To read this new article visit http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2011/09/02/the-courts-should-strike-down-medicare-mandates/ Tweet
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
UN: Credible Evidence Iran Working On Nuke Weapons
Tweet
The U.N. nuclear agency said Friday it is "increasingly concerned" about a stream of intelligence suggesting that Iran continues to work secretly on developing a nuclear payload for a missile and other components of a nuclear weapons program.
In its report, the International Atomic Energy Agency said "many member states" are providing evidence for that assessment, describing the information it is receiving as credible, "extensive and comprehensive."
US Economy Created No Job Growth In August: First Time Since 1945
Employment growth ground to a halt in August, as sagging consumer confidence discouraged already skittish U.S. businesses from hiring, keeping pressure on the Federal Reserve to provide more monetary stimulus to aid the struggling economy.
Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged last month, the Labor Department said Friday. It was the first time since 1945 that the government has reported a net monthly job change of zero. The August payrolls report was the worst since September 2010, while nonfarm employment for June and July was revised to show 58,000 fewer jobs.
Tweet
Israeli Vice Premier And Minister Of Strategic Affairs Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon: "No Return To June 1967 Borders!"
Visit http://youtu.be/DnxkwkVugT4 to view the video for yourself. Tweet
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
New Yorker Magazine Labels Justice Clarence Thomas "Intellectual Leader": Analyzing Jeffrey Toobin's Recent Article About The Supreme Court's Finest
Jeffrey Toobin recently wrote in the pages of the New Yorker about Clarence Thomas. As an article overall, it has faults some of which I shall focus on, but is worth reading nonetheless. He writes that "[t]he conventional view of [Supreme Court Justice Clarence] Thomas takes his lack of participation at oral argument as a kind of metaphor. The silent Justice is said to be an intellectual nonentity, a cipher for his similarly conservative colleague, Antonin Scalia." I have heard Thomas speak, and he says that he thinks the oral arguments are rather pointless, and to some extent he is probably correct, as the minds of the Justices are largely already made up at that point. It is more for lawyers, on the bench asking questions and making the arguments below, to hear the sound of their own voices. However, Toobin declares that it is time to realize that Thomas "has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court." The truth is that he did not "emerge" as such a leader, but has always been one. It is important to analyze Toobin's article and to wonder why a writer that is no friend to Thomas's originalist jurisprudence has decided to write an important article changing this narrative. It is important to evaluate some of the most important and relevant claims made about and against Justice Thomas, indubitably the finest Supreme Court Justice on the high court.
The belittling of Justice Thomas for all these years is nothing short of shameful and disgusting. Reading his opinions show that he is in fact the finest Justice currently on the Supreme Court. Perhaps the reason that people like Toobin are trying to only now change the meme about Thomas from dunce to "intellectual leader" is because they sense a growing interest around the country in returning to the original Constitutionalism that Thomas most loyally on the Supreme Court attempts to espouse. Given the resurgence in interest in Constitutionalism of late with the Tea Party and more, opponents of Thomas are beginning to perhaps feel their big government unconstitutional agenda is threatened in the words of Toobin by the "implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country." In order for people to realize this, Thomas is now being transformed in the pages of the New Yorker from idiot to intellectual so that he will be taken more seriously as a challenge to their decades long Supreme Court hegemony.
The article begins by stating that Thomas "was compelled to amend several years of the financial-disclosure forms that Supreme Court Justices must file each year." Thomas has said the employment of his wife, Virginia Thomas, was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” Whether misunderstanding government filing instructions seems plausible is up to you, but it is really irrelevant. Anyone who has read Justice Thomas's dissent in Gonazalez v. Raich (2005) and other cases would find it quite obvious how he is going to rule on Obamacare, regardless of whatever work his wife does. His position is already well known not because of who he is married to, but because of his own past judicial opinions. The point is really, as Toobin then immediately points out, "that seventy-four members of Congress called on Thomas to recuse himself from any legal challenges to President Obama’s health-care reform, because his wife has been an outspoken opponent of the law." Ginnie Thomas's work is not a minor issue mentioned in the article, it is a major thrust of it. In fact, the entire article is entitled "Partners" and the title asks, "Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan?" Ginnie Thomas gets a lot of ink in the body of the article as well, getting an entire section devoted to her and more, sometimes on matters of obviously of very little contemporary importance or of little import to how Thomas will rule. A response to this criticism of Clarence Thomas is therefore mandatory.
