Why I continue to come here is for my own amusement, which really is the only reason for anyone to anymore. Hardly anyone left here engages in debate anymore…

The last sentence is ambiguous. [grin]

don’t you sometimes wish for a Penultimate Court over the Supremes, an even higher court that could uphold or overturn the lower “Supreme” court?

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;–between a State and Citizens of another State;–between Citizens of different States;–between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

And you are SUCH a contributer of well thought-out positions and eloquently stated rhetoric.

All you seem to contribute is bile-laced anger at America, the world, and any opinion that conflicts with your own (heck, look at the moniker you have chosen for yourself).

I used to contribute much more original thoughts in my posts, and I used to spend a lot of time spelling out my positions and philosophies.

Doing so or not doing so, however, hasn’t seemed to made much of a difference to the quality and character of the responses I get, so why bother?

Heck (wow, two hecks in one post {now three}), I am one of the few remaining of what used to be a regular group right-libertarian posters that seems to come by on a regular basis anymore (I miss you, cstanley and others).

Wonder why? Certainly can’t be the left-leaning trend at this site over the past 2 years, because it doesn’t exist here (or in the MSM, either). I know that because the left-leaning majority here keeps telling me that.

Why I continue to come here is for my own amusement, which really is the only reason for anyone to anymore. Hardly anyone left here engages in debate anymore (myself included), trying by force of logic, facts, and fair opinion to change the thoughts of others.

It is all bomb-throwing, all the time, just like on the political TV shows. At least here, I get to participate.

Well, give them time , DLS- the Bush court is just getting rolling. And most moderates would oppose the conservative activism of decisions like these. You don’t have to be a liberal to dislike the direction that we’re heading.

Actually, the Court is merely not as leftist activist as it has been in the past (since the 1930s, in fact, but notoriously so in the Warren Court years). It is a relief rather than alarming. We aren’t seeing any conservative counterpart now and here to the Warren Court or other judges’ rulings that outrage Americans all the time. Given what liberal activists (seeking the courts as their alternative legislature, court rulings rather than real legislation or amendments to the Constitution, which require them to win elections first) have won over decades, is conservative activism possible someday? Yes. Is it also wrong? Yes. And if we ever see it in modern times we have liberal activists to thank. They “broke the dikes” and they remain those at fault even if the flood changes direction someday.

Earlier:

don’t you sometimes wish for a Penultimate Court over the Supremes, an even higher court that could uphold or overturn the lower “Supreme” court?

Who’s to say a higher court would be any better? Everyone would just go there and the higher-level justices would be tempted (y’all have just been Borked) to arrogate even more power there.

This issue has long been an issue faced by non-liberals who have been upset and sometimes outraged by liberal judicial activism. Aside from having Congress legislate exclusions to the scope of the Court’s ability to rule, what has been stated as an alterative, given the outrages we have sometimes seen not only by the Warren Court in the past but by judges even today, is open defiance of the court(s). It actually has become (as has harsh treatment of the United Nations) a mainstream rather than remained an extremist idea in this country.

Pyst:

The SC isn’t a toy, and anyone that would use such childish remarks will never get “it” apprently.

Austin’s remarks were not childish in the least. Liberals have long used the Supreme Court and other courts as a weapon, a political weapon (y’all have been Borked again — same when you see abortion-related demonstrations next time at the Supreme Court rather than next to Congress) as well as a first rather than last solution and general-purpose legislation-from-thin-air tool.

Austin, I have come to the conclusion you are nothing more than an instigator since you never have much to add other than “gotcha”, or neeneer neener type posts. You are wasting electricity, and your toy (your computer) should be taken from you since you are abusing it. Or maybe we can take away your first amendment rights since it isn’t important to you.

Democracy to you is when a minority position, having failed to achieve Legislative approval or a mandate from the public, is forced upon the public by Judicial fiat?

It is Democracy when the Constitution is amended not by the methodology proscribed and ratified by the States, but by whole cloth creation of classes of rights that do not exist in the Constitution, and by that same Constitution should have been forbid to the Federal Government? (and no, I mean not Roe, bit the whole slew of cases where the Commerce Clause was twisted and tortured beyond any recognition; where after the ERA failed, the courts stepped in an applied it anyway, etc., etc.)

As I said, I don’t agree with all the rulings, but I agree with more of them, and the reasoning behind even those I disagree with, than I did before.

And even the Rehnquist court was still ‘liberal’, due to the total makeup of the Justices.

To repeat an earlier post – Boo hoo hoo. Sucks when your toy gets taken away, doesn’t it?

The country that I knew and loved is disappearing, step by step.

– domajot

Took the words right out of my mouth. Sometimes I feel like we’re creating our own strange version of Lord of the Flies. Of course it’s all still dressed up to look progressive and civilized enough (to the average citizen), but the longer this administration rolls along, the more I wonder where all the adults have gone.

casual, Austin, DLS, if you like watching the 1st amendment being eroded you are in the wrong country. Maybe we can find you guys a far right dictatorship to your liking since our constitution doesn’t seem to hold much weight with y’all anymore.

What I said doesn’t make me part of any political “team”, it makes me an American when I raise my voice about transgressions against the constituion. I guess the only amendment the far right gets it’s panties in a twist about is the 2nd, and I do as well when it’s threatened, does that make me a temporary part of your “team”? Well I wouldn’t play for that team even if they paided me A Rod money.

