Mark

....Block other people from answering their questions?

Seems like hate to me, if he won't even let me answer his questions. Has he blocked any of you too?

I wonder if there is just one racist who keeps on creating various sock accounts so that he/she can show us all how unintelligent he/she is, or if there really are two or more racists who keepon posting questions withwords run together. Nah, it makes more sense that there's only one who is doing it.

While we're waiting the next three months for the Republican Convention to nominate the person we know is going to be the nominee, why not talk about amending the Constitution so that in the future this nominating process won't be so elongated and so strangely early in the calendar year? It used to be case that the New Hampshire wasn't even until some time in April. Over the past 40 years, the other states -- not named New Hampshire -- decided that they wanted to be more influential to the nomination process and started competing to move their primaries earlier in the year. And so New Hampshire also kept on moving ITS primary earlier. Now it votes in the first week of the whole year. It's ridiculous.

Ask Congress to propose and the states to ratify an amendment that provides for a primary/caucus schedule that does not begin until April, like before, and which says that only states with 1 or 2 seats in the House can hold the events in April. Then the medium-size states, with 3 to 10 seats in the House, are allowed to hold primaries or caucuses in May (too bad, Iowa). Then all of the largest states have to wait until June.

Make sense?

Because of Mike Wallace's recent death, I found this online article and a video of a TV special that aired 45 years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/homosexuals-mi...

Be careful because as I just said, if you watch the video it will take 43 minutes.

I do. Like the Yahoo! user with a crybaby as an avatar. Call them a troll once, and they block you. They can dish it out, but can't take it. Hippo ......... Krits.

In November 2008, in the state of California:

Obama received 8,274,473 votes, while

McCain received 5,011,781 votes

(and there were 275,646 votes for minor candidates).

But at the same time, voters voted on Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage:

Yes votes: 7,001,084

No votes: 6,401,482.

So approximately how many people voted for Obama but also voted to ban gay marriage?

Less than a half hour ago someone asekd a question about gay marriage and I included in my answer a brief discussion about the difference between Libertarianism and Egalitarianism. Now the question itself is deleted, so I don't know what he thought of my answer. Darn. But let's find out from some of the rest of you: are you libertarian-minded or egalitarian-minded? See the definition of egalitarianism here:

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

I've also said before that conservatives tend to be more libertarian while liberals tend to be more egalitarian. And I've said that the gay marriage issue often gets confused because *those of us whose philosophy on gay marriage is egalitarian* don't clearly explain it that way. Libertarian-minded people don't appreciate that any topic pertaining to gay equality is always argued for on the basis of egalitarianism.

Are you:

Libertarian and for gay marriage?

Libertarian but against gay marriage?

Egalitarian and for gay marriage?

Egalitarian but against gay marriage?

"I have not yet adequately expressed the more than anxiety that I feel at the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down what I believe to be the constitutional rights of the States. As the decisions now stand I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they happen to strike a majority of this Court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions. ... Of course the words 'due process of law' if taken in their literal meaning have no application to this case; and while it is too late to deny that they have been given a much more extended and artificial signification, still we ought to remember the great caution shown by the Constitution in limiting the power of the States, and should be slow to construe the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as committing to the Court, with no guide but the Court's own discretion, the validity of whatever laws the States may pass."

That was from a dissenting opinion in the 1930 case of Baldwin v. Missouri. The author of that was Justice Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.

Newt Gingrich is getting news, and criticism, for a suggestion as to what we can do to combat judicial activism. He wants to have judges hauled before congressional committees to re-explain and to justify what the judges already put in writing in their rulings. Talk about a bad case of using a piece of spaghetti to knock down a brick wall.

I have a different suggestion. The SOURCE of judicial activism is the three phrases that appear in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Justice Felix Frankfurter once said that these three phrases have "purposed vagueness." Prof. John Hart Ely said, in his 1980 book "Democracy and Distrust," that two of these three phrases are so vague that they are, in effect, open invitations for judges to be "activists," and that the phrases were intended to be as vague as they are.

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws."

Both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause have been used *frequently* to strike down laws just because the justices think that they are bad laws. And even granting to those justices that they are right -- those laws are unwise or unnecessary -- does it really make any sense to say that the 14th Amendment was adopted to give the federal judiciary that much power? The Privileges or Immunities Clause has rarely been invoked, but according to Prof. Ely, it *could be* invoked just as much as the other two clauses have been.

So let's just agree that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment needs to be re-worded to mean something narrower, and clearer. Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights can be "absorbed" into the 14th Amendment, the meaning of the Due Process Clause is limited to "procedural due process" and there shall never again be any "substantive due process," and the Equal Protection Clause bans racial discrimination, nothing more than that. Can you live with that?

Newt Gingrich is getting news, and criticism, for a suggestion as to what we can do to combat judicial activism. He wants to have judges hauled before congressional committees to re-explain and to justify what the judges already put in writing in their rulings. Talk about a bad case of using a piece of spaghetti to knock down a brick wall.