Speaking of Thomas's supposed filing omissions, the article itself omits that that this anti-Thomas effort was led by the disgraced liberal Congressman Anthony Weiner. But more importantly, it is without doubt that an unadulterated double standard has emerged as the article fails to mention the challenge based on the employment or advocacy of a wife of another jurist on a federal court. Arguably much better claims were made against liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who is to rule on the Constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 defining marriage as only between a man and woman. Not even one sentence, if just for contrast regarding the issue, not to mention to add balance, was in the article. Reinhardt's wife, Ramona Ripston, is actually related to that specific litigation. Ripston is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which actually filed an amicus brief in the district court case under appeal. In contrast, Ginni Thomas is not filing briefs with the Supreme Court any time soon. Yet Reinhardt refused to step aside when lawyers defending Proposition 8 filed a motion requesting that he do so, providing his reasons for not recusing himself in a memorandum which stated:
My wife’s views, public or private, as to any issues that may come before this court, constitutional or otherwise, are of no consequence. She is a strong, independent woman who has long fought for the principle, among others, that women should be evaluated on their own merits and not judged in any way by the deeds or position in life of their husbands (and vice versa). I share that view and, in my opinion, it reflects the status of the law generally, as well as the law of recusal, regardless of whether the spouse or the judge is the male or the female... In 2011, my wife and I share many fundamental interests by virtue of our marriage, but her views regarding issues of public significance are her own, and cannot be imputed to me, no matter how prominently she expresses them. It is her view, and I agree, that she has the right to perform her professional duties without regard to whatever my views may be, and that I should do the same without regard to hers. Because my wife is an independent woman, I cannot accept...[the] position that my impartiality might reasonably be questioned...because of her opinions or the views of the organization she heads.
It is important to realize that those like Anthony Weiner that led the call for Justice Thomas to step aside on any Obamacare ruling, and those like Toobin in this article that imply they are together working to kill Obamacare from the Supreme Court, have been silent on Reinhardt. Either Reinhardt is right, or else opponents of Thomas must as loudly demand that Reinhardt step aside as well. Of course, reading Justice Thomas's opinions it is obvious that he is true to an originalist judicial philosophy, not to the political predilections of his conservative wife. I am not sure the same could be said for a non-originalists like Reinhardt whose judicial philosophies have little anchoring outside of personal predilections.
Toobin writes that Thomas's "intellect and his influence have also been recognized by those who generally disagree with his views." He correctly also writes that "[t]he silent Justice is said to be an intellectual nonentity, a cipher for his similarly conservative colleague, Antonin Scalia. But those who follow the Court closely find this stereotype wrong in every particular. Thomas has long been a favorite of conservatives, but they admire the Justice for how he gives voice to their cause, not just because he votes their way." However, it is not giving voice to the "conservative" public policy cause, but the cause of originalism in Constitutional interpretation. It is his principled adherence and devotion to this only legitimate method of interpreting the Constitution that so duly earns him this admiration.
Toobin importantly writes, "The implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country, are profound. Thomas is probably the most conservative Justice to serve on the Court since the nineteen-thirties." However, it is not his conservatism that marks his jurisprudence, but his loyalty to the original meaning of the Constitution. Toobin himself concedes that "[m]ore than virtually any of his colleagues, he has a fully wrought judicial philosophy." It is the philosophy that demands that the Constitution be interpreted according to its original meaning. It is why professor Stephen Calabresi at the Northwestern University School of Law is quoted in this article as saying Thomas's opinions have "lots of historical sources and his views are the most principled, even among the conservatives." What Toobin fails to realize is that it is the only legitimate method of constitutional interpretation and that is why Thomas is the real intellectual and principle leader, not because he is "conservative." Originalism is the only way to legitimately interpret the Constitution that is not a manifestation only of the particular Justice's political or policy preferences (see http://www.stevelackner.com/2011/04/case-for-originalism-why-constitution.html for my basic defense of originalism). If adherence to the Constitution itself demands returning to views that would not have validated the New Deal, it is irrelevant if that is the course that the Constitution demands unless amended.
