[tomder55]

It's a strawman. Santorum specifically referenced a SCOTUS decision that overturned a STATE law(Griswold v. Connecticut ). He was clearly making a States power case.
ABC's Clintonista George Stephanopoulos tried to pidgeon hole Romney with that line of questioning and he correctly pointed out that there was zero states that are trying to outlaw contraception. Romney correctly panned the question as silly.. and it is .

[speechlesstx]

Stephanopoulos raised the issue in the debate with Mitt Romney and gave Santorum credit for not recommending states ban contraception. The candidates said it wasn't an issue, Georgie is the one who pressed it, and pressed it and pressed it.

ROMNEY: Should this be done in the case -- this case to allow states to ban contraception? No. States don’t want to ban contraception. So why would we try and put it in the Constitution?

With regards to gay marriage, I’ve told you, that’s when I would amend the Constitution. Contraception, it’s working just fine, just leave it alone.

NO, I don't think it was a viable line of questioning, I think it was an attempt to make the candidates look foolish. It didn't work.

[tomder55]

Anyone who is concerned about this should not be concerned about what Santorum would do except perhaps the question of who he would appoint as judges. As we all know ,judicial fiat is the preferred method of social change for progressives.

[excon]

As we all know ,judicial fiat is the prefered method of social change for progressives.

Hello again, tom:

Knowing that that's exactly what President Santorum will do, you STILL have the balls to diss Democrats for doing it. I didn't think you were THAT one way.

excon

[talaniman]

Its okay for conservatives to engineer social change through the judiciary, but not progressives??

So how are you liking "corporations are people too"?

[tomder55]

Tal ,that's the 1st amendment for you .I know you guys don't like it so much unless you can limit the free exercise clause.

No Ex ,Santorum would appoint judges who are originalists . He would not appoint judges who decide what rights are based on the penumbras of the hidden words in the Constitution.

[excon]

No Ex ,Santorum would appoint judges who are originalists .

Hello again, tom:

And, they would set out right what's wrong by judicial FIAT.

excon

[tomder55]

What they wouldn't do is divine rights out of whole cloth ;and then overturn the laws of the states that the people's representatives made , based on these rights that the judges found in the hidden meaning of the words of the Constitution .

[talaniman]

Sorry Tom, I forget its okay if the right does it, but no one else. Forgive me please!!

Just like a mandate is a great idea when repubs want it, but when Obama wants it, its crap. Like Sotomayer excusing herself from the decision to come because she argued the case as an GC, but Thomas can't even though his wife is employed by the other side of the case. What a farce. Another righty snow job, just like the primaries. Just like Santorums BLAH people.

[tomder55]

I think you mean Kagan .

I don't make a big deal about recusals because there are no firm rules on them. But here is one thought. Kagan orgasmically whoooped for joy when Obamacare was passed . As solicitor General she was intimately involved in the process of getting it passed.
She was involved at a supervisory level with strategizing to defend this law. One could argue that it is a conflict of interest for her to now be making judicial decisions on laws she was involved in creating .

Ginnie Thomas on the other hand is a lobbyist for a tea party affiliated group. I don't see any comparable conflict of interest for Justice Thomas. Now if Ginnie Thomas was involved in her work with filing an amicus brief related to the case then of course Justice Thomas should recuse himself . But that is not the case.

The truth of the matter is that the left knows there is probably a legitimate reason for Kagan to recuse herself ;so they are making a bogus claim about Thomas to try and even the score.

My best guess is that Obamacare will be declared constitutional even though the mandate is clearly unconstitutional.
As ususal the left's claim of expansive powers of the Federal government can be found in their broad interpretation of the commerce clause to include all manners of human activity ;and the 'necessary and proper 'clause and the power of Congress to tax endlessly for any justification it finds in the 'best interest ' of the nation.
The die was cast in this case in the recent circuit court opinion by Judge Laurence Silberman.

Silberman concluded that courts should show great deference to legislation passed by Congress, so long as such laws are designed to address “national problems" that the courts should “presume” that when Congress acts, it does so constitutionally.

It is nonsense of course ;but , he is held in high esteem in conservative circles and I suspect some of the conservatives on SCOTUS will buy his argument. I don't think one or two recusals will change that.

[paraclete]

Well what do you know a judge who doesn't want to rewrite the constitution

[paraclete]

I just love the comments of Peter Wreith, perhaps the most right wing politician in Australian history. The Australian people don't want to have something vague put in the Constitution, they want the Parliament to make the decisions and the courts to throw it out, they don't want something wishy washy put there forever. The Australian Constitution has only been altered nine times.

[TUT317]

Silberman concluded that courts should show great deference to legislation passed by Congress, so long as such laws are designed to address “national problems" that the courts should “presume” that when Congress acts, it does so constitutionally.

It is nonsense of course ;but , he is held in high esteem in conservative circles and I suspect some of the conservatives on SCOTUS will buy his argument. I don't think one or two recusals will change that.

Hi Tom,

I think this is a sign of the times. Very few people will 'buy' original intent because it is nearly always impossible to determine original intent. In the vast majority or cases original intent can mean what ever you choose it to mean.

As you point out the progressives on the other hand will pick words that can be interpreted in a variety of ways and use that to claim the constitution is a flexible document.

The only other alternative I see is a claim to historical language(for the want of a better term). It is of course possible to claim with a reasonable degree of certainty that words used in the historical context of 1700 had a definable meaning. The problem is that we are not living in the 1700's. Perhaps we would be better off if we were, but we're not.


