Carl and Lee at EFFin’ Unsound rejoice: WhackyNation’s Mark Gardner is blogging again after two weeks in Hawaii, and he picks up right where he left off:
Got to meet Donald Rumsfeld and hear him speak to a small group. In person, he is an incredibly gentile, humble human being, a great public servant.
So Donald Rumsfeld is an incredibly “gentile” person. Or as Ann Coulter would say: “perfect.”
Watched Bill Maher this evening. Tucker Carlson kicked his ass all over the place. Maher has got a smart mouth and no brains, and it’s sure good to see him get his just reward for being a horse’s ass.
Paul Krugman was on with Maher, too, along with some whiny-assed bitch from “The View.” Both were dummies. Krugman must have got his economics degree from a “blue light special” sale. The mouthy bitch was in character: you could tell she was from an inane TV show like “The View.”
Incorrect @1,
That’s right… everybody who disagrees with you is stupid. Pleasant dreams.
Folks is the blog that supports Terrorist in this country? Maybe you could check out Usaamsh after you buy your new silk prayer rug.
“America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness,” he wrote on his blog. “America is known to be a people of arrogance.”
Unlike Mr. bin Laden, the blogger was not operating from a remote location. It turns out he is a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina, where he serves as a kind of Western relay station for the multimedia productions of violent Islamic groups.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10.....ref=slogin
And they have no reason whatsoever to be violent right klake? We never once pissed down their necks right? And we are of course never violent are we klake? Never been “arrogant” (
Bring ’em On) either right?
Klake, why don’t you sign up for Blackwater. You get to shoot kiddies for fun!
klake you ass, what makes you think anybody here would support your alleged “relay station” for the extremists?
Has anyone here expressed support for terrorism?
Against President Bush != For the terrorists.
Dumbass.
In person, he is an incredibly gentile, humble human being, a great public servant.
That’s what rightie fucktards say about all the war criminals….
@5…OM…
Don’t hardly see you condemn them or express outrage at the loss of life that’s occurred by their hands or the consequences of doing nothing to defeat them.
Take @4…FSMP… He appears to be an apologist for them. His “down their necks” rhetoric implies that their murderous behavior is somehow our fault. While this a typical FSMP delusion – one of a great many – it’s also false.
Your positions are known only by what you say. When you say nothing, it must be assumed you either have no position or, through your silence, you endorse complained-of conduct. Which is it? Certainly, I’m very well of the opinion of many HA regulars about Dubya; fulminations long and loud are the order of every day.
But their astounding silence on the barbarity of our enemies says what about how they regard that behavior?
Speaking of which…Navy Lt. Michael Murphy is to be posthumously awared the Medal of Honor for his actions in a firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in 2005. I was moved by what his father had to say about him in this news story:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21258032/
” ‘I think it is a public recognition of what we knew about Michael, of his intensity, his focus, his devout loyalty to home and family, his country and especially to his SEAL teammates and the SEAL community,’ Murphy’s father, Daniel Murphy, told Newsday for a story published on its Web site.”
Any of you care to comment on Lt. Murphy’s sacrifice, bravery, honor, committment, or faithful performance of his duty?
The Piper
@7
Any of you care to comment on Lt. Murphy’s sacrifice, bravery, honor, committment, or faithful performance of his duty?
Yes, he’s a hero, and you’re still a retard.
So Donald Rumsfeld is an incredibly “gentile” person. Or as Ann Coulter would say: “perfect.”
Goldy, his name sounds kind of Jewish, so I think Gardner was just reassuring his readers that he’s a “real” American.
@1
Watched Bill Maher this evening. Tucker Carlson kicked his ass all over the place.
Make sure you watch it with the sound on next time.
Maher has got a smart mouth and no brains, and it’s sure good to see him get his just reward for being a horse’s ass.
I’m pretty sure he’s not too worried that some pathetic wimp in Seattle couldn’t tell how much Carlson made an ass of himself by trying to talk over everyone, but still making no sense.
Paul Krugman was on with Maher, too, along with some whiny-assed bitch from “The View.” Both were dummies. Krugman must have got his economics degree from a “blue light special” sale.