The reason that "Thomas’s views both reflect and inspire the Tea Party movement" and "accords, with great precision, with Thomas’s own approach" is firstly, as is evident by its very name harkening to the American Revolution, because the Tea Party movement believes in returning to this nation's first principles. Therefore, interpreting the Constitution as originally understood is of course going to be in line with this most basic of Tea Party imperatives. As Toobin writes, even if "it can be difficult to pin down" the Tea Party "stand on any given issue," the Tea Party "is unusual among American political movements in its commitment to a specific view of the Constitution." Toobin then says that "[f]or decades, various branches of the conservative movement have called for a reduction in the size of the federal government, but for the Tea Party, and for Thomas, small government is a constitutional command." But this is not for the Tea Party or Thomas, as if this is a matter of personal political gratification, but what the Constitution itself as agreed to states (understand, as but one example, the original meaning of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments by reading http://www.stevelackner.com/2011/06/original-purpose-of-two-most-ignored.html). That we have departed so far from the Constitution that loyalty to it is to be associated with only one Justice on the Supreme Court is a demonstration of the current sorry state of affairs.
This article in the New Yorker absurdly states that "Thomas’s entire career as a judge has been building toward the moment when he would be able to declare that [Obamacare] law unconstitutional." That is utterly ridiculous. If the law is declared on non-originalist grounds by a majority of the Justices to be unconstitutional, it will be no great victory for the jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas. Toobin warns that "Thomas’s triumph over the health-care law and its supporters is by no means assured, but it is now tantalizingly within reach." This is not a tantalization for Thomas, the real tantalization will come for Thomas if he can convince other members of the Supreme Court to join him in his enduring faithfulness to the original meaning of the Constitution.
Toobin understands this, as he accurately writes, "Thomas pays far less deference to prior rulings of the Court than his colleagues do. As he put it..., 'If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and we are obligated to revisit it.'” But he then declares that "[t]his is a different approach from the traditional conservative position, which stresses the importance of stare decisis—of relying on precedent." This is not in any way the traditional conservative position. Originalism was the orthodoxy of the Supreme Court until relatively recently, and until this point even when it was departed from lip-service was still considered necessary toward the original meaning of the Constitution. It was most certainly not the position of the great Judge Robert Bork who never made it to the Supreme Court, nor is it the mainstream view of true conservatives. What are conservatives attempting to "conserve"? All who are conservatives should be so because they are trying to return to the roots of and conserve the founding principles for this country. There is absolutely no rational way that looking to the original meaning of a Constitutional provision at the time drafted and as understood by those who ratified it could be considered anything but the only "conservative" position.
