Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Critics and defenders of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown attacked each other Wednesday....Prominent blacks charged President Bush deliberately chose a conservative black woman so it would be harder for senators to vote against her. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/06/03]
Comments WSJ's Taranto: "Having long ago achieved the indisputably noble goal of ensuring that America lives up to the promise of equal justice under the law for all citizens regardless of race, the civil rights movement turned to the more dubious pursuit of 'affirmative action.' Now, however, they are complaining that blacks receive favorable treatment."
Nov 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Yahoo News:Breaking with most of his Democratic rivals, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark said Tuesday he favors amending the Constitution to ban flag burning.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
I wrote the following letter to the editor of the New York Sun:In your editorial ["Moore's Next Move," Nov. 14, 2003], you write: "No one can dispute that the Ten Commandments are fundamental to Alabama¹s and our nation¹s law and government." Yet the Ten Commandments had existed for millennia before anything like the Constitution was envisioned, and for good reason. America is a product of the Enlightenment, until then the most secular era in history and the one that overthrew religion's hold on politics. John Locke and Enlightenment intellectuals insisted on basing law upon the empirical observation of human nature, not on divine revelations. American government rests on a view of man as sovereign and independent, with the law protecting his freedom from religious authority and his right to pursue his own self-interest. The view that the Ten Commandments undergirds our law and government is simply false.
Recommended Reading: The Ten Commandments vs. America, America: Under Rights or "Under God"? and Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Against FreedomNov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Randy Barnett is a libertarian, but he makes some excellent points about how judicial philosophy is relevant to choosing justices in the NYSun:"Judicial liberals" are willing to ignore the Constitution when it leads to political results they find objectionable. That is why they place so high a premium on whether a particular nominees favor the outcomes of certain hand-picked cases, and why they lambaste any effort by the Rehnquist Court to hold Congress to its enumerated powers as "activist," notwithstanding that this is clearly required by the Constitution....
Some Republicans, on the other hand, are quite willing to ignore portions of the Constitution they find objectionable. The Ninth Amendment specifies that: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People." The 14th Amendment says that: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Both of these provisions authorize the judicial protection of unenumerated liberty rights. "Judicial conservatives" would have judges disregard them....
...senators ought to vote to confirm candidates nominated by the other party whom they believe have the required intelligence and ability to do the job of judges, and whose judicial philosophy is to follow the dictates of the Constitution, even where it cuts against a nominee's political inclinations. Those unwilling to do so lack "judicial virtue" and are unqualified. But more than this the opposing party cannot expect....
That no judge should ignore the Constitution when doing so suits their ideological agenda is a philosophy all nominees must accept. So must all senators. For they too have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and not just the parts that, for the moment at least, lead to results they happen to like.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK Telegraph:[With regard to problems of harmonization, European Commission president] Prodi cared about one thing only: tax harmonisation. "Can you imagine," he asked with astonishment, "what would happen if Estonia decided it would have zero tax? All the business in the EU would go and locate in Estonia!!"
The bureaucrats know full well they represent the forces of destruction; they just don't care.
Nov 15, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
James Taranto points out that librarians are all against restricting "offensive" speech through the use of porn filters, but then again there are some people whose "offensive" views even they won't allow in their libraries:It seems that a local charity asked Addie Ciannella, the head public librarian in Haverford Township, Pa., to put what she characterizes as a "symbol" on display in the library. She nixed the idea on the ground that the symbol might offend some people. Here's her explanation, in a letter to library trustees quoted by columnist Gil Spencer:
"It was a rather awkward situation" but she didn't feel as if she had much of a choice given her "professional opinion" which is "the library (any public library) is a place for all people of all beliefs, backgrounds, etc. Symbols can send a message of unwelcome philosophical orientation, expectations of others, and can produce ill will and even fear. I know we are an adjunct of the government but we are not the (township) or county or other government...." [Daily Times]
And what was this symbol that was so threatening to certain Haverfordians that it could not be displayed at the library? The American flag.