Yeah, Krugman is a real light-weight on economics. Can I sit with you on 12/24 when you stay up all night waiting for Santa?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....lla13.html
PI: Race a factor in snub by key groups, Della says
Looks like you missed another one of Sierra Clubber Michael McGuinn’s electionering
@7: For fuck’s sake, Piper, grow up.
I haven’t said anything about how awful the Taliban and Al Qaeda are because it really doesn’t need to be said. It’s underestood.
It’s also expected. It’s part of their M.O. They’ve pretty much told us all that they want to take us back to the 7th Century and just how they plan to do it so it’s really pretty pointless to wad up my skirt and cry, “Oh my, save me from them Terrists!”
I beat up on Bush and that bunch because I don’t want us to become like them. That’s what we collectively can control. We can’t control their behavior, we can only hunt them down and stop them.
Doesn’t mean we have to become barbarians as well.
I also am pretty sure that nobody serious has advocated “doing nothing to defeat them.” Please to show me an example of someone who has. That or shut the fuck up.
Now I don’t really expect you to get any of this. Willful ignorance appears to be your M.O.
-OM
Oh, also, Lt. Murphy is a hero. I absolutely admire those who do their duty regardless of what they feel about the mission.
Again, my beef is with their leaders.
Piper, you’re not the only one with relatives who have or are serving. Please climb down of that particular high horse as well.
s/of/off/
Piper,
You sure your friends don’t call you that for what you put IN the pipe?
Here is something for you to get mad at.
The majority of CMOH winners were not heroes. They were men who were mostly caught up in a circumstance brought about by a human mistake. Their own, their commanders or their fellow squad members. They are forced into taking desperate action to fix the mistake or the failure to follow procedure. They are not John Wayne rushing into the face of enemy fire in some Hollywood production. They do not stand up and say “Today, I will be a hero”. They use their will to live and find a way out of the quagmire that they find themselves in.
I am sorry to burst your bubble. Every soldier I know would prefer not to “win” this award. They would prefer not to have their parents make an acceptance speech for them. They would much rather be alive. Drinking a beer. Laughing at your foolish words.
Go back to sucking on whatever it is that you smoke in your pipe. You are, in my experience, a sad wannabe individual with no military experience. You don’t have the stomach to actually live it. You are sadly living the “war” through your children. They are two young men who are doing their sworn duty to serve. They may not agree with what they are doing, they very well may agree with the politics behind their assignment. Doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that they have the heart and courage to serve.
Must have got that from their mother.
Follow this link. Read some of the stories carefully. You might learn something.
http://www.cmohs.org/index.html
Asshole!!
@15…MLF…
My favorite MOH stories are the ones of chaplains – they always seem to be Roman Catholic Priests – who ministered to wounded and dying Marines during WW II…And there’s also the story of a Seventh Day Adventist CO who was a medic and received his for what he did during the Battle of Okinawa…
Ordinary people displaying extraordinary courage under brutal circumstances…
I’m also fond of the stories of Dan Dailey, one of the very, very few multiple recipients of the MOH…
My point???
OM is wrong…it doesn’t “go without saying” If you don’t say it, then how does anyone know you believe it. You decry and pillory the tiniest detail and the most irrlevent junk, yet nothing is ever said to put the shoe on the other foot.
I just happen to think that when you spend all your time ostensibly spitting at what soldiers and Marines are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan – sure don’t hear much at HA commending them for their work or lauding their successes – then it makes me wonder whether you care or not.
And, frankly, my sons share that opinion.
Now…I genuinely appreciate yours and OM’s regard for the sacrifice of Lt. Murphy. And I agree…a truckload of medals doesn’t replace the life of a brave man.
Simply remember this: They’re all volunteers, many have re-enlisted (my oldest did while in Iraq and youngest extended voluntarily before leaving for Okinawa), and they’re not looking for adulation or honors…just to be respected for their sacrifice and the work they do.
BTW…thanks for the link…been there many times.