Tut

[tomder55]

I won't quibble over the difference between historical language and intent. The fact is that there are copious amts of supporting documents to determine intent.

If you look at the language of a series of decisions by SCOTUS you will see that beginning with a case before Griswold ,and a couple after ,the justices cleverly added words in their decisions that were seen as a 'precedent' for advancing an ultimate goal that came to fruition in the 'Roe v Wade' abortion case the launched the Great American genocide. In all these cases Planned Parenthood ,an organization that makes it's living killing babies and dispensing contraception,was intimately involved .

[TUT317]

I won't quibble over the difference between historical language and intent. The fact is that there are copious amts of supporting documents to determine intent.

If you look at the language of a series of decisions by SCOTUS you will see that beginning with a case before Griswold ,and a couple after ,the justices cleverly added words in their decisions that were seen as a 'precedent' for advancing an ultimate goal that came to fruition in the 'Roe v Wade' abortion case the launched the Great American genocide. In all these cases Planned Parenthood ,an organization that makes it's living killing babies and dispensing contraception,was intimately involved .

What you have said is not relevant to my position.This is because I didn't put forward for any position here. I was pointing out the arguments. You should have stuck to supplying the supporting documents. This was the issue at hand.

If you are suggesting that ,a few words interpreted here and a few words added there have resulted in genocide then I am in agreement with you.

Just for the record I am against abortion.

But again, abortion was not the issue. What have you got to support original intent?

Tut

[tomder55]

The so called right to privacy was not something the people were demanding ;nor was it implied in any of the amendments except where it specifically banned the government from acting (ie the 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches .Just that wording alone is more than enough proof that the founders didn't think there was a right to privacy.)
Nor was the "people" demanding such a right. There was at best a very few people in Connecticut that objected to the laws of the state regarding contraception. It was Planned Parenthood that twice concocted court cases in conjunction with the ACLU . Their amicus in the 'Poe' case provided the ,language for the majority opinion ;and it was 1st introduced by a dissenting opionion in 'Poe v. Ullman'.
Melvin L. Wulf, a lawyer for the ACLU claims credit for first raising the idea .
He later explained his strategery:
Judges dislike breaking entirely new ground. If they are considering adopting a novel principle, they prefer to rest their decision on earlier law if they can, and to show that the present case involves merely an incremental change, not a wholesale break with the past. Constitutional litigators are forever trying to persuade courts that the result they are seeking would be just a short step from some other case whose decision rests soundly on ancient precedent.

Since the issue of sexual privacy had not been raised in any earlier case, we employed the familiar technique of argument by analogy: If there is no exact counterpart to the particular case before the Court, there are others that resemble it in a general sort of way, and the principles applied in the similar cases should also be applied — perhaps even extended a little bit — to the new case.

In other words they make it up as they go along giving the judges the cover to move the ball along to their ultimate objective of changing the constitution while pretending to uphold it.

Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority in the Griswold case that the right was to be found in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of other constitutional protections.

Now you talk of clear language ? What the hell was that supposed to mean ? A penumbra is an term describing the partial shadow in an eclipse or the edge of a sunspot . Emanation is a scientific term for gas made from radioactive decay . Somehow he managed to twist the language to make it mean that there are hidden meanings in the words of the Constitution .
In concuring opinions Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a Ninth Amendment justification for the decision .Justice John Marshall Harlan II and Justice Byron White wrote that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
With this twisting of the language and the constitution ,any state ,disregarding what the people's representatives passed (so much for the phony 9th amendment justificiation) ,was forced to end any restrictions on the sale of contraceptives.

Justice Hugo Black,hit the nail on the head in his dissent.He attacked the way Douglas had turned constitutional law into semantics by replacing the language of actual rights with the phrase “right to privacy.” He wrote, “The Court talks about a constitutional 'right of privacy' as though there is some constitutional provision or provisions forbidding any law ever to be passed which might abridge the 'privacy' of individuals. But there is not. There are, of course, guarantees in certain specific constitutional provisions which are designed in part to protect privacy at certain times and places with respect to certain activities".....

“I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision."

It gets better... this case was used as the 'precedent' (in the same playbook as the Melvin L. Wulf strategery ) to advance the cause of the right to an abortion.
In Eisenstadt v. Baird Justice William Brennan added this new expansion .
“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”
Moving the ball along.
From that it wasn't hard to conclude that the decision whether to bear or beget a child would include the right to snuff out the life of the baby .

I'll throw the argument back to you . You cannot find plain language in the Constitution ;the 4th ,9th ,14th whatever that justifies the taking of innocent human life under any circumstances let alone the convoluted rationale as the "right to privacy" .

[talaniman]

Keep it simple, a judge deciding the case of his spouses boss STINKS.

Make whatever argument in any languge you want! It don't look good, and like a fix to me!

You must be holding your nose not to smell what the court is cooking! Like the fox telling the farmer, "I will guard your chickens"!

[tomder55]

Tal ,I don't write the ethics laws. Since there doesn't seem to be anything that compels Kagan to recuse then I have no problem with Thomas sitting in on the decision.
Don't worry . For reasons already stated ,I don't see the court overturning the law that will put the final nail into the country's coffin.

[talaniman]

Your gloom and doom at a changing world is so noted. The guys on the right running for president scare me the same way.

[tomder55]

Lol... have you checked out the new Chief of Staff Jack Lew??

He's a bankster!! Lololol He was chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments in 2008 . That group was involved in proprietary trading, and was involved in shorting the housing market as the bubble burts!!

The President just screwed up his whole campaign message.