dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Many of us believe, further, that when the government perpetuates the notion that blacks need help from the government to be on an equal footing, it drives a wedge into a rift that would heal on its own.

This is an ideology of negation and inaction. You've made it very clear on many occasions that you don't believe in government intervention, and at best you'll reluctantly support programs that have proven successful (Social Security). And your notion that the the rift "would heal on its own" is pretty patently ahistorical, for the reasons that kimbatiste noted. People generally act in their own interests, and most of the time, sadly, in the absence of legal force to go in the other direction, that will work toward perpetuating segregation.

Additionally, as Phan Paul points out, what's happened here seems like an act of judicial activism that conservatives under other circumstances would abjure. Which is why I deem Bush's two appointees hypocrites as well as ideologues, based on their statements during confirmation.

Given the general leftward trend in our society as a response to the stunning failure of Bush/DeLay pseudoconservatism, it's not hard for me to see this Roberts Court becoming as seriously out of step with the political consensus as was the early FDR-era Court.

First, the easy point. I see judicial activism as using the courts to forward an agenda (no matter how noble) by thwartng the Constitution, be it directly as in ruling for affirmative action, or indirectly by inventing rights to be enforced. This ruling simply enforces the Constitution, and in fact reverses past judicial activism.

A major flaw in the thinking of the left (and sometimes on the right) is that we can eliminate bad attitudes by passing laws against them. My hope is that someday those on the right will learn that you cannot make people behave straight by making it illegal to be gay; you cannot fix the drug problem by banning drugs any more than prohibition fixed the problems of alcohol. You cannot make society safe by outlawing guns; not in a country with the gun history and porous borders of the USA.

You cannot make white people embrace nonwhite people by passing laws on racial quotas or affirmative action. The progress of non-white Americans, measured by test scores, home ownership, or income, was soaring up until the time of the new wave of legislation intended to help them yet more. Progress since then, however, has been slow. All of the great society programs, designed with such fine intentions, have had no effect or a reverse effect.

Real market forces would do much better. In a global economy, no employer of any import could dare risk refusing to consider a whole race of potential employees. And if he did, his rival would prosper. If you look at areas where there has been no government props -- sports, entertainment -- you see the complete rainbow of success. I can only imagine the mess that Hollywood or the Yankees would be if they had to follow government quotas and set-asides.

kimbatiste wrote:2. This leads to my second reason that I do not believe racism will ever heal itself. The numbers support the racist viewpoint. Whites are much more likely to go to college and have a hire wage. Blacks are much more likely to spend time in prison (44% of all inmates are African-American). My position is that through a decrease in governmental intervention, those numbers will continue to provide racists with a self-fulfilling prophecy that will engender itself through the generations. If someone would think that federal or state aid to improve the quality of inner-city schools would be a sign that blacks need help to be on equal footing then they already think of blacks as an inferior race (in my view that is the definition of racist). No one is saying that inner-city (and lets be honest that has become synonymous with black) schools should be country clubs and white schools left unfunded. But I fully support over-funding black schools to get them to a comparable level to those of their white counterparts. Otherwise we are in post-Reconstruction mindsight.

I wish it were so simple that we could fix it with dollars.

There are myriad problems in the inner city, and they are mainly the doings of the federal government.

The "war on drugs" has made drugs scarce (relatively, compared to legal stuff) and hence made the drug trade lucrative. Persons in poverty are drawn to the easy money. And the high stakes involved make it a violent trade, and it infects the entire community with fear and danger. And it puts a lot of young blacks males in prison or underground.

The schools in the inner city are indeed lousy, but by and large the union-protected administrators have little incentive to do better. Provide genuine school choice (go ahead, include the white suburbs in the school choice plan, so that de-segregation is chosen, not legislated) and crappy schools will vanish.

The biggest single factor to being a success in life is having two loving parents. After decades of well-intentioned federal programs that gave unwed mothers incentive to crank out babies and stay unwed, the federal government taught inner city males that they have no role in child rearing. Dad is dead, dealing, or in jail; mom is drinking with her new boyfriend and has no plans to seek work; another generation raised by an overmatched grandma.

All of this family-destroying behavior, all incentivized by federal goverment policy.

TomatoPie wrote:You cannot make white people embrace nonwhite people by passing laws on racial quotas or affirmative action. The progress of non-white Americans, measured by test scores, home ownership, or income, was soaring up until the time of the new wave of legislation intended to help them yet more. Progress since then, however, has been slow. All of the great society programs, designed with such fine intentions, have had no effect or a reverse effect.