That’s all…
The Piper
Y’know what, piper? Fuck you. Fuck you and your “if you aren’t slobbering all over the troops, you’re not a patriot” bullshit. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of you bringing up your sons for no apparent reason other than to say, “See? My kids are in the military so I’m better than you. You’re not patriotic. You don’t support the troooops!”
Bull.
I’ll put my patriotism up against yours any time, any day, you pigfucker. I don’t believe you have to go around flying a flag or sporting an “America: Love it or leave it” bumper sticker on your SUV to be a patriot.
I happen to think that it’s patriotic to fight for civil liberties. To put the brakes on an overreaching Executive. To protest a war that we should NEVER have gotten into and now have no good way to get out of.
So fuck you, you fucking blowhard. You make me sick.
Luce Enz: Congratulations on the new Pipette in your family, Piper. Did you read my (I say it’s Winik & I say to hell with it) notes in the Olympian open thread, below? Note that I did not and do not accuse Winik of plagiarism. Plagiarists snag stuff from sources they think are too obscure to be known. Dr. Winik lifts promiscuously from sources that are recent and more-or-less renowned. It looks like plagiarism, smells like it, but it’s something else, something new under the sun. A sincere form of flattery that has no name.
Another TJ & DJ: Economics here, too. Maybe that explains why we have nothing better to do than to hang at a skank venue like this. Wasn’t being snarkastic about your zipper. I got the joke. And I’m sure you zip your third leg on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
Frankfurter was not part of the pack plan. He didn’t become one of the Nine Old Men in long black dresses ’til long after FDR’s folly, and he took the Rad Jew seat on the Court that Brandeis had held.
Brandeis, almost as much as Hughes, was responsible for vanquishing FDR’s imperial hubris. Brandies detested accretions of centralized power in corporations and in FDR’s New Deal. NRA, for example, was knocked down by a unanimous Court, not by the Four Horsemen malcontents (plus one) who despised modernity. The New Deal’s AAA was killed six to three. Even more than Brandies detested liberal empire building, he destested the sloppiness of liberal legislation. NRA, AAA, and lesser New Deal expedients were, he said, legally and logically indefensible.
(Check an old good book, The American Political Tradition, re the deaths of NRA & AAA. Neo-progressive historian Richard Hofstadter, the book’s author, cites a Brookings study showing that New Deal economic recovery happened only after the New Deal was killed by the Court. That springtime of recovery was brief, but lasted long enough to give FDR his 1936 landslide. Apres the electoral deluge, the deluge … more manic recession with 13+% enemployment, situation normal until Franklin rushed us into a secret war before the war.)
As for the Switch itself, there were two. The first was by Roberts on a state min wage law (I think we were the state) and his switch preceeded FDR’s sudden announcement of his secret plan to pack the Court with six cronies. Franklin said speciously that a 15-member Court would be more efficient than a nine. In other words, the Court was already going liberal (maybe Roberts read the 1936 election returns … as Maine goes, so goes Vermont) before Franklin tried to pack it with liberals.
The second switch was Van Devanter’s. After being assured in mid-1937 that he could retire with full pension, paleocon Van retired. It gave FDR his first appointment, white Hugo Black, a reliable KKK lib.
As for Marbury, proto-Progressive George Norris said during the Court Pack fight that he’d checked the Constitution, front to back, and saw nothing anywhere that gave power to the Court to do judicial review of legislation. Nevertheless, Norris opposed FDR’s risky scheme to pack the Court with Brownies. Opposition to the pack plan was led by another Progressive, Burt Wheeler of Montana.
Piper,
Spitting at the conduct of a president who dragged us into a war with no end is not anything close to spitting at the soldiers.
Herein lies the difference, albeit one you either can’t or refuse to see: My problem is with the politician (Bush) who stubbornly, against the advice of the most senior military leaders, forced us into a battle that we can not win. His ego will not allow him to do the right thing and bring the troops home. (In this effort to be RIGHT he has changed commanders whenever the current commander says something contrary to Bush’s “reality”, he refuses to hear the truth. Instead he continues to attempt to make his own truth. How is that working out?) Because I feel this way, and an overwhelming majority of Americans agree with me by the way, does not mean I don’t support our troops. It does not mean I am not patriotic. It does not mean that I am an appeaser or enabler of the forces that decry our way of life. It simply means that I disagree with the politics that took us to Iraq in the first place. That’s all. Nothing more.