Toobin states that "Thomas...makes little pretense of relying on the words of his [Supreme Court] colleagues and their predecessors when their interpretations conflict with his own understanding of the text of the Constitution itself." Thomas may be wrong in some particular cases, but he is not wrong in his devotion to originalism. He is most loyal not to "his own understanding" of the text, but the original meaning of the text. That meaning, by its very definition, is not his own, but the meaning as originally understood at the time the Constitutional provision was ratified. This method of interpretation demands that one's "own meaning" not be placed above the original meaning. This should be known to Toobin, but is only apparently not truly understood due to ideological blinders. That is why a judicial view like Thomas's must be labeled "conservative" by Toobin when in fact the truth of the matter is that when faithfully applied it is not a political label, but only the true label of Constitutionalism that Thomas represents. Toobin even quotes Thomas as saying in a dissenting opinion in 2005 that "[w]hen faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution’s original meaning." Toobin is right that Thomas "has been a committed originalist." And he is correct also in his contrast to Justice Antonin Scalia, who unlike Thomas, "is the figure most often associated with this school of thought, but he refers to himself as a 'fainthearted originalist.' Scalia means that other factors besides his own understanding of the intent of the framers, most especially the long-established precedents of the Court, influence his judgment on the resolution of constitutional disputes. 'If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he'—Thomas—'would say let’s get it right,' Scalia told a reporter in 2004. 'I wouldn’t do that. He does not believe in stare decisis period.' In other words, there is nothing fainthearted about Thomas’s convictions about the meaning of the Constitution." And that is precisely why Thomas is the most admirable Justice, because there is nothing fainthearted about him when it comes to his dedication to the Constitution. That's why, Toobin writes, "No other Justice, not even Scalia, studies the historical record with as much care, and enthusiasm, as Thomas."
In fact, Toobin has pointed out that Thomas was long ahead of the Supreme Court, as Thomas implied in at least one concurrence that his understanding of the Second Amendment was that provided an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court itself finally affirmed Thomas on this point in D.C. v. Heller (2008). Recognizing Thomas as an intellectual of the highest caliber paving the way on the Supreme Court for real originalism is long overdue. The New Yorker article goes on with much more, and it's not worthy of analyzing in full. The basic point is to understand what Thomas represents, and why every American needs to work to make sure that all other Supreme Court Justices are cut from the same mold as the great Clarence Thomas.
Tweet
Hezbollah MP: Syria, Iraq, Iran, And Hezbollah Will Wipe Out Israel After American Withdrawal From Iraq
Hezbollah MP Walid Sakariya on Lebanon TV earlier this month in absolutely chilling description of how in the relatively near future he sees the actual possibility and hopes for the opportunity of a war to "pulverize" and wipe out Israel, the expense of the "martyrs" of an Israeli nuclear response being no deterrent, upon an American withdrawal from Iraq:
And remember, this is all in his mind with a conventional war with Israel, without adding in the crazies in Iran actually attaining a nuclear weapons before this nightmarish fantasy scenario of this Hezbollah MP could unfold. Historical nuclear deterrence may obviously not be as effective as it has been if the enemy is the Islamic radicals of the Middle East, and if that enemy with this mindset is allowed to join the nuclear club.
Tweet
North Carolina Lawmakers Propose Bill That Would Legally Define Marriage As "One Man, One Woman"
The Miami Herald reports:
Republican leaders in the state House of Representatives held a news conference Tuesday to push for passage of legislation that will put before voters a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The issue is one of several constitutional amendments the legislature will take up when it returns Sept. 12.Tweet
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
House Speaker Pro Tem Dale Folwell, a Republican from Winston-Salem, said that there has long been support in the General Assembly for such an amendment and that the time has come to let people decide.
"It's time we settled this issue," Folwell said at the news conference in the Legislative Building. "People in favor of this will live or die by how the people of North Carolina feel about it. ... Power needs to be pushed away from this building and back to the people."
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Rick Perry Joins Other Republican Candidates In Signing Pledge Against Gay Marriage
Texas Governor Rick Perry is the latest Republican presidential candidate to sign a pledge against gay marriage. The pledge confirms Perry’s reversal of an earlier statement he made that he would leave the definition of marriage up to the states.
The pledge, put out by the National Organization for Marriage, has become a standard commitment among this year’s GOP contenders. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum have also signed the pledge. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is not signing any pledges.
The pledge commits a candidate to support a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, appoint judicial nominees and an attorney general who would reject a constitutional right to gay marriage, establish a commission to investigate harassment of anti-gay marriage donors or organizers, and let the people of Washington, D.C., vote on gay marriage.