The last sentences are factually wrong, as I suspect you know.

So let's talk about the first sentence. Two simple questions:

1) Do you think there is more, less, or about the same level of racism in the former states of the Confederacy today, or in 1953? How about 1962 (before the major civil rights acts)?

2) In the absence of Brown v. Board, and the Johnson-era civil rights laws, how do you believe the answer to #1 would be different?

Similar questions could be asked of the statistical measures you note. My premise is that, over time, government action can "take root" and really change attitudes, on the individual and community level. The contention of one side in the decision handed down today is that when you have kids of different races in school together, they tend to grow up with less fear, suspicion and ignorance of each other. This strikes me as more of a sure route to lessening discrimination than your ideologically derived paean to "market forces."

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:You cannot make white people embrace nonwhite people by passing laws on racial quotas or affirmative action. The progress of non-white Americans, measured by test scores, home ownership, or income, was soaring up until the time of the new wave of legislation intended to help them yet more. Progress since then, however, has been slow. All of the great society programs, designed with such fine intentions, have had no effect or a reverse effect.

The last sentences are factually wrong, as I suspect you know.

So let's talk about the first sentence. Two simple questions:

1) Do you think there is more, less, or about the same level of racism in the former states of the Confederacy today, or in 1953? How about 1962 (before the major civil rights acts)?

2) In the absence of Brown v. Board, and the Johnson-era civil rights laws, how do you believe the answer to #1 would be different?

Similar questions could be asked of the statistical measures you note. My premise is that, over time, government action can "take root" and really change attitudes, on the individual and community level. The contention of one side in the decision handed down today is that when you have kids of different races in school together, they tend to grow up with less fear, suspicion and ignorance of each other. This strikes me as more of a sure route to lessening discrimination than your ideologically derived paean to "market forces."

My last 2 sentences are factually accurate. so let's turn to your two questions.

1) There is less racism today than there was in 53 or 62.

2) I'm right on board with you. Both Brown vs Bd Ed and the Johnson-era civil rights legislation were in complete alignment with our Constitution. Both were immensely helpful in furthering positive race relations.

3) We'd be much further along were it not for 40+ years of bad policy forged largely by activist, liberal courts.

Where we have gone wrong is the extra-constitutional stuff piled on by well-intentioned activists. They felt so good about helping black people, they just wanted to do more, Constitution be damned. You thought we were magnanimous making you equal? Hell, we'll pass laws to make you better than equal! And all of that has backfired badly. It's an old cliche, but the left keeps trying to legislate equal outcomes. The irony is that equal outcomes would result so much sooner if we'd allow equal opportunity to work on its own.

No, not overnight. No, not perfectly or fairly or quickly. But after HALF A CENTURY of the failure of do-good extra-constitutional social legislation, why not allow basic equality and fairness to work on its own merits?

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:You cannot make white people embrace nonwhite people by passing laws on racial quotas or affirmative action. The progress of non-white Americans, measured by test scores, home ownership, or income, was soaring up until the time of the new wave of legislation intended to help them yet more. Progress since then, however, has been slow. All of the great society programs, designed with such fine intentions, have had no effect or a reverse effect.

The last sentences are factually wrong, as I suspect you know.

Just some numbers:

...affirmative action’s proponents seem utterly unaware that black progress was already well underway, and proceeding at a brisk pace, long before the era of affirmative action. In fact, between 1940 and 1960 African Americans were, in many ways, improving their position faster than they would after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or after the dawn of widespread affirmative action programs in the early 1970s. The pre-1960 economic progress of blacks was in large part a result of their massive migration from the rural south to northern cities, where the employment and earning opportunities open to them were far superior. Without a doubt, the strides they made in the space of just two decades must be ranked among the greatest achievements of any demographic group in American history an ascent they began from the very bottom rung of the social ladder.

Whereas in 1940 only 10 percent of black men held middle-class jobs, by 1960 this figure had more than doubled, reaching 23 percent. Between 1940 and 1950 the earnings of the average black man, in real dollars adjusted for inflation, grew by a remarkable 75 percent (about twice the rate at which white male incomes grew), and increased by another 45 percent during the 1950s. By 1960, black male incomes were 2.5 times greater than they had been twenty years earlier, and black female incomes were 2.3 times greater. In two decades, the black poverty rate had virtually been cut in half.