I have served my country. I have proudly worn the uniform. I have seen what you only read about. I have lived what you are only talking out of your ass about. For you to accuse me, and others of like mind, of being something less than patriotic and loyal is disingenuous at best and treasonous if the truth be told.
I have read your posts for weeks. They are well written for the most part, but they are 100% fiction. No exceptions. Your position is NOT supported by fact. It is supported only by lies and omissions.
A year from now, as we elect a Democrat to the Oval Office and tighten the Democrats grip on both houses of congress, this era of lies and omissions will come to an end. Perhaps then you will be able to see the folly and fantasy that has become the trademark of the current administration.
If not, sit back, relax and at least welcome our troops home.
I tried to have it both ways, but BrandEIs is, of course, correct.
Have taken cheap shots here at Little Big Mouth, KIRO 9-noon, but caught part of the Mercer Island proletarian elitist’s act this morning and it was good. So was he. Topic was Ricardo Sanchez, and Ross was one of very few talkers who talked about Ricardo’s full text instead of cherry-picking the good parts that dump on Bush.
Sanchez dumped on everybody, including Democrats and particularly including Big Media, BM. Glad somebody noticed.
Soldiers screw up and get fragged or do time. Generals die, fade away, or screw up and get shit-canned and die. Politicians who screw up get impeached, voted out, or consigned to the ash heap of history. Or they tap dance in the toilet and get busted.
But screw-up journalism just goes on and on. Good of Sanchez to notice and to speak out. The only way he could have made his point more forcefully would have involved dog leashes and Dan Rather.
(Screw-ups on talk radio get dumped, sometimes, but often they snuggle in journalist’s security blankets of immunity. Remember, about six years ago, when Mike Webb referred to the President’s national security advisor as “Jemima” Rice? Somebody later, in another state, got fired for a “Jemima Rice” rap, but Seattle’s Webb got applause.)
OneMan says:
Y’know what, piper? Fuck you. Fuck you and your “if you aren’t slobbering all over the troops, you’re not a patriot” bullshit. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of you bringing up your sons for no apparent reason other than to say, “See? My kids are in the military so I’m better than you. You’re not patriotic. You don’t support the troooops!”
Bull.
I’ll put my patriotism up against yours any time, any day, you pigfucker. I don’t believe you have to go around flying a flag or sporting an “America: Love it or leave it” bumper sticker on your SUV to be a patriot.
I happen to think that it’s patriotic to fight for civil liberties. To put the brakes on an overreaching Executive. To protest a war that we should NEVER have gotten into and now have no good way to get out of.
So fuck you, you fucking blowhard. You make me sick.
Hey Piss Ant how about joining the PEASE CORP and save the world from Al Gore or rescuer the starving in Sudan. Yep any father who supports his sons or daughters in the military has right to bragged all he wants. Now having served my country in the military there is something you need to know, we do not fight for civil liberties. Yep we take an oath to defend the Constitutions from foreign and domestic threats. Oh I forgot you are very selective on what you fight for but never to defend this country. Remember the whole world hates us, dame why are so many Mexicans running across our borders? Yes to free us from those evil Republicans or make you learn Spanish as a second language. Yep Hillary will win the election and come out of the closet claiming to be gay. Poor Bill!!!!!!
klake is a nazi
JCH is a nazi
Klake, again, stop posting while drunk.
Piper,
I just happen to think that when you spend all your time ostensibly spitting at what soldiers and Marines are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan – sure don’t hear much at HA commending them for their work or lauding their successes – then it makes me wonder whether you care or not.
First of all, to be quite frank, I don’t believe there’s anything I can possibly say that would properly honor the sacrifices being made by our men and women in uniform and their families. Every time I try to come up with the words, they feel empty and shallow. So, I choose other ways to honor their sacrifice.
Secondly, lumping Afghanistan and Iraq together rather ignores the fact that no small number of us vew Iraq as a diversion that’s taken away from getting the more important job done in Afghanistan–namely bringing the actual perpetrators of 9/11 to justice and completely eviscerating al Qaeda. Indeed, had we finished the job in Afghanistan first, it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t be facing many of the same difficulties in Iraq that we see now.
