito who, for all of his attributes, wouldn’t be my first choice. For some reason, Bush is scared of a fight over the bench. It makes no sense to me. Those who are going to oppose and be contrary are going to be that way no matter what, so why not at least appease your supporters and get another Scalia or Thomas (or even Rehnquist) on there?
When Rehnquist died, he should have nominated Scalia for Chief Justice. The collective pop of liberal heads exploding all over the country would have been music to my ears.Bork’s nomination certainly ushered in a new era of insanity in the SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process, and the template remains much the same to this day: When a Republican nominates someone, scream bloody murder, get your interest groups mobilized to make up lies and smear the nominee, distort their positions, cry about them “rolling back” cherished “liberties” (read: abortion) etc. etc.
Bork's nomination proved that the base of liberal voters has a high tolerance for the absurd and vicious and will support the Ted Kennedy's and John Kerry's no matter what they do to a nominee. This only emboldened them and made sure we got more of the same in the future. It's sad really.Bork should have been confirmed. It was the height of pettiness and self -absorption by the Democrats that prevented it.
I don't know much about Burger so I'm reserving judgment until I have time to study him or at the very least read some of his decisions.Napolean was a mixed bag to be sure. He was a megalomaniac with expansionist priorities, but to focus solely on that overlooks some of the ameliorating positive aspects of his tenure: the Napoleanic Code, the Continental System, his immense contributions to the study of war and combat, it was his expedition to Egypt that discovered the Rosetta stone, etc. He was no angel, but he was not Hitler either. Of the 4 million that died under his wars, it bears repeating that the overwhelming majority were soldiers, not civilians, the exact opposite of the pattern from WWII on under totalitarian systems.
As Gallophobic as I am, I'm willing to give the French Revolutionaries a bit of a break precisely because they were the first to experiment with what we term today to be social engineering and "rationalism." No one had tried it before, so where was the evidence that it would fail? Everyone that came after them (Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Islamic radicals) I am much harsher in judging because there was ample evidence of the flaws of their trying to reshape human nature.Not only capability, but metality. The 20th century is the first in man’s history that tried to replace religion with the worship of The System (in whatever form it took) and where no limit was placed on “means” so long as the “ends” were the establishment or maintenace of The System.
I couldn’t agree more. Thurgood Marshall was probably this century’s worst Justice.
I too agree with Thomas a little more often than I do Scalia, but for sheer pugnaciousness, brilliance, logic, brutality of argument and abrasiveness, Scalia gets my vote in this category.In terms of damage and pure madness/megalomania, aims, means, and lasting impact, it’s hard to aruge with Hitler for that title.
Though, Stalin is a close second (if not first) for many of the same reasons. Pol Pot should rank high on any list for the sheer breadth and pervasiveness of his social engineering schemes, and for killing over 1/3 of the population under his control (something no other dictator has accomplished--for Hilter to do the same, he would have had to have killed over 50 million people based on the population under his control at the height of the Third Reich.) Mao was an asshole of the first order, as was the Ayatollah Khomeini and Lenin himself, but the champ of all would still have to be Hitler or Stalin.
It's instructive that so many of the villians from "history" that come to mind when we think of that term are from the 20th century.Don,
I think we were talking at cross purposes. You were more focused on a trial court, while my concerns are more regarding appeals courts and the erroneous standards and reasonings that pop up there as a matter of policy and legal interpretation. This is a snippet from caedroia.org/blog that pretty much sums up my beliefs more articulately than I can right now:
The Supreme Court's job?the whole judiciary's job, in fact?is not to represent anyone. It's to apply the law as written to the facts of the controversies that are argued before them. That's it. There's no "black" meaning to the 3rd Amendment. There's no "feminist" reading of Admiralty law. There's no "hispanic" theory of tortious liability. There's reason, and the law, and that's about it. There is nothing at all about the judiciary that's representative. That's what we elect Senators, representatives, and to some extent, Presidents to do.
