Charlie Rose

ajain31  03/07/2013 10:39 PM Report

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) must be upheld by the supreme court: Discrimination is alive today unfortunately; Liberty and justice for all is openly sabotaged and the Supreme Court is inviting trouble of great magnitudnal proportions if it dares to fail its ultimate mandate: to uphold everyone's constitutional rights.

We not only need to keep the protections in the current Voting Rights Act (VRA), it should be expanded. The numerous despicable attempts to restrict voting made during the last election cycle are proof of that. Anyone who truly believes the VRA is obsolete needs to recognize, given last year's voter suppression efforts, the Jim Crowe era is biding its time, lurking in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to rear its head once again.

If properly educated and aroused to stand up against Supreme Court activism from the bench the entire nation will speak against it because the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is not about political parties; the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is about individual rights protection. Bank on it! it is time to review; the Supreme Court's Justice Scalia's attack on VRA as " racial entitlements" will not stand the test of time. If the Supreme Court does not uphold the Voting Rights ACT it is no longer acting as an unbiased institution and that, its Justices, can be challenged in public. Supreme Court Justices, get up and do your job or we will make it happen! Count on it!

Now Even if you are dumb enough to believe that all is OK with the world and there are no reasons to have the voting rights act on the books. Then why are the the parties at opposite end's on this ? Why are the Republicans in America trying to keep people from the poles ? Well I will tell you what I think. I think there may be a dozen or two, man and women (Billionaires) in America that have the means to buy the power it wants to call all shots in this Country. The only way they can obtain this right now is get the people they want in office. To buy them so to say. But they know they can be stopped at the voting polls as proven in the 2012 election. They know the more that get out and vote there chances are reduced substantially.

Commentator George Will knows this and should be ashamed of his views on VRA. He says VRA is 47 years old. Is that old ? I don't think so. Look at the constitution, at that II Amendment a lot older right. SS, Medicare, still very new in the big picture. But look at who wants to change them. Not working men and women, no the big bosses. They do not like to match payments that is what this is all about. They did not like it back in the 1930s and they do not like it now. So Americans do not be fooled by the right wing opposition and all of you older people that now have this little benefit fight like h--- to keep it just as it is. It just might be all there is between eating and striving !!

The argument is that VRA is discriminatory against Southern states to require them but not other states to seek pre-clearance for voting laws; I actually agree. The Voting Rights Act should require *all* states to seek pre-clearance. After what we've seen the GOP try to pass in states all across the nation prior to the last 2012 election, I see no reason this safeguard against voter suppression should be limited to just Southern states as suggested by VRA of 1965 but now should be expanded to apply to ALL 50 states.

It is urgent that whoever can go to the Supreme Court and organize peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience protests in front of the Supreme Court ASAP to do so right away!

supune  01/27/2013 04:44 AM Report

Charlie, I'm disappointed that I haven't seen much discussion about Citizen's United on your show. I'm a pretty regular viewer of your show. I'd love to hear your guests' opinion on it, and if it makes sense. Did Scalia ask to not talk about it? I agree with the sentiment given in this video: http://youtu.be/k5kHACjrdEY . I keep reading that the constitutional amendment is gaining ground, but your show and other shows don't bring that up.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  12/14/2012 02:05 AM Report

There have been recent comments by Antonin Scalia comparing sodomy laws to bestiality laws.

Jon Stewart nicknamed the justice “slippery sodomy slope Scalia,” and warned that if we follow Scalia’s logic, the legalization of gay marriage could lead to interspecies weddings, complete with singing priests.

(It is funnier if you watch the clip.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  11/30/2012 06:30 PM Report

Here is Chief Justice John Roberts http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/308879-1 who was at Rice last month.

Ken Starr, President of Baylor and spender of $70M to impeach Clinton, had the front row on the right.

The President of Rice is a Harvard Law Review buddy of the Chief. So friends in high places and all that.

Rice is now 100 years old (Happy Birthday!).

If you buffer to 32:24 you will hear John Roberts' favorite part of the Constitution: WE THE PEOPLE . . . not we the corporations nor we the lobbyists.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  11/30/2012 01:46 AM Report

Mr. Subject-Verb agreement does not seem to have his facts on Lincoln and Dred Scott in proper agreement.

From Lincoln, "Judicial decisions have two uses—first, to absolutely determine the case decided, and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar cases will be decided when they arise. For the latter use, they are called "precedents" and "authorities."

We believe, as much as Judge Douglas, (perhaps more) in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution.

But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it, has often over-ruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it to over-rule this. We offer no resistance to it."

http://www.freemaninstitute.com/lincoln.htm

Perhaps we need a Lincoln for the Citizens United case? Who will over-rule themselves in this case? Obama already did a "Lincoln" on you robed ones during a State of The Union address so get to over-ruling.