Apart from income, there were additional barometers of black Americans’ growing prosperity. For instance, between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of blacks who owned their homes rose by 65 percent, as compared to a 42 percent rise for whites. In 1940 black life expectancy at birth was just 53 years, fully 11 years lower than the white figure. By 1960 the black average had risen by ten and a half years, while the corresponding white figure had increased by only half that much. During that same twenty-year period, the percentage of blacks who attained high-school diplomas more than tripled, while the corresponding figure for whites grew at only one-fifth that rate.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1347

Imagine. Black progess without hand-holding by the Federal Government. How could that be, with all that unchecked discrimination?

TomatoPie wrote:Black progess without hand-holding by the Federal Government. How could that be, with all that unchecked discrimination?

That wasn't the part I took issue with, as (again) I think you know.

Nothing--nothing--that happened, economically speaking, between 1940 and the mid-'60s or so can be taken as baseline. The economic advantage we had by virtue of not having a war fought on our soil explains everything: labor/management relations, the fact that a top marginal tax rate upwards of 90 percent didn't throttle the economy, the terrible television of that decade, etc.

Also, I suspect the large bulk of those gains to African-Americans happened outside a certain region that was the target of civil rights activity. Doubt that's a point Mr. Horowitz--who's maybe the most hateful agent of the right outside of Coulter--brings up.

Meanwhile, I await the response to my questions. Though I guess we could continue to talk past each other.

EDIT: I see you did answer the questions. Sorry--missed that. (As a side note... it's probably terrible for my health to both engage in a political argument and follow the Phils in a tight extra-inning game. My widow will be in touch...)

I think we have (as often happens) an irreconcilable disagreement on this one. I believe affirmative action and "the Great Society" in general (not in all the specifics) have benefitted the country. You don't. So be it.

My other point (which I didn't make explicitly) was that today's decision IMO is more like Brown, less like the policy interventions you take issue with. I doubt we can convince each other on that one either, so perhaps we should close it here.

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:You cannot make white people embrace nonwhite people by passing laws on racial quotas or affirmative action. The progress of non-white Americans, measured by test scores, home ownership, or income, was soaring up until the time of the new wave of legislation intended to help them yet more. Progress since then, however, has been slow. All of the great society programs, designed with such fine intentions, have had no effect or a reverse effect.

The last sentences are factually wrong, as I suspect you know.

So let's talk about the first sentence. Two simple questions:

1) Do you think there is more, less, or about the same level of racism in the former states of the Confederacy today, or in 1953? How about 1962 (before the major civil rights acts)?

2) In the absence of Brown v. Board, and the Johnson-era civil rights laws, how do you believe the answer to #1 would be different?

Similar questions could be asked of the statistical measures you note. My premise is that, over time, government action can "take root" and really change attitudes, on the individual and community level. The contention of one side in the decision handed down today is that when you have kids of different races in school together, they tend to grow up with less fear, suspicion and ignorance of each other. This strikes me as more of a sure route to lessening discrimination than your ideologically derived paean to "market forces."

No, not overnight. No, not HAMELS or fairly or quickly. But after HALF A CENTURY of the failure of do-good extra-constitutional social legislation, why not allow basic equality and fairness to work on its own merits?

We gave over 60 years trying the non-activist, hands-off approach to equality. I submit that there has been more progress in the last half century then in the previous 60 years. African-American college enrollments at an all time high, black family income at an all time high, black unemployment at an all time low. Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Barack Obama. One statistic I find interesting is that pre-Brown, there were 4 Black congressmen elected from post-Reconstruction until Brown. Since Brown, 86. With 200 years of being enslaved, two generations of trying to make up for it doesn't seem lilke such a substantial commitment.

TomatoPie wrote:Buffett is a great man in many ways, and also a caring man. He is obviously uncomfortable about the wealth he has amassed.

this is fatuous nonsense. You really have nothing on which to base this assertion, other than your skewed notions about how a guy with the loot buffet has should feel.

It's fine to encourage philanthropy, but America is prosperous precisely because we have few restraints against the accumulation of wealth.

Some would find this pompous self-deluding tautology worthy only of contempt.

In me, it inspires pity

I've actually had trouble falling asleep tonight thinking about the Court's decision today. The more and more I think about it, the more convinced I become that this Conservative "belief" in strict constructionalist judiciary is the most hypocritical BS ever spouted. Let us just call a spade a spade and admit that when they say liberal activist judges they mean only decisions that they don't agree with. I often when the last was that these people actually read the Constitution.