Lastly, do you honestly see no difference between spitting at what our service men and women are doing and spitting at the fact that we’ve put them in harms way? If so, then you really are a despicable excuse for a human being.
Klake, how many “Constitutions” did you defend while in the service?
OneMan wants to know…
PS: Good on you for serving. Too bad you’re too stupid to understand what you were defending.
21 Klake:
Have you got your GED yet? It is impossible to decipher your rightwing code. Try spell check. Or download Firefox and there is an automatic spell checker built in.
“Donald Rumsfeld is an incredibly ‘gentile’ person.”
I say he’s a phucking pharisee.
@7 All war is barbarous, in case you didn’t know. A polite way of killing people hasn’t been invented yet.
Now for Lt. Murphy. Having served in Vietnam with a soldier of my unit who sacrificed himself to save others, and received the Medal of Honor for it, I know what valor is. Valor knows no politics, no race, no creed … valor simply is what it is.
I salute Lt. Murphy. A respectful, sharp, hand salute to a man who now forever stands in our memory among “the bravest of the brave.”
@15 MLF, I must respectfully disagree. Most MOH recipients are people who rose to an extremely difficult situation and saved the day by doing something incredibly brave which their orders did not require them to do.
OneMan says:
Klake, how many “Constitutions” did you defend while in the service?
OneMan wants to know…
PS: Good on you for serving. Too bad you’re too stupid to understand what you were defending.
Some Officers ask this same General this question, “What do you mean by Country General?”
Good question! I don’t know what a Philadelphia lawyer might say, but I know what I mean by Country. It is the Constitution! Just the greatest document ever written by man according to an English Prime Minister. You know why we serve the Constitution. Simple! Recall what you said when you got your first commission or got promotion. You take an oath to God to support the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. We are fighting for our Constitution. We are not fighting for any man, president, senator, congressman nor potentate. This is what I mean by Country. Does this answer your question?
Now you know why those soldiers did not die for nothing. Those of you who are not willing to defend this nation will get the honor to die more than a thousand deaths.
By the way who was the General that made the statement above?
Maybe this will help and the Gerneral above goes by the name of George S Patton
OH I FORGOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roger is the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for the Socialist Democrats Party today just like Paul Joseph Goebbels was in Hitler Germany. His Nazi friends taught him the trade when he visited them in jail.
Who was the great American General that made this statement?
Congress is usually void of leadership. I don’t know that Congress will ever have any leadership because they are always running for reelection. But don’t worry about Congress. Just remember we have to live with them. Trying to get reelected every two years breed’s great jumpers and not great leaders. Congressmen and senators are quick to jump on a horse and ride off in a direction they think the people might be going. If a Congressman jumps on a horse going in the wrong direction, he will change horses in a hurry and try to jump at the head of the parade going in the same other direction. Great leaders will always lead. A great leader will never try to jump up to the head of a convoy of troops or even public citizens.
Roger how those bumper sticker sells going, win any wars lately? Did you ever free Tibet? Maybe you can feed the poor in Sudan, or maybe you can get your terrorist friends to visit Bagdad Jim in Seattle. Then you can show them your new silk prayer rug. Roger can you pray?
@25…DJ…
I appreciate your respect of the men and women who serve all of us…left, right, center.
Like you, I regard my words as pathetically inadequate. Then so did Lincoln, and he said so in the Gettysburg Address. So, whenever I encounter one, I simply thank them for their service and sacrifice, then listen to what they have to say.
We have differing views on the war. I view it as not restricted by geographical boundaries. The Taliban and al-Quida aren’t just in Afghanistan. Ask the people of The Philippines, Indonesia, Spain, some South American Countries, Britain, Germany, countries in East Africa, and lots more.
Securing Afghanistan will only mean that Afghanistan is secure; more work will remain. Besides, Ossama bin Laden is probably holed up in Pakistan beyond our reach for a lot of different reasons.