This is a microcosm of whole problem with the way the Left views the Courts. They view the Courts as another governing branch, which makes interest in "proper results" and "looking like America" and "making history" important to them. But the Judiciary is not a governing branch. At best, it's a referee for the real governing branches, the executive and the legislative.
Once you've bought into the idea that the Courts are there in some way to govern us, then you've already subscribed to a feeling of equanimity with tyranny. You've already become comfortable with the idea that a coterie of unelected lawyers who serve for life can become a sort of peerage?a legal nobility?who can legitimately direct our lives in any way they wish, whether we, the people, agree or not.
The really funny thing is that such an attitude is what's now known as "progressive" thinking.I call it “chronocentrism:” imputing modern values and conventions into previous historical epics because the author/moviemaker thinks they SHOULD have been there or judging the events of the past through the prism of contemporary experience rather than through the paradigm that existed at that time.
From all the evidence, it seems he attacked in 1941 because his quack doctor told him he might only have a few years to live (correct, bu not in the way he thought) and Hitler was a big believer in his destiny as Germany’s great leader. He seized the moment because he felt that to wait might endanger the whole project (when in fact it would have helped him) and because there had been on major campaign every year since 1939, and Hilter believed in momentum. Why wait another year and lose that momentum was part of his view.
I’m not much of an expert on Greek literature, but I think Star Wars could be fairly classified as a tragedy. A tragic character is someone who’s greatness or what have you is marred by his hubirs, ego, arrogance, and ultimately, humanity. Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the force (which he did, but not in the way everyone thought.) He essentially had to destroy both sides to give the Jedi a chance to return. He joined the dark side because of greed, lust for power, a misguided ambition, all the hallmarks of a classic tragic character.
As for the prophecy of Anakin, I think it bears a resemblance to the Oedipal prophecy: it was given, ,misunderstood, and untimately fulfilled, though in the least likely way possible. It's also similar in that destiny could not be avoided; no matter what anyone did, it came to pass.
As to Yoda, I think he might be the Oracle you spoke of, but I'll have to think about this a bit more.Don,
Morals are important, but right now I'd take an atheist who is faithful to the Constitution over a Bible-thumper who thought it was a "living document."
A judge's job is to apply the law, especially at the trial level but also at the appellate. The most important consideration is not how sympathetic a particular party is, how many amici briefs they have, how they frame an issue or anything else. The most important role for a judge is to APPLY THE LAW AS WRITTEN giving necessary deference to precedent if it comports with the language, intent, spirit, history and tradition of the Constitution.
At the trial level, a judge's decisions are certainly based on evidence and presentation because he has to decide the particular controversy in front of him, but most of the time his role is a "gate keeper" since most issues of facts will be decided by a jury, unless it's a bench trial (relatively rare, even in the federal system.) So the damage he can do is comparitively small precisely because his ability to set policy is limited.
But appeals courts, setting broader policies and more far-reaching decisions and precedents don't have to worry about issues of fact, since those will have been decided at the trial, i.e. by the time a case reaches appeal, they have the facts pretty much given to them. It is these courts that shouldn't (but unfortunately do) consider things like which way the political winds are blowing, what organizations filed briefs on behalf of this or that party and all the other things they routinely cite. They look at sociological studies to bolster their rulings and in general substitute their judgment for the judgment of the people, the legislature or a previous court. Such actions are abhorrent to a system that needs consistency and settled expectations and definitions of rights, powers and responsibilities. I have no doubt but that judges have ruled many times against the party that put on the better case in terms of evidence, presentation, argument, and policy simply because they did not like the law or the people who supported it. I know I could outargue a multitude of my classmates on any given issue and with any given set of facts, but that's not the litmus test for what the decision should be. The decision should rest on a consideration of "what does the law say and how does it relate reasonably and rationally to these facts?" The respective skill of a given side's attorney should be pretty much irrelevant to an honest judge.
Don't kid yourself. Judges know the law and don't need lawyers to explain it to them, at least on most issues, and to encourage them to decide a case based on which lawyer 's a better debater would be to encourage them to further abdicate their responsibilities to faithfully apply the law.
