That it was 5-4, is Scary!

Mottleydude said:
Absolutely. Don't take Dixie to seriously. When the courts make a decision he likes there defenders of liberty, when they make a decision he doesn't like, their damned activist judges.

You should have seen the absolutely hillarious dance on the pin of a head he did over the Kittzmiller vs City of Dover decision on Intelligent Design.
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First of all, you have no basis for your lies and misconceptions. You've made your mind up without reading a word I have said, and it is certainly your prerogative to do that. When the courts make ANY decision based on their personal political viewpoint and agenda, rather than the Constitution of the United States, it is Activism.

I have no idea what the Kittzmiller vs City of Dover decision was about, nor do I recall any dance on the head of any pin over it. I think you may be thinking of someone else, I have no idea of what you're talking about. In any event, that topic is not this topic, and I understand you just like to see if you can divert the topics you can't argue, so I will respond no further, if you want to talk about ID and Kittzmiller, you need to start a new thread.
 
Lets talk about Kittzmiler v. Dover... There is no rule that you must start a new thread is there?
 
Dixie said:
I think you and I are on the same page with gun rights, but I think you are missing a fundamental point about our current Supreme Court. The vote on whether individuals have the right to bear arms, was 5-4! Not 8-1 or 9-0, but 5-4!! Replace one originalist judge with another activist, and we would have essentially lost our 2nd Amendment rights as Americans! This is ALARMING to me, it doesn't appear to be as alarming to you.

The purpose of the Supreme Court should be to evaluate whether a case is proven on basis of the Constitution, and its originally intended and understood meanings. It is not their duty or charge to re-assign meaning to the works of our founding fathers in an attempt to change what is the law. Yet, that is precisely what they continue to do, and they don't legitimately have the authority to do. The SCOTUS is not given this authority in the Constitution, and We The People never gave them this right! We have a means to change our laws and legislate what The People wish, and it should not be left to 9 people in black robes to decide for us.

When people talk about what the Founding Fathers would laugh at, it would likely be the mere notion that we've allowed the SCOTUS to obtain such power and control. They would wonder why we bother with funding and paying for a Congress, or spend money on electing representatives. If we are going to cede our power to 9 people in black robes, why bother with all the cost of government, just abolish it!
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I fully under stand your complaint. If there had been 1 more justice on the gun-control side of the court, the focus of the decision would have been on the militia phrase, and not on the people phrase. We won, but we barely won. I am glad we won

There are times when SCOTUS pulls a decision out of their ass with respect to the Constitution. IMO, the opinion of the dissenting justices in the Heller case is not one of those examples.

You believe there is only one proper interpretation of the 2nd amendment, and you have multiple documents from the 1780s justifying your opinion.
However, the justices, too, hold that there is a different meaning, and you can bet they, too, have documents from the 1780s supporting their position. Believe it or not, during the discussions that took place over the composition and acceptance of the Bill of Rights, there were those who did NOT agree with including the right to keep and bear arms. And they, like those who defended the right, wrote their letters and made their speeches which were recorded in the minutes of the convention.

There were also those who did not agree with the freedom of religion. The debate of individual freedoms and how they apply to a constitutional republic are not new.

I, too believe the intent of the 2nd Amendment was to give the people the power to prevent our government from evolving into a totalitarian form. I believe this because most of the pro-rights advocates were also anti-federalists. They strongly mistrusted a strong federal government, and did everything in their ability to assure it never gets TOO strong. Much of their effort has been since bypassed resulting in a federal government far more powerful than they intended - or even what some of the federalists intended for that matter.... But some parts still remain. And the 2nd, regardless of how close the vote, just got a hell of a boost that will most likely remain in place for a long time to come, no matter what the balance of the court is in the future.

But regardless of my opinion, and regardless of the writings from the founders supporting my opinion, there are those who hold a different one, including SCOTUS justices. They too, have documents to support their opinion. I believe their opinion to be wrong, but they believe my opinion to be wrong. That is the way of our society. I spent a 40 year career defending the right to be wrong. I won't stop it now.