Tweet
Professor Robert Wistrich: Pope Pius XII, The Holocaust And Catholic-Jewish Relations Today
Professor Robert Wistrich spoke at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Monday, May 4, 2009 on the subject of Pope Pius XII, the Holocaust and Catholic Jewish Relations today. He was one of six scholars who sat on the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission from 1999 to 2001 to examine the wartime record of Pope Pius XII, with special reference to the Holocaust which was eventually disbanded: http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=721&FID=754&PID=0
Here is an excerpt from the lecture:
Tweet
Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Alabama Immigration Law
The Washington Times reports:
TweetA federal district judge halted Alabama’s new immigration law Monday just days before it was to take effect, making it the latest state to see a crackdown law blocked by a court.
Chief District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn said she didn’t have enough time to consider the law in full before the Sept. 1 date it goes into effect, so she halted its enforcement until she has time to make a broader ruling later next month.
“In entering this order the court specifically notes that it is in no way addressing the merits of the motions,” Judge Blackburn wrote in her brief order, promising a ruling by Sept. 28.
Monday, August 29, 2011
"A Body Blow Against Al-Qaeda": The Death Of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman
The death of Atiyah Abd al-Rahman in an Aug. 22 drone attack in Pakistan may appear to be just another in the revolving-door fatalities among al-Qaeda’s operations chiefs. But it was a crucial blow to the core group that once surrounded Osama bin Laden.Tweet
Rahman was bin Laden’s channel to the world. Their correspondence was the most important prize taken from bin Laden’s compound when he was killed May 2. They talked about everything: strategy, personnel, operations, political setbacks. Whatever thread still held al-Qaeda together passed from bin Laden through to Rahman.
The Libyan-born Rahman’s death blunts al-Qaeda’s ability to stage a new mega-attack against America; it brings the top leadership of the group closer to extinction; and it increases the likelihood that the organization’s center of gravity will shift from Pakistan’s tribal areas to one of the affiliates, such as the robust al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen.
Asked recently to name the most important remaining leader in al-Qaeda, a senior U.S. official had said it was Rahman. He explained that the nominal successor to bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was actually a secondary figure — more a leader of the group’s Egyptian wing than of al-Qaeda as a whole. It would be in America’s interest if Zawahiri rather than Rahman were dominant, this official said, because Zawahiri was a divisive figure whose ad-hoc tactics were less threatening to America.
One of the subjects discussed frequently between Rahman and bin Laden was whether al-Qaeda’s ferociously violent tactics were alienating Muslims in the countries where it operated. That led to a fascinating 2005 missive from Rahman to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, chiding him for targeting Shiite Muslims in his scorched-earth campaign in Iraq against America and its allies. And in more recent years, the two discussed the danger of seeking an Islamic “caliphate” in areas where al-Qaeda appeared strong, since that extremist move would likely alienate other Muslims. Better, they reasoned, to keep assaulting America.
Rahman’s death is especially important as the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States approaches — and not just for symbolic reasons. Bin Laden had been working with Rahman to plan a spectacular strike against a U.S. target, pegged to the Sept. 11 anniversary. It’s not clear how far that planning had progressed, but whatever its level, it will be hampered, maybe even disrupted, by the death of the man whom bin Laden charged with organizing the details of the plot.
Also unclear is how the CIA was able to target Rahman in the Aug. 22 attack over North Waziristan or how he had been maintaining his sanctuary there. The cache of material taken from the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad in May didn’t include much that would help pinpoint the location of operatives in the field, according to the senior U.S. official, and Rahman would have understood that anything that disclosed his whereabouts had been compromised. But on targeting and other operational details, U.S. officials are tight-lipped.
Rahman fell to a Predator drone attack, the weapon that he and bin Laden had complained about so bitterly in their correspondence. Rahman had told his boss that this U.S. “intelligence war,” as bin Laden had called it, had made it nearly impossible for al-Qaeda to move, communicate, recruit or train in the tribal areas of Pakistan. They had discussed whether al-Qaeda should move its headquarters to someplace safer. That relocation seems more likely, now that the man who anchored the group’s presence in Pakistan is dead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
RSS Feed (xml)