If, as you say, the side issues could be ironed out, I would tretract my argument.
In my view, they can’t be ironed out, however.

A church doesn’t, that I know of, hire separate staff to do social services and another staff to do other work. They just hire ‘staff’. Often, the different functions are performed in the same space. It would even be unreasonable to demand that one organization split so completely between different areas of function; the effort could well break them financially.

Then, too, some churches that consider homosexulity to be a sin, for example, would never be able to comply with an anti-discrimination ruling. Excluding these groups from grant money could become very problematic.

The question of favoritism looms large, too. Naturally, it’s a potential problem with secular groups as well. From what I observe, it just seems that it’s much easier to achieve transparency with secular organizations in today’s atmosphere.

The elephants in the room are Muslim groups. How do we balance being fair and giving them grants with the fear in the country about the uses to
which their grant money could be applied?

Ironing out the side issues would just lead to more issues, IMO.

There would have been more of a chance for a reasonable solution if the President hadn’t made
such a big deal about it. Doing things like creating a special office for faith based issues definitely sent a message that this is about more than just equal opportunity. Actions and words like that elevated fears and suspicions, perhaps some unnecessarily.

As past precedence was being cast aside at will to fulfill the desires and wishes of the Left, there were no national debates about stare decis (except among conservatives).

When the SCOTUS manged to find new and unenumerated rights, from a document that said such things could not exist within its text, where was the national debate about originalism?

When the SCOTUS usurped the rights of the States, communities, and individuals in favor of secularist and atheistic interpretations, where was the outcry that this, too, represented government sanctioning of religious views by negation?

Boo hoo hoo.

While I don’t agree with some of today’s, or this term’s, rulings, I find the irony that so soon into the Robert’s Court, i.e., a Conservative majority on the SCOTUS, that all of a sudden the left has discovered the issue of Judicial fiat.

For years the left counted on the Judiciary to resolve those issues to their favor that they could not muster the political will within Congress and the Executive, even during times of holding both branches, to pass the laws and regulations they desired.

So now, when all the unmandated rules and regulations foisted upon the American public in the name of our own good by our betters, according to said Left, for the past 40 years seem in jeopardy, that such a hue and cry on the vested and uncontrollable powers possessed by the SCOTUS fill me with naught but crocodile tears and laughter.

And don’t forget, it was a very successful campaign message for Republican Presidential candidates that they would indeed put these types of jurors on the court, and stop the aforementioned Leftish tyranny of judicial fiats.

So, despite what the LEFT LEANING LIBERAL MEDIA (and as in the most recent investigation showed, 87% of the media contribute to Democratic candidates, so why don’t we put the ‘unbiased’ lie to bed) say, the American public at least seem to feel the court leaned to far left.

Now it doesn’t.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

p.s. – I may not believe in the Good Book, but it is full of great and apt quotations!

also I don’t feel people should be too concerned if there are religious messages during public service. a lot of private, secular hospitals support religion as a way of dealing with psychological issues as much as they support eastern treatments like yoga. the issue of abstinence in sex education is a complicated issue also. But I believe that any group that receives public funding should be required to adhere to guidelines for that funding, and if we want to decide that abstinence-only education is using bunk science, we should not fund that. however this would also likely include activist ideology influencing sex education on the other side of the spectrum.

there are areas of concern, one of them is to prevent religions from misusing the funding appropriated to them or overtly prosthelitizing, or even issues concerning discrimination laws that have been raised here.

but like i said, constitutionally, i fell they’re all separate issues.

My general feeling is that we are trying to squeeze our very complicated world into the framers rather simple set of rules, made for simpler times. The fact that those rules can still be applied at all, even if in very twisted ways, is a tribute to their genius.

For every conservatism you find in the so-called Bush influenced Supreme Court, I will find you two liberalisms of the Warren Court.

More like 5-10 or more, and far more substantial, far more arrogant, than anything that can be claimed as “conservative activist.”

and yet this blog is called, moderate

False advertising. Moderate = “moderate Democrat” or “mainstream liberal” (non-extremist), though you will encounter radicalism on here, too.

but when i said that there’s no constitutional justification for exclusion, i’d include the idea that secular groups can be given unintended power that taxpayers don’t support. religion is one form of ideology, that belief in god is part of the ideology doesn’t make it more worthy of exclusion of anything else.

the details in how the law is carried out, how anti discrimination laws are enforced or what anti discrimination laws actually should require (and this itself is contested), are exactly that, details that can and should be dealt with separately from the first and primary constitutional question.

right now, differences between how these laws are carried out are being justified, and maybe they shouldn’t be. but to me thats a separate constitutional issue than whether religious groups are recipients of money.

The funding of faith based social progrms leads to much more than the simple picture you paint.
For one thing, anti discrimination laws in hiring staff are not enforced like they are in secular undertakings.

It’s true that religious groups perform valued services. It’s also ture that by federal funding, certain groups and their oultooks are empowered, way beyond the value of the services they perform.

Another wrinkle lies in the selection of recipients.
Where money flows, it’s too easy to play favorites.
If the ‘worng’ religion were elected to power, I wonder how the suuporter fo this policy would feel.