But in the end, the opinion we support did prevail. And it prevailed in a manner that will be VERY difficult to overturn. Be glad.
 
Should it be legal to shout "fire" in a crowded building when there is no fire?

Should it be legal to keep a howitzer in your front lawn?

There are limits to the "absolute" Amendments, where those limits are is for the S.Ct to decide. This is not about "activist" judges, thats just Con code for decisions they dont like.
 
I fully under stand your complaint. If there had been 1 more justice on the gun-control side of the court, the focus of the decision would have been on the militia phrase, and not on the people phrase. We won, but we barely won. I am glad we won

There are times when SCOTUS pulls a decision out of their ass with respect to the Constitution. IMO, the opinion of the dissenting justices in the Heller case is not one of those examples.

You believe there is only one proper interpretation of the 2nd amendment, and you have multiple documents from the 1780s justifying your opinion.
However, the justices, too, hold that there is a different meaning, and you can bet they, too, have documents from the 1780s supporting their position. Believe it or not, during the discussions that took place over the composition and acceptance of the Bill of Rights, there were those who did NOT agree with including the right to keep and bear arms. And they, like those who defended the right, wrote their letters and made their speeches which were recorded in the minutes of the convention.
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I can find no record from any of the founding fathers regarding the opinion of the dissenting view in Heller. In fact, to the contrary, almost every founding father was clear and on record in support of individual rights to bear arms. The Stephens dissent was based solely on a historic misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. There is no basis for it, that is what you fail to understand.

I am thankful it passed as well, but I think it was WAY too close for comfort. This was about the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms! Had the court gone the other way, which very easily could have happened, we would have effectively lost our Constitutional right to bear arms! Period, end of discussion! The system is not supposed to work that way! If we as a people decided to do away with the 2nd Amendment, that is one thing, the SCOTUS deciding it for us, is something entirely different. We have a major problem here, and it is regarding the scope and power of the SCOTUS.

Our founding fathers never intended our 2nd Amendment rights to be abridged, and they damn sure didn't intend an out of control activist Supreme Court to make those kind of rulings. We have a system of government, a means to pass legislation to determine what is and isn't law, it is not up to the Supreme Court to do this by judicial fiat. Yes, we won this one, but what about the next one? We shouldn't ever be put in the position of hoping we win the right to keep our Constitutional rights!
 
There are limits to the "absolute" Amendments, where those limits are is for the S.Ct to decide. This is not about "activist" judges, thats just Con code for decisions they dont like.
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And no one has EVER argued that we shouldn't have limits and restrictions on all our freedoms. In fact, if you bother to read my earlier posts, you will find that I am very receptive of modifications in conditions or regulations concerning firearms. The Heller case was not about a restriction or condition, it was about a municipal right to ban guns, and deny people their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights all together.

The Supreme Court is not authorized to decide what is best for us! That is not their fucking job! WE decide what is best for us! The Supreme Court merely determines if something meets the criteria of the Constitution or not, as it is written and intended by the framers, and not some convoluted interpretation they came up with to promote an agenda. I fully understand your mush-brain attitude about this, because you are a flaming liberal and you get a kick out of the SCOTUS fucking over our rights for now, but just you wait fucktard, one of these days the out of control court is going to take away your rights and you will be forced to accept it because you were too stupid to see it coming.
 
Dixie said:
I can find no record from any of the founding fathers regarding the opinion of the dissenting view in Heller. In fact, to the contrary, almost every founding father was clear and on record in support of individual rights to bear arms. The Stephens dissent was based solely on a historic misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment. There is no basis for it, that is what you fail to understand.

I am thankful it passed as well, but I think it was WAY too close for comfort. This was about the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms! Had the court gone the other way, which very easily could have happened, we would have effectively lost our Constitutional right to bear arms! Period, end of discussion! The system is not supposed to work that way! If we as a people decided to do away with the 2nd Amendment, that is one thing, the SCOTUS deciding it for us, is something entirely different. We have a major problem here, and it is regarding the scope and power of the SCOTUS.