How come conservatives were not denouncing Bush's funded of faith based initiatives? After all, Amendment I clearly says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Under the Lemon test, this did not have a secular purpose and obvious creating excessive government entanglement with religion. It does not matter whether the funding supported the establishment of a particular religion but just religion in general. Of course, respecting the literal words of the Constitution meant nothing here.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, BUT upon probable cause." In the face of that seemingly unambiguous edict, any judge upholding the Constitutionality of the Patriot Act would appear to me the most obvious kind of activist. And yet we heard nothing.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution... are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Last time I flipped through the Constitution (tonight), the power to regulate marriage was not delegated to the federal government. It is up to the individual States to regulate marriage in the manner they see fit. Yet somehow, following the Reserve Clause, probably the most basic of the Amendment, a judge in Massachusetts is a liberal activist judge. Why? For exercising his Constitutional role of deciding for a state matter for a state?

My favorite example of the conservative activist judge however is Bush v. Gore. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." No where does it say that the right to vote shall not denied or abridged as long as there is a previously delineated system for conducting a recount. The overarching theme of Voting Rights jurisprudence is One Person One Vote. Yet, the conservative activist court in 2000 added a new procedure that went outside the confines of the 15th Amendment, Section 1 quoted in whole above.

The most common assault upon "liberal activist judges" is that they create new rights not included in the Constitution. I guess these people never got far enough to read Amendment IX. "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE." Perhaps the courts are not creating new rights but further enumerating those retained by the people.

If we are going to be faithful to the literal words of the Constitution, fine. But let us do so unwaveringly. Let us stop suspending the rules of grammar and sentence construction and read the Second Amendment as we would any other sentence in the English language. You cannot simply separate out the second half "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" while still allowing the first half to make sense. If I asked someone not familiar with the Constitution what this sentence means the answer would be unanimous. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed IN ORDER to keep a well armed militia because it is important to the security of a free state. One cannot pretend that the end of the need for a well armed militia has no bearing on the sentence. If I said that "you should stay away from your roommate because he has mono" and then later told you that your roommate no longer has mono, clearly there is no longer any need to stay away from him.

The point of course, is that I do not think those who argue for a strict textualist view of the Constitution actually mean what they say. Nor should they. The words of the Constitution may be stagnant but they were not meant to be read according to 1780's parlance in perpetuity. If so, then the strict textualists would actually be against today's decision. After all, the 14th Amendment speaks only in terms of laws. There was no law in Seattle, this was school board program and decision. Therefore, today's court expanded the meaning of laws and creating new rights protecting citizens from not just laws. But of course, laws in today's world means any state action.

Let there be no mistake that the Court today overturned a plethora of landmark cases and there are sure to be dozens to follow. To me, that is activism at its worst. As Justice Breyer said today to Roberts and Alito, "Never before, have so few undone so much in so little time." The most applicable definition of discrimination is "unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice." Therefore, a negative result is required. to someone or else it wouldn't be unfair. So when today's court holds that forces white students to go to school with black students is discrimination it is basically saying that is unfair or harmful to the white students to have to attend school with black students. I wonder if the Court thinks it is harmful to white people to make them eat in the same restaurants or drink from the same fountain as black people.

My real disgust today is not with Alito or Roberts. To those who feel for their act during the confirmation hearings and didn't see this coming, well let's just I've got some real estate you might be interested in. Instead, as I lie here unable to sleep, I wonder how Clarence Thomas is resting tonight. Is it even occurring to him that Thurgood Marshall is undoubtedly rolling over in his grave at what has become of Clarence Thomas. I understand party loyalty as much as the next guy but could this man have any less of a backbone. I might be a Democrat, but that does not mean I would support Democratic legislation that would require all Jewish people to live in ghettos. How can a black man sit in Thurgood Marshall's seat on the Court and allow the latent racism of today to stand? It would be like the Israeli's sending Bobby Fisher as their representative at the U.N.

I'm not really concerned if some of you dismiss this as simply a liberal rant. Regardless of what the Bushes might think, I am proud to be a liberal. I just wish my political party was as well.

Sadly, I must follow up the novel with this link, but I love it and it will be my new bored at work site...

http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

kimbatiste wrote:I'm not really concerned if some of you dismiss this as simply a liberal rant. Regardless of what the Bushes might think, I am proud to be a liberal. I just wish my political party was as well.