Dennis_100  11/29/2012 05:07 PM Report

Justice Scalia asserted his "textualist" views, impuning judges(progressives) whom he believes decide cases to achieve results that accord with their personal political views. Yet, in Citizens United, Justice Scalia strained to achieve a result that evidently reflects his conservative personal views more than a textually required reading of the law.

While wrapping himself in a cloak of "textualism" and rendering pronouncements about the dangers of judicial activism, at bottom Justice Scalia seems no different than the progressives he impunes. He just has different political views and seeks different results.

horizonrusted  11/28/2012 10:37 PM Report

Love to hear any of the Justices speak. Justice Scalia is especially entertaining. However, I wish that interviewers like Mr. Rose would watch other previous, recent interviews with their guests. About 1/2 of this interview was a recapitulation of what Justice Scalia had said on Piers Morgan & Brian Lamb. 1/4 of it was new, & the other 1/4 was the two of them cracking jokes. I would have loved it had Charlie, when Justice Scalia suggested that he would have dissented with Justice Harlan on Plessy on the basis of Equal Protection, jumped in & said something like "Ah! So you are pro-gay marriage!"

AQQ  11/28/2012 05:57 PM Report

It's a false dichotomy, people. Those who are convinced by neither originalism nor progressive theories of constitutional interpretation are invited to check out the work of philosopher Tara Smith. For instance:

http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=djclpp

NoPardonforMichaelMilken  11/28/2012 04:58 PM Report

The Scalia Court remains the finest legal body the world has known or will ever know.

Chief Justice Antonin Scalia, since his days drafting the Constitution, stands as the most outstanding legal mind in the history of mankind and will never be matched by any to follow him.

julia_cybele  11/28/2012 04:05 PM Report

Great program! This is what I always love about the show... the conversation dependably sheds light upon influential people and the ideas that motivate them. I've a better understanding now of Justice Scalia's positions, even if I don't necessarily favor them.

Dasein  11/28/2012 02:52 PM Report

Why wasn't Lincoln's General Order Number 100 reviewed by the Supreme Court? Or today's secret Drone Order?

REMant  11/28/2012 12:30 PM Report

Charlie's approach to this subject is quite similar to his economic and technology notions: in a word, progressive. But an "is" can never be an "ought," and because it can't, "oughts" have no basis. We think retrospectively. And we formulate laws based on our past. Therefore, of necessity, our growth is not evolution, but development. Ppl may not like that, but it's the best we can do. The world may be creative, but we don't create; we look for truth. And we discover law, we don't make it. Even in legislatures. It's fallacious to talk about the Constitution as a living vs a dead document, because it begs the question.

I was sitting in on a graduate history seminar, many years ago now, and the discussion wandered into the analogous question of "Whig history," it being felt that since we are historical creatures, the present should not be read back into the past. The same idea animates legal realism, that the past should be interpreted in its own context. This may seem perfectly just, but only on the assumption that the past was really different. Historical interpretation, I argued, actually proceeds by alternately applying the present to the past, and the past to the present. The truth is found when we finally see there's no difference, or at least extremely little, tho different societies appear to have followed the same paths, just as we see a similar progression in men. This is how we grow up and become rational. Surely, the progressives don't wish to deny that. And yet, that's precisely what they do in talking about keeping up with the times.

The problem is that no one really wants to ask "the ppl" what they think, and instead wish to impose on them, and that is as old as the Constitution itself. But in addition to creating a polity, that contract also limits it, and in large measure to make sure the power granted is not abused. The legislative powers were not enumerated merely as illustrations.

For instance, no one at the time the Constitution was adopted thought taxation should be used to regulate commerce. That was what the British empire did and what the Boston Tea Party was about. The issue was mentioned in the Convention, and in the Constitution, yet we find taxation used to create a national banking system during the Civil War, and now to push various social and environmental measures on the bogus theory that there really are such things as "externalities." (Furthermore, if the Obamacare mandate is a tax, the bill originated in the wrong house of Congress.)

Today's conservatives see the Revolution as the defining moment in American history, while liberals see that as the Civil War, some going so far as to rewrite the Revolution as a civil war, and/or see the former as being brought to fruition by the latter.

Lincoln not only suspended habeas corpus, he attempted to arrest the Chief Justice, himself, for crossing him, created fiat money and drafted the populace to fight his holy war, and shut down 300 newspapers for criticizing these actions, saying: "Measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." I don't think a fascist could have put it any better.

The Civil War didn't preserve the Union, it attempted to consolidate it, an effort continuing in tortured applications of the 14th Amendment. But govt cannot be supported by force, when people only submit to it to be free of force. Responsibility to protect is a fraud. No person can be absolved of the responsibility, nor forced, to protect himself, and remain a person. Just another way of saying he has unalienable rights. And no one is "above the law," only because the law can be above no one.