Our founding fathers never intended our 2nd Amendment rights to be abridged, and they damn sure didn't intend an out of control activist Supreme Court to make those kind of rulings. We have a system of government, a means to pass legislation to determine what is and isn't law, it is not up to the Supreme Court to do this by judicial fiat. Yes, we won this one, but what about the next one? We shouldn't ever be put in the position of hoping we win the right to keep our Constitutional rights!
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You need to look deeper if you cannot find any dissenting opinion to any of the Bill of Rights. They were definitely there, and were definitely expressed. There were 74 assigned delegates, 55 of whom attended and debated at the constitutional convention. Then there were the debates at the state level during the ratification of the Constitution. Several hundred people were involved with those debates. Add to that the fact the the Bill of Rights was added afterward under pressure from dissenting states, and then add in the debates at the state level to ratify the Bill of rights, and you have a couple thousand politicians involved in debating what rights should be enumerated and guaranteed for the people. With that many people involved you can bet there were varying opinions, especially coming from the Madison group who were the prime movers in creating a more powerful federal government in the first place. Want to see dissenting opinions for the Bill of rights, look to some of the state ratification debates.

Again, the call for the Bill of Rights came primarily from the anti-federalists. Most of them did not want the Constitution in the first place. For them the Articles of Confederation were enough. But the anti-federalists were in the minority. (Otherwise the Constitution never would have flown.) Opposing the addition of the Bill of Rights were the federalists, led by Madison, who, during the debates over the Bill of Rights actually ended up taking the more moderate view from those expressed by the federalists.

You say there is only one interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. And though I agree with the interpretation you propose as the "only" one, I also acknowledge that there are other opinions out there which are not automatically invalid simply because I disagree with them. The view the the right of the people to keep and bear arms should be severely limited if not excluded goes all the way back to the ratification of the Bill of Rights. I do not view those justices who still focus on the militia phrase as "activist", since the militia phrase argument has been prevalent for a LONG time. Things would be a lot simpler if the 2nd simply read "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The reference to militia was included for a reason. That reason is NOT what the anti-gun factions claim, but none the less, it was included for a reason. And it is valid to debate what that reason was, and even valid for SCOTUS justices to rule according to their views on that debate.

But the bottom line is the 2nd amendment did win out over the totalitarians. And it did so in a way that will be extremely difficult to revisit anytime in the near future. The interpretation that the 2nd amendment is intended as an individual right of citizens is on the books for a long time to come. The 4th also won a round in recent weeks.
 
Goodluck, what does the losing side of a 200-year old argument have to do with the 2nd Amendment and this case? Go find me some viewpoint from ANY founding father, which contradicts our fundamental right as individuals to bear arms! You won't find it because it doesn't exist! There were those who favored more restrictions or limits than others, there were those who felt it wasn't necessary to enumerate the right as the federal government, but no one believed you didn't have the right to bear arms. NO ONE!

The only interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that should matter is the one ratified by the states and established as part of our Bill of Rights! Misinterpretations which may have been contrary to the argument 200 years ago, do not matter. What you are trying to do is practice Compassionate Conservatism, and you will get your clock cleaned. You can't cede our rights away to the Supreme Court because you are too afraid to make a stand because your liberal friends may not like you anymore!

I am not reassured by your confidence that our Constitutional rights are "safe" for a long time to come! We escaped having our 2nd Amendment rights vanquished forever, by one measly vote! If we don't get control of the SCOTUS, we are in huge trouble as a nation, we simply don't have any rights that are sacred.
 
Dixie said:
First of all, you have no basis for your lies and misconceptions. You've made your mind up without reading a word I have said, and it is certainly your prerogative to do that. When the courts make ANY decision based on their personal political viewpoint and agenda, rather than the Constitution of the United States, it is Activism.
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And, of course, every time the courts are making a decision Dix doesn't like, they are making it base don their own personal political viewpoint and agenda, and if they make a decision Dix likes, they are basing it on the Constitution of the United States.
 
Dixie said:
Goodluck, what does the losing side of a 200-year old argument have to do with the 2nd Amendment and this case? Go find me some viewpoint from ANY founding father, which contradicts our fundamental right as individuals to bear arms! You won't find it because it doesn't exist! There were those who favored more restrictions or limits than others, there were those who felt it wasn't necessary to enumerate the right as the federal government, but no one believed you didn't have the right to bear arms. NO ONE!