Still…it would be nice to hear, along with condemnations of Dubya, the Administration, and the rest – statements you’re absolutely entitled to make as American citizens – at least a roughly equivalent level of denunciation of the atrocities being committed against our soldiers and Marines.
My oldest son got pinned down in a firefight in a forward operating base in Eastern Afghanistan this past summer. While he’s active duty, his current billet is in a civilian job as a journalist, and he was there in a non-combatant role. Still, the ordnance going off around him wouldn’t have distinguished between a uniform and civvies. A soldier was critically wounded in that fight, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do to help him since he was exposed and under constant fire.
I think about that episode often. And similar ones from other theaters of operation told me by other soldiers and Marines. There’s simply no way any of us can adequately appreciate what these men and women do for us.
Pfc. Desmond Doss…I mentioned him in an earlier post. Awarded the MOH for bravery during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. A devout Seventh Day Adventist, he was a pacifist. Nothing would ever occasion him to pick up a weapon and kill anyone. Yet for days he not only exposed himself to repeated enemy fire, but rescued many critically wounded soldiers. He also refused care for his own wounds even to the extent of getting off a stretcher so that another wounded soldier could receive care.
The citation accompanying his MOH cannot be read without deep emotion.
The service and sacrifice of the men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, to be appropriately honored and respected, must be regarded in almost the same light as Pfc. Doss’. Sure, most won’t undergo anything close to what he endured, but these 19 and 20-year old young people (my sons are 30 and 22) are entitled to our unconditional admiration, respect and gratitude…
And they’re entitled to whatever we can do to make them successful in their work.
The Piper
Jeebus, Piper, there you go again nattering on and on about something that nobody is arguing with you about. Our soldiers == good. Yay. Ribbons, confetti all around. Hey, if it makes you feel better, I guess it’s only electrons.
Can we please move on now?
@18…KVD…
Just how many aliases have you?
I hadn’t read your follow-up posts on the Jay Winik thing until just now. Thank you for bringing them to my attention. I found them thought provoking and interesting.
It seems that a lot of modern historical scholarship gets caught up in this stuff. You mentioned Doris Kearns Goodwin, a good and reliable liberal. Also Stephen Ambrose and Jefferson scholar, Joseph Ellis, had their…issues.
Candidly, I found the discussion of “The Switch in Time” pretty interesting with good things said by everyone who weighed in.
SCOTUS did undergo a change no matter how you might describe it. The retirement of Justice Willis Van Devanter to be replaced by Alabama Senator and former KKK member Hugo Black (who never went to law school) was a watershed moment for many reasons.
A died-in-the-wool New Dealer, Black was Roosevelt’s man. Yet in the “modern” (60’s and 70’s) he wasn’t someone you could pigeonhole. He voted in favor of the NY Times in the Pentagon Papers case, yet he, along with John Marshall Harlen, dissented in Griswold v. Connecticut, which was an essential precursor to Roe v. Wade. He probably would have dissented in Roe had he not died.
Probably one of his most hair-pulling votes was in the case dealing with the lowering of the national voting age from 21 to 18. When Pres. Nixon signed the bill, he expressed grave reservations about its constitutionality. SCOTUS split 4 – 4 with Hugo casting the deciding, split the baby, vote to strike down lowering the voting age in non-federal elections while sustaining it in federal ones. Scared the crap out of Congress and the states such that a Constitutional Amendment never passed out of Congress and was ratified by the states so quickly.
Like Lincoln during the Civil War, FDR probably weighed in the balance the immediacy of doing something against the niceties of the Constitution and elected to address the former at the expense of the latter, hence the 100 Days.
Still, there were still some remnants of Lochner v. New York Substantive Due Process thinking and attitudes kicking around, and they did play a role in some of the early New Deal legislation being struck down.
Whether there is a single reason for “The Switch in Time” is open to much debate. Reasonable people can disagree…reasonably. Suffice to say it came “just in time.” To those who don’t believe in coincidence and who know that SCOTUS justices read the paper like everyone else…Well, “just in time.”
In 1936, there was a factional 4 – 4 split with Justice Roberts a more-or-less swing vote. He voted to strike down the Agricultural Adjustment Act, but to uphold something else.
