Charlie Rose

writersblock25  11/12/2011 12:50 PM Report

Thank you for posting this, Charlie Rose, LLC.

robdverity  07/01/2010 04:24 PM Report

Here's a query for patriots to consider. As an atheist, six Catholics and three Jews is more than a full house - it's a bad draw. Reasoning and judgment are not among the virtues that come to mind with ANY religion, as they all require faith, which is code for supplanting the real with the surreal, which in turn requires APPLIED STUPID.

That aside, patriotism and loyalty is the real concern here. Neither can be divided long term. The pro-Israel, Zionist screeds emotively expressed in this forum makes one wonder - if push came to shove - where would their loyalties fall? They could easily hide behind religious fervor. Or forgoing that just rationalize it all for the emotion associated with having a Jewish state.

ISRAEL 100 USA 0!

Would Miss Kagan's sentiments, rulings be so influenced?

NeilMacCallister  06/30/2010 05:02 PM Report

A televised report from a recent UC student legal protest focused the camera frame on one young student leader's face as she suggested to the crowd and camera that we "Find out what it is that binds us as a people and a nation".

I found that missing data difficult to understand.

I thought it was our signing on to the agreements of our Constitution that expressly collected us as a nation, and made us a people of a now stated goal and purpose.

Is that still true?

REMant  06/30/2010 11:16 AM Report

Regarding the nominee I think Gilbert had the right idea:

"You'll soon get used to her looks," said he,

"And a very nice girl you'll find her!

She may very well pass for forty-three

In the dusk with a light behind her."

I have to ask if political affiliation doesn't matter, why do presidents always appoint one from their own party?

But I totally disagree with everything she said about precedent. Law is not precedent; it is discovery. It is not created; it is found. It is a scientific process. And not only is it found, in our system it is spelled out in the fundamental law of the republic.

I've noticed that many police in the DC area do not understand the difference between telling someone he can't do something, and telling him he must do something, and that is what the Eleventh and Twelfth amendments are about, and why we have the Bill of Rights. Common law has always been about the infringement of rights, and not about the duties and liberties of subjects, but they have not historically been easy to distinguish. The latter tho is properly administrative law, and it ia really the only law the Federal court system should be concerned with excepting conflicts between the states and between the US and other nations. You cannot argue that citizens of the US have common law rights, because it is nowhere in the Constitution, and it was clearly not intended to be. When queried by Jefferson about the omission Madison asked him in reply whether they should have adopted the entire law of England. Jefferson and Madison, Morris and Hamilton all understood that the Federal govt is more of a confederation, than a mixed constitution like England's. Tho all the branches of govt have sought to increase their power the Supreme Ct no less than the executive and the Congress, the Constitution remains what it is. Under our Federal system the Bill of Rights cannot be applied to the states. The Federal govt cannot ban handguns or order the states to do so, anymore than it can order their citizens to buy insurance or pay income and social security taxes, but the states, depending on their own constitutions, may. To argue otherwise, as the Supreme Ct did, is to uphold the very thing strict constructionists and judicial conservatives are against in other areas. Whether it is deemed a right or not is as immaterial, as whether you think it has "value." Madison and other Federalists argued that including a Bill of Rights would do exactly what it has done: imply that the Constitution was not a limited document. Art IV, sec 4, makes this limited sovereignty clear for it says that while the Federal govt may intervene to guarantee a republican form of government, it may only do so in the case of foreign invasion or upon application of the state govt. The so-called "Comity Clause" Art IV, sec 2, applies only to the treatment of citizens of states who are strangers in other states, and does not apply the Bill of Rights to the citizens of the states. The 14th Amendment merely repeats the language, while attempting to insinuate a special character to a "citizen of the United States" which has no standing anywhere else in the document. But it is clear that nothing applies the Bill of Rights to the states. And it is clear that while you may continue to hear the justices argue about whether guns are good or bad, I'll venture you will never hear any of them say it is none of their business.

Likewise the argument that the 2nd Amendment applies only to the militia suffers from the same misconstruction, because a militia at that time referred to the whole body of the citizenry and clearly Madison meant only to give its justification in terms which would have been understood by everyone: that freedom must be defended by arms. Joseph Story cited Blackstone: "the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers." A free state was understood to be a republic and a republic to be a polity without a monarch, hence in which there were no subjects, to clarify John Adam's muddle about it. The act forming the Commonwealth in 1649 called it a free State. Machiavelli, in The Art of War, described a militia as a republic's part-time citizen army of virtuous men and not either a professional (or standing) army, nor a mob. But where Machiavelli said virtuous men, Madison writes a "well-regulated" militia, i.e., one well-trained, and which would presumably require therefore ready and continuous access to weaponry, as was found to be needed at the start of the war for independence. The wording came from the Virginia ratifying convention. A good historian of this question, altho on the other side of it, writes: "Virginia's proposed amendments, which probably most directly influenced Madison's draft of the Bill of Rights, help bring into focus the concerns that ultimately produced the Second Amendment. Indeed, the changes proposed by the commonwealth's ratifying convention nicely define the issues raised during later congressional debates. Declaring that 'the people have a right to keep and bear arms,' Virginians asked for constitutional recognition of the principle that 'a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free state.' Madison had Virginia's recommendations in mind when, on June 8, 1789, he proposed to Congress that the Constitution be amended to provide that 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.' Reacting to the widely held fear that Congress's access to the militia might be misused, the Virginia representative proposed that that amendment be placed alongside the other limitations on legislative power listed in Art.l, Sec.9, of the Constitution. Six weeks later, a committee of eleven, composed of Madison and representatives from each of the other states that had ratified the Constitution, began preparing a formal slate of amendments, using as a guide both Madison's recommendations and those proposed by the states. The committee revised Madison's original recommendation, stating more explicitly the armed citizenry's importance to the constitutional order. 'A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people,' the new language read, 'being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' Little is known about the Senate's debate of the Second Amendment, we know little about the Second Amendment's reception in the states. No state rejected the amendment. As a statement of republican principle already commonplace in many state declarations of rights, it probably evoked little discussion."