The only interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that should matter is the one ratified by the states and established as part of our Bill of Rights! Misinterpretations which may have been contrary to the argument 200 years ago, do not matter. What you are trying to do is practice Compassionate Conservatism, and you will get your clock cleaned. You can't cede our rights away to the Supreme Court because you are too afraid to make a stand because your liberal friends may not like you anymore!

I am not reassured by your confidence that our Constitutional rights are "safe" for a long time to come! We escaped having our 2nd Amendment rights vanquished forever, by one measly vote! If we don't get control of the SCOTUS, we are in huge trouble as a nation, we simply don't have any rights that are sacred.
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Well if you want to assure that SCOTUS continues with an originalist majority, then hard core right conservatives need to quit electing and supporting assholes like GW Bush. (and then come out with McCain as the follow-up) I don't know if you have come to the realization yet or not, but the current ass in the WH has done more damage to the conservative movement that started under Reagan and got a good foothold while Clinton was in office, than the far left liberals could possibly imagine accomplishing in their wildest wet dreams.

I may be mistaken, but it seems that you continue to support Bush and his idiot policies. Not admitting to failure is not going to do the conservative movement much good if it comes to supporting future agendas based on them. At least not for a while. (Gotta wait 32 years for people to forget.)

By moving too far to the right, the republican party has opened the door for the extreme left, who will reintroduce their failed policies whose effect no one under 50 remembers very clearly, and no one under 30 was affected by. Since few remember, and since both parties continue to slide outward toward their respective extremes, we will get relive the effects of moving too far to the left for a while, until the people tire of that and move back too far to the right again.

We DO have a problem, though I do not see the 5-4 vote as a symptom. What I do see is more extremists of both flavors ending up on the bench in cyclic patterns according to which party has fucked up most recently and lost favor with the people. Like you said, right extremist justices may gut the 4th, 5th and 9th amendments given a chance. Left extremists will gut the 1st, 2nd and 10th.

Want a REAL originalist SCOTUS that will remain that way over a long period of time? Then it is time people like yourself dump the extremes of party politics and start looking for and supporting moderates of BOTH political parties.

I admit I had to be dumped by the democrats to truly wake up to where party politics is headed. But then, I was dumped because I wanted us (them) to move along a more moderate path than the party was moving toward.
 
Contrary to what you think, I am not an extreme right winger, I am fairly moderate. The nation seems to be full of idiots like you who can't make up their mind whether they support Socialism or Democracy! You want to try and take these idiotic positions in the middle and for most of the arguments between Socialism and Democracy, there is no freakin' middle!

Now, this moderate middle of the road, 'reasoned thinker' approach you are taking, it sounds very nice and non-threatening to the liberals, so they will all pat you on the back and make you feel like you are such a big man for blasting Bush and being a Maverick like McCain, but the nature of the liberals game is incrementalism. A little chip here, a little chip there, and viola, we have a Socialist nation one day, while you sit around with your thumb up your ass trying to be Mr. Nice Guy to them!

The only possible hope our SCOTUS maintains originalist judges is with a McCain presidency, and THEN it's not a guarantee... that bastard would nominate Hillary to get the Libs to praise him... come to think of it, he's just like you! But we already know what kind of ACLU Pro-Abortion lunatic we will get from Obama, so we have to hope there is a chance with McCain.
 
Dixie said:
Contrary to what you think, I am not an extreme right winger, I am fairly moderate. The nation seems to be full of idiots like you who can't make up their mind whether they support Socialism or Democracy! You want to try and take these idiotic positions in the middle and for most of the arguments between Socialism and Democracy, there is no freakin' middle!

Now, this moderate middle of the road, 'reasoned thinker' approach you are taking, it sounds very nice and non-threatening to the liberals, so they will all pat you on the back and make you feel like you are such a big man for blasting Bush and being a Maverick like McCain, but the nature of the liberals game is incrementalism. A little chip here, a little chip there, and viola, we have a Socialist nation one day, while you sit around with your thumb up your ass trying to be Mr. Nice Guy to them!

