[extropy-chat] Tyranny in place

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Oct 1, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Samantha  Atkins wrote:
> On Sep 30, 2006, at 2:26 PM, spike wrote:
>> My understanding is that it was congress that did this, not the
>> executive branch.
>
> What, you missed that the executive has been pushing hard for this?
> Every administration attempts to get Congress to play ball with its
> wishes.


The executive branch lobbies, but they often only get their way with  
Congress when interests intersect and particularly in the House.  The  
wishes of the executive branch have been flatly ignored by Congress  
enough times even when the wishes made good sense that I would assert  
there is plenty of blame to go around for all.


> Sorry but these laws will remain long after the election even if they
> are eventually successfully challenged.  And this is hardly the
> point.  The point is that so-called public servants sworn to uphold
> the Constitution and supposedly in office to protect the rights of the
> people are violating that oath and putting the people in far more
> jeopardy than we ever faced from the extremely unlikely scenario of
> dying at the hands of a terrorist.


The idea that it is okay to pass obviously unconstitutional laws and  
let the Supreme Court clean up later is one of the more evil and  
stupid things Congress does.  It amounts to taking a second pull on  
the trigger when playing Russian roulette -- it does not improve the  
odds of a good outcome.


> Guess again.  The court is being loaded.


I guess it depends on what you mean by "loaded".  There were plenty  
of real clowns on the SCOTUS (and still are) before the current  
appointments routinely making egregiously poorly reasoned decisions,  
and frankly the current appointments do not seem to be any worse and  
in some ways apparently better.  I am open to revising that opinion  
when one of them makes a flagrantly stupid or venal decision.

The only person on SCOTUS that seems to have a consistently  
reasonable perspective that reflects constitutional history (even  
when I disagree with the outcome in some fashion) is Clarence  
Thomas,  but that may be nothing but a reflection of his personality  
and temperament rather than a conscious effort to do the job correctly.


J. Andrew Rogers