I have a different suggestion. The SOURCE of judicial activism is the three phrases that appear in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Justice Felix Frankfurter once said that these three phrases have "purposed vagueness." Prof. John Hart Ely said, in his 1980 book "Democracy and Distrust," that two of these three phrases are so vague that they are, in effect, open invitations for judges to be "activists," and that the phrases were intended to be as vague as they are.

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person the equal protection of the laws."

Both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause have been used *frequently* to strike down laws just because the justices think that they are bad laws. And even granting to those justices that they are right -- those laws are unwise or unnecessary -- does it really make any sense to say that the 14th Amendment was adopted to give the federal judiciary that much power? The Privileges or Immunities Clause has rarely been invoked, but according to Prof. Ely, it *could be* invoked just as much as the other two clauses have been.

So let's just agree that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment needs to be re-worded to mean something narrower, and clearer. Rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights can be "absorbed" into the 14th Amendment, the meaning of the Due Process Clause is limited to "procedural due process" and there shall never again be any "substantive due process," and the Equal Protection Clause bans racial discrimination, nothing more than that. Can you live with that?

... If gay marriage is ruled to be a constitutional right by the US Supreme Court, it does not prove that sexual orientation is not a choice? It does not prove that heterosexuality and homosexuality are not "the same"?

I've studied a whole lot of case law on the subject of "the equal protection of the laws," and there is not and never has been a pattern or statement that "the equal protection of the laws" is a principle that is limited to ONLY human characteristics that people are born with and can never change.

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of age, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" against people with a mental handicap, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of gender, like the draft, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "disciminate" on the basis that you were born out of wedlock, ...

And I've see the Court strike down laws that "discriminate" on the basis of a characteristic that obviously IS the choice of the person who wasn't treated equally! Please Yahoo or Google search for:

Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, ...

Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elec., 1966, ...

Glona v. American Guaranty, 1968, ...

Plyler v. Doe, 1982, in which the Court explicitly acknowledges that someone's behavior is the basis of the discrimination, ...

And most pertinent to the marriage debate, look up Zablocki v. Redhail, 1978, ...

So, if the Court legalizes gay marriage in the name of the Equal Protection Clause, what does it prove? How about nothing more than the fact that our Justices are substituting their value judgments for that of the majority?

... If gay marriage is ruled to be a constitutional right by the US Supreme Court, it does not prove that sexual orientation is not a choice? It does not prove that heterosexuality and homosexuality are not "the same"?

I've studied a whole lot of case law on the subject of "the equal protection of the laws," and there is not and never has been a pattern or statement that "the equal protection of the laws" is a principle that is limited to ONLY human characteristics that people are born with and can never change.

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of age, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" against people with a mental handicap, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of gender, like the draft, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "disciminate" on the basis that you were born out of wedlock, ...

And I've see the Court strike down laws that "discriminate" on the basis of a characteristic that obviously IS the choice of the person who wasn't treated equally! Please Yahoo or Google search for:

Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, ...

Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elec., 1966, ...

Glona v. American Guaranty, 1968, ...

Plyler v. Doe, 1982, in which the Court explicitly acknowledges that someone's behavior is the basis of the discrimination, ...

And most pertinent to the marriage debate, look up Zablocki v. Redhail, 1978, ...

So, if the Court legalizes gay marriage in the name of the Equal Protection Clause, what does it prove? How about nothing more than the fact that our Justices are substituting their value judgments for that of the majority?

... If gay marriage is ruled to be a constitutional right by the US Supreme Court, it does not prove that sexual orientation is not a choice? It does not prove that heterosexuality and homosexuality are not "the same"?

I've studied a whole lot of case law on the subject of "the equal protection of the laws," and there is not and never has been a pattern or statement that "the equal protection of the laws" is a principle that is limited to ONLY human characteristics that people are born with and can never change.

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of age, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" against people with a mental handicap, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "discriminate" on the basis of gender, like the draft, ...

I've seen the Court uphold laws that "disciminate" on the basis that you were born out of wedlock, ...

And I've see the Court strike down laws that "discriminate" on the basis of a characteristic that obviously IS the choice of the person who wasn't treated equally! Please Yahoo or Google search for:

Skinner v. Oklahoma, 1942, ...

Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elec., 1966, ...

Glona v. American Guaranty, 1968, ...

Plyler v. Doe, 1982, in which the Court explicitly acknowledges that someone's behavior is the basis of the discrimination, ...

And most pertinent to the marriage debate, look up Zablocki v. Redhail, 1978, ...

So, if the Court legalizes gay marriage in the name of the Equal Protection Clause, what does it prove? How about nothing more than the fact that our Justices are substituting their value judgments for that of the majority?

'Tis a fact, isn't it? As I recall, Northwest Airlines got married to Delta, and took Delta's name. Continental Airlines got married to United Airlines.

We have a law against POLYGAMOUS corporate marriages. It's known as Anti-Trust Law. But doesn't it make sense to say that our laws allow corporations to get married?

If so, would this be a good description of a "neocon?" Alan Dershowitz says this about Justice Antonin Scalia: "His conservatisms, according to a professor who is an expert ... are 'of the Old Word European sort. rooted in the authority of the Church and the military. It is more reminiscent of French, Italian, and Spanish clerical conservatism than of American conservatism with its libertarian bent."