The only possible hope our SCOTUS maintains originalist judges is with a McCain presidency, and THEN it's not a guarantee... that bastard would nominate Hillary to get the Libs to praise him... come to think of it, he's just like you! But we already know what kind of ACLU Pro-Abortion lunatic we will get from Obama, so we have to hope there is a chance with McCain.
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Dixie, socialism and democracy aren't incompatible (that's like saying the free market and democracy are incompatible), and it's absolutely ludicrous that you are calling Good Luck a socialist.

Why isn't there a middle of the road?

Oh Christ.

I'm going to get 10 paragraphs per each word.
 
Waterhead, Socialism is not compatible with Capitalist Democracy. And I never called GoodLuck anything, much less a Socialist. You need some reading comprehension lessons, seriously!

There is no middle of the road because the issues all have a Socialist or Capitalist solution. There is simply no way to combine both and expect a viable solution, and in most cases it will only compound the problem.
 
Dixie said:
Exactly, but all three powers have a different function. We've allowed the Judiciary to assume the role of the Legislature. I have no problem with a Supreme Court which functions as it should, there is a place in the system for the Judicial branch. I hope my comments didn't lead you to think I advocate disbanding the SCOTUS or something, because it certainly wasn't the point intended.
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I did think that actually so that's good to get it clarified. But do you think the Supreme Court should be permitted to interpret the Constitution and be able to declare legislation unconstitutional?
 
Socialism can operate with democracy or without it. Capitalism can operate with democracy or without it. The economic machines just grind on, they're just concepts, they're not sentient and they're not products of a political process.
 
Watermark said:
Before responding to this post I laughed for a whole ten minutes.
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Laugh all you like, you are so far left you've gone around and are now in danger of being an extreme right-winger from the back side. When I take those stupid libertarian tests to show you how libertarian you are, it always pegs me in the centrist, moderate, middle of the road area. I'm not out there with Winston Churchill or Gandhi, I am dead center in the middle of the graph. I tend to lean right on economics, and I am pro-life. That doesn't make me an extremist, it makes me average and normal for an American.

I know some extremists, and they scare me. I prefer people like my uncle, who think pragmatically about things, and use good judgement in their decisions and choices, as well as their views. I admire people like my sister, who keep an open mind to all sides of an issue, and tries to see some value in your opinion even when she sticks to her principles and disagrees with it. I don't expect society to live by my standards or rules, I simply want all people to have a say. Liberals wouldn't dare put this question to a popular vote, or any Liberal question of the day! You want to invoke these changes on our society without giving the people a voice in the matter, through judicial fiat.

No, I am not an extremist at all, but you are. The worst kind.
 
Diuretic said:
I did think that actually so that's good to get it clarified. But do you think the Supreme Court should be permitted to interpret the Constitution and be able to declare legislation unconstitutional?
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Originalist is the word most commonly used to describe my belief in interpretation regarding the Constitution. I think our Founding Fathers spent an enormous amount of time to get it right, and their thoughts and views on the matters were well documented. To attempt assigning different meanings to things they phrased a certain way in 1760, is not the definition of "interpret" as far as I am concerned. I was appalled at the 5-4 decision precisely because the dissenting view of Justice Stephens was missing any substantive documentation from any of the founding fathers, and relied on a mere "historic belief" in what the 2nd Amendment intended to mean. It was the most absurd dissenting argument I think I have ever read, and it emphasises the point being made in the Originalist vs. Activist judges debate.
 
Diuretic said:
Socialism can operate with democracy or without it. Capitalism can operate with democracy or without it. The economic machines just grind on, they're just concepts, they're not sentient and they're not products of a political process.
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Socialism does not play well with Democracy. Socialist systems generally require authoritarian control by the state, since the state is the provider of all social needs. This power can be hard to maintain in a democracy, which is why you see very few true socialist democracies. It is inherently impossible for Socialism to flourish in a Capitalist Democracy, as Capitalism is the direct opposite of Socialism.
 
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