In re Marbury v. Madison and Mr. Norris…It’s one thing to say something isn’t in the Constitution, therefore it has no business being government’s business. It’s entirely another thing to say that the Constitution is functionally unworkable unless a standard of reasonableness is applied.
Chief Justice Marchall, in Marbury, held that it was implicit in the role of the federal courts to adjudicate upon the Constitutionality of federal statutes even the the document was explicitely silent on whether courts had that power.
His reasoning, essentially, was that if they didn’t, what’s the point of having federal courts or limits upon Congress in the Constitution? Hence the Judiciary Act’s conflict with the Constitution rendered it an impermissable act.
BTW…still waiting for some juicy rulings on the 10th Amendment.
I, too, took several Constitutional Law classes as an undergraduate. At Western from Prof. Dick S. Payne, who had an abiding dislike for the Warren Court. I also took more such classes post-graduate.
I freely admit to being of the “Originalist” school of interpretation; the idea of a “living document” scares the crap out of me. Does that mean we can make it mean anything we want? Thank you…no!
BTW…President Eisenhower said the worst mistake he made in eight-years was the appointment of Earl Warrent to the Court. His second worst was the appointment of William J. Brennan, but that’s a personal opinion.
William O. Douglas was awful! His opinions read like novels, they’re so made up as he went along. Towards the end of his career and life, Hugo Black found less and less common ground with Douglas.
So…anyone…thoughts on the Wilmot Proviso?
The Piper
Wilmot Proviso. Wasn’t he the guy …
Excellent comments as usual, Piper. In a deleted comment I suggested that you, as the only triple-digit-IQ contributor to HA, were engaged in the lonely and impossible task of trying to raise the collective HA IQ into double digits.
Goodwin & Ambrose: I suspect both were sandbagged by incompetent and nameless grad research assistants who failed to post full citations on their 3 X 5s. Winik’s theft-as-the-sincerest-form-of-flatterly approach to scholarship is of another phylum and order or magnitude. And it hurts to say it, because his worldview is probably close to ours. (Sent my little prelim pile to Fred Barnes at Weekly Standard, to which Winik contributes, and got no answer and no respect.)
My comparison of Winik’s words to those of predecessors was exhausting but not exhaustive. I knew almost immediately that many of his words were Paul Johnson’s, but I pulled the Burns/Ward book from SPL’s shelves at random. Imagine my surprise to open Ward and to find more Winik. After an hour my eyes gave out and I gave up. Think I proved my point, and am sure that neocon Jay borrowed as liberally elsewhere.
I know the rationale of The Hundred Days. Remember, though, that FDR’s braintruster Ray Moley later confessed that the revolutionary 100-Day New Deal was a continuation of policies already in place under HCH. Remember also that the New Deal’s twin towers, NRA and AAA, were invalidated by solid majorities of the Court. NRA’s death was by unanimous decision.
In 1936 and early 1937 the Court had only four rabid/avid right-wingers. It also had Stone and Brandeis from the progressive left, and three mods. Sort of like the Court breaks now. That all Nine Old Men slapped down the New Deal’s main event, NRA, is an important actual fact, but history isn’t written by the victors; it’s written by the Democrats. They’ve been successful as mischaracterizing the Court fight as enlightened liberalism v. knuckle-dragging reaction.
Marbury: Mentioned it only because one of the zippers mentioned it on the other thread, and because it’s extraconstitutionally apropos to discussions of 1937.
Originalism, strictly constructed: What part of living and breathing don’t you understand? (And isn’t it droll that expanisive liberals, who want our Constitution to live and breathe and to be as elastic as Silly Putty, become straitlaced, straight-jacket strict constructionists about the Geneva Conventions, insisting that the Conventions are so sacrosanct they must be extended to stateless, un-uniformed combatants and terrorists. Oh, wait, silly me … one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. That’s why Boze reported today that our soldiers in Iraq were forced by FISA to wait nine hours and 38 minutes to secure a warrant to eavesdrop on Iraqi terrorists who had kidnapped and tortured American soldiers. That’s the modern, enlightened way to do war. You do it with Maranda lawyers, just like Molly Ivins told us to.)