It surely is a liberal rant, but no cause for shame. Your heart is in the right place.

I hope you might find some comfort in knowing that thinking conservatives who embrace this decision have the same exact hopes for society that you do; we just see a different means of getting there. And I hope this Court and you both are around long enough to see how much better it will be when government stops race meddling.

TomatoPie wrote:

kimbatiste wrote:I'm not really concerned if some of you dismiss this as simply a liberal rant. Regardless of what the Bushes might think, I am proud to be a liberal. I just wish my political party was as well.

It surely is a liberal rant, but no cause for shame. Your heart is in the right place.

I hope you might find some comfort in knowing that thinking conservatives who embrace this decision have the same exact hopes for society that you do; we just see a different means of getting there. And I hope this Court and you both are around long enough to see how much better it will be when government stops race meddling.

But see it's not really a liberal rant at all. It doesn't take as its basis any higher notion of right and wrong, it merely follows the text of hte Constitution. I still want to know how people supporting the court's decision yesterday can have any legitimacy if they didn't also decry the decisions above. I guess what I'm asking is there a difference to you in the situations above and the Seattle School Dist. case. It seems the only distinction to me is that the line of cases I used all deal with expansion of government power at the expense of personal liberties. I hope that is not the case since it would mean that these true Constitutionalists would be supporting a limited reading of the Bill of Rights, which is completely antithetical to their origination.

kimbatiste wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

kimbatiste wrote:I'm not really concerned if some of you dismiss this as simply a liberal rant. Regardless of what the Bushes might think, I am proud to be a liberal. I just wish my political party was as well.

It surely is a liberal rant, but no cause for shame. Your heart is in the right place.

I hope you might find some comfort in knowing that thinking conservatives who embrace this decision have the same exact hopes for society that you do; we just see a different means of getting there. And I hope this Court and you both are around long enough to see how much better it will be when government stops race meddling.

But see it's not really a liberal rant at all. It doesn't take as its basis any higher notion of right and wrong, it merely follows the text of hte Constitution. I still want to know how people supporting the court's decision yesterday can have any legitimacy if they didn't also decry the decisions above.

You had a ton of arguments in your prior post. Let me know which you find incongruous with a reading of yesterday's ruling as constructionist.

Many times I've heard the "unenumerated rights" argument in defense of the Court's decision on abortion. I don't accept that our founders intended the courts of the future to have such a blank check to imagine and declare the rights du jour requisite for their most urgent social engineering. I'm not arguing that such rights may not exist, but that the Court has no place in inventing them.

TomatoPie wrote:

kimbatiste wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

kimbatiste wrote:I'm not really concerned if some of you dismiss this as simply a liberal rant. Regardless of what the Bushes might think, I am proud to be a liberal. I just wish my political party was as well.

It surely is a liberal rant, but no cause for shame. Your heart is in the right place.

I hope you might find some comfort in knowing that thinking conservatives who embrace this decision have the same exact hopes for society that you do; we just see a different means of getting there. And I hope this Court and you both are around long enough to see how much better it will be when government stops race meddling.

But see it's not really a liberal rant at all. It doesn't take as its basis any higher notion of right and wrong, it merely follows the text of hte Constitution. I still want to know how people supporting the court's decision yesterday can have any legitimacy if they didn't also decry the decisions above.

You had a ton of arguments in your prior post. Let me know which you find incongruous with a reading of yesterday's ruling as constructionist.

Many times I've heard the "unenumerated rights" argument in defense of the Court's decision on abortion. I don't accept that our founders intended the courts of the future to have such a blank check to imagine and declare the rights du jour requisite for their most urgent social engineering. I'm not arguing that such rights may not exist, but that the Court has no place in inventing them.

The Court has not created a right to abortion but is part of the right to privacy that they have enumerated. A state can not place an undue burden on the ability to get an abortion in the first trimester. Anytime, after that they can basically do whatever they like so long as any law contains an exception for abortions in the case of rape and for the health of the mother. Not much of a right.

But to narrow the discussion somewhat. Please tell me:

1) How in your view, supporting the approach to the Constitution yesterday, the Patriot Act can be held Constitutional in light of the 4th Amendment to be free from unreasonable searches without warrant.

2) http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/. How is this Constitutional? Please read this article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews.

