Charlie Rose

writersblock25  11/12/2011 04:51 PM Report

Thank you for posting this, Charlie Rose, LLC.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/21/2011 02:06 AM Report

John Paul Stevens is 91 and Billy Graham is 92. Both have books out now that they are promoting.

"I had been taught all of my life how to die, but no one had ever taught me how to grow old."

I don't think John Paul needs Billy's book.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/21/2011 01:54 AM Report

Yes, the nation's confidence was hurt by Bush vs Gore. Our judicial branch needs work--from Frontline's several stories on the FBI to the ratings agencies that give junk triple A ratings.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/21/2011 01:49 AM Report

'Judge Thomas asks very few questions because he is a listener.'

I think the best way to listen is to think of relevant questions to ask unless of course there are some supernatural powers of understanding that I don't understand.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/21/2011 01:46 AM Report

Indeed, the law of unintended consequences where Miranda Rights lead to better education of police officers of individuals' rights and of course the Supreme Court decision of Bush v Gore which lead to what many argue was the worst president ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

anne4444  10/20/2011 10:45 PM Report

Here is Justice Relativity:

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew”...By Albert Einstein in 1905.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  10/19/2011 10:15 PM Report

So the choice was "John Paul" or using a green pen?

Good choice sir. You have distinguished yourself.

robdverity  10/19/2011 05:33 PM Report

Agree with JP re corporations should not be considered persons (unless of course you could shoot them). An amorphous mass of stockholders with varied views as the general taxpaying public should not have their views held captive by corporate officers.

The SEC for example is fining Citigroup a mere $285 million for a $2.0 billion scam. "Citigroup was accused of misleading investors in a $1 billion derivatives deal, then betting against them as the housing market in the United States began to show signs of distress."

Hardly worth letting such scumbag, puppy-kicking, baby-rapers have a say or vote on anything judicial or political. And that's just one of the too-big-to-fail slime that scuttled the world economy. Inhuman - not a person - legal or otherwise.

REMant  10/19/2011 12:09 PM Report

Good interview, but if the justice thinks that somehow precedent and so-called legal reasoning can trump philosophy I believe he is engaging in wishful thinking, and/or attempting to reduce the latter to mere opinion. By being "conservative" we have to conclude not engaging in the advocacy born of the "legal realism" of Holmes, et al. This was made clear by his definition of constitutional originalism. Originalism can only mean one thing - what the parties meant by the words. That this shouldn't be obvious really falls into the category of sophistry. The reason for its importance is that the language itself has changed over time, and words have distinctly different meanings dependent on two opposed world views. One considers the law, like science, a matter of discovery, and the other a matter of creation, similar to the sort one sees in children, who always discount the their elders' experience and speaks of the "coming generation," the "new economy," "new frontier," "new age," even "new world," and so forth, by implication repressed by things out-dated, ideas encapsulated in the term primitivism. The one sees freedom in knowledge, the other in the passions, and feels as Hume, a monarchist, famously remarked, reason ought to be a slave to them. The former is an individualist view, republican not monarchical, Reformed not Catholic. Philosophy, not religion, has been the bulwark of freedom since the Greeks, because it believes in the real sovereignty of God, not of men.

Of course, it has been interpretation of the 14th Amendment which primarily has undermined the original view of the entire Constitution, and of states' rights. My own view of it is that it is either meaningless verbiage, the entire subject already being made abundantly clear in the Constitution, or a backhanded attempt to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, which clearly was not intended, and justify prosecution of the Civil War. After that the welfare and interstate commerce clauses, and the role of the judicial branch, itself, have been the culprits. The Convention avoided discussion of the English common law and said nothing about it in the document. But it must be presumed that as Madison reported to Jefferson, the courts would operate largely as they had under the Confederation, and not as an independent branch under some idea of a balanced constitution, with its own body of law, the notion propounded by the so-called High Federalists, who wanted a more "energetic" government in which individuals were, as in England, subjects. I think Mr Stevens has made amply clear his predilections in this regard, Bork and gun control notwithstanding.