Ike: Remember that the internment of 110,000 Americans and legally resident aliens was a progressive project of liberal FDR and … progressive Earl Warren.
William O. Douglas wasn’t a putz. He was a dangerous putz. But he had good taste in frisky young women. Bring ’em on.
Aging children of a certain age, about 100, will recall that, when they stared in horror or disbelief at the breakfast gruel in their bowls or the lunchtime offal on their plates, they were sternly enjoined by their stern post-Victorian mothers to “remember the starving Armenians.”
Granny Pelosi remembers the starving Armenians. She’s determined to destroy what’s left of our foreign policy and our war by censuring Turkey for its 1915 mistreatment of Armenia. The young Turks and the old Turks are not amused. Most of our Iraq war is routed through Turkey, which resents Pelosi’s disrespect, and is recalibrating the cost of being our friend.
(What’s with Democrats and their mania for beating up our allies? Or killing them, as JFK probably did with Diem? Why don’t you save your exquisite indignation for a vile and vicious modern-day travesty, e.g. … http://www.nypost.com/seven/10.....ost_gi.htm )
Fuck. FISA. Amen.
@37…E&P…
Really…you need to settle upon a name!
Initially I wasn’t sure how to take you. Since 99.9% of the HA regulars qualify for regular office hours at Western State, I approach each as I would someone who has extensive experience wearing shackles.
But your use of Paul Johnson was a clue. No friend of the left, to be certain, is he!
When I read Winik’s book, two things impressed me, prose puloining aside: (1) his characterizations of Lincoln during the war when he hadn’t a friend in the world, and (2) the fascinating discussion of the real prospect that Southern soldiers would melt into the countryside and engage in a protracted guerilla war of insurgency.
Winik’s discussion of (2) included, as I recall, referances to other pre and post-Civil War situations in which that had happened, which, frankly, led me to wonder why it wasn’t properly anticipated in Iraq.
Much of what’s taught in re the Civil War ends with Lee and Grant at Appomattox; at the end of that day the war went poof! But Lee only surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, not Johnston’s forces further south, N.B. Forrest’s in what was called the west, as well as other scattered remnants.
That Lee had the moral authority to set an example was as significant as anything. Had it been up to Jefferson Davis, the war would have continued as a slow-bleed, hit and run campaign of attrition.
SCOTUS in, say, 1936 was 4 – 1 – 4. Brandeis, Cardozo, Stone, & C.J. C.E. Hughes – Roberts – McReynolds, Vandevanter, Sutherland, Butler.
I think the progenitor in this thread of the discussion on judicial review was a comparison of it to stuff the federal government does that’s not specifically authorized in the Constitution. But it’s a superficial comparison since one is a legal theory that makes the Constitutional checks and balances separation of powers concept work, while the other is simply usurping either the rights of the states or the people.
Earl Warren: author of perhaps the single largest racist act of the 20th-Century.
William O. Douglas: Goose Prairie’s answer to “Wanna Walnetto???” had to have been the dirtiest old man on the public payroll. I think he had a mathematical formula that determined when to dump a wife and how young the next should be. Something like when the current one’s age was a certain percentage of Douglas’, it was time to dump her for one whose percentage figure was less than one-half the previous wife.
His last wife was young enough to be his granddaughter. He really was a lech…
Agree in re slavish insistence to the jots and tittles of foreign courts over whom the people of the U.S. have no authority or sovereignty. What’s to prevent some of these courts from attempting to exercise jurisdiction over cases and controversies that are exclusively the province of U.S. courts? Nothing…it’s only a matter of time.
I still say Ex Parte Quirin ought to be required reading for those who contend that stateless terrorists ought to be accorded Geneva Convention protection and access, at public expense, to U.S. courts.
If FDR was president, most in Gitmo would have been tried and executed years ago. But then, he was a Democrat with deep regard for human rights.
Query: under what name will you next post?
The Piper
Reponse to Piper posted at Late Nite Open Thread … how many Piper pickled posts appeared since pickled Piper post-it posts were posted?
The Reichert Will Rise Again!