Let me preference to say that Chief Justice Roberts' law here is decidedly incorrect. Yes, tax players lack standing to sue simply for being taxpayers EXCEPT when challenging actions under the Establishment Clause. The Court rests this fallacy on the fact that the funding came from Congress but not pursuant to a law. Of course, no where else has the Court interpreted "laws" in the Constitution to actually only refer to laws.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

The Court has granted certiorari to two appeals from Gitmo prisoners to be heard in the Fall term. I hope the Hamden decision enjoys its summer because come October it will have a plot next to Bowers v. Hardwick in the overturned graveyard.

kimbatiste wrote:But to narrow the discussion somewhat. Please tell me:

1) How in your view, supporting the approach to the Constitution yesterday, the Patriot Act can be held Constitutional in light of the 4th Amendment to be free from unreasonable searches without warrant.

2) http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci/. How is this Constitutional? Please read this article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews.

I don't have especially strong feelings on the subject here. I'm a little uneasy about funding faith-based organizations, not out of church/state issues, but due to the difficulty in identifying what is a faith and what faiths and faith-based organizations are worthy. And while the charities of major religions have proven to be far more effective than any government program, their dependence on government funding could render them just as bloated and ineffectual as the government itself.

On the larger issue, such taxpayer funding comes nowhere close to "establishment of religion," by which our founders clearly meant that the government shall not direct the citizens in choice of worship.

I can't debate you on the logic used by the court to reject the case; I concede it's out of my league. But I do know that the four liberal judges have been willing time and time again to disregard the Constitution in order to further the causes they favor; Judge Roberts, not so.

Some polling numbers:

* 51% view the Democratic Party favorably; only 36% look favorably on the GOP.

* 57% think it's good for the Country that Dems run Congress.

* Only 42% approve of what Dem leaders have done thus far; 49% disapprove.

The poll also suggests that right now Dems still hold an advantage heading into the 2008 Congressional races. Fifty-three percent say they'd vote for a Dem candidate in their district if the elections were held today; 41% would cast their vote for the Republican.
...
Bush: Approve 31%, Disapprove 60%
Cong. GOP: Approve 30%, Disapprove 56%
Cong. Dems: Approve 36%, Disapprove 49%

In other words, the public is not exactly clamoring for a return of DeLay and Frist. I might add that the disapproval of Congressional Democrats seems to have as much to do with liberal frustration that Pelosi and Reid can't end Bush's Splendid Little War on their own as anything else.

For Democrats, Bush 'n' Dick are the gift that keeps on giving. The only way they can screw it up next year is by nominating Hillary, whom more than half the country detests. They'll probably do just that.

Oh, and the source of these numbers is Fox News.

dajafi wrote:For Democrats, Bush 'n' Dick are the gift that keeps on giving. The only way they can screw it up next year is by nominating Hillary, whom more than half the country detests. They'll probably do just that.

It seems pretty certain that the next President will be a Democrat. It Hillary gets the nomination, she'd win.

But I said 2 years ago, and stick by it, that the next President is going to be Albert Milhouse Gore.

TomatoPie wrote:But I do know that the four liberal judges have been willing time and time again to disregard the Constitution in order to further the causes they favor; Judge Roberts, not so.

This is a "nyah nyah, I know you are but what am I" response, way below the finely argued post kimbatiste made taking the opposite view. You're better than that, TP.

Roberts is a really contemptible jurist. Again and again, he's spoken about seeking consensus and respecting precedent, in the tradition of John Marshall. I forget who said it, but the quote was something like "He can be a great Chief Justice, or he can be a right-wing hack. He can't do both."

Seems like Roberts has made his choice, and I suspect one result--beyond the damage he's doing to our laws and our society--will be that the confirmation process is going to get even more debased. Any Democrat who believes the sort of lies Roberts spouted at his hearings will face an enraged activist base, and understandably so.

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:For Democrats, Bush 'n' Dick are the gift that keeps on giving. The only way they can screw it up next year is by nominating Hillary, whom more than half the country detests. They'll probably do just that.

It seems pretty certain that the next President will be a Democrat. It Hillary gets the nomination, she'd win.

But I said 2 years ago, and stick by it, that the next President is going to be Albert Milhouse Gore.

That would be fine by me, and he has lost weight, so... but I suspect that he'd need to go on the Unity '08 ticket, because the Clinton Gang might have almost as firm a grip on the Dem Apparatus as the Other Royal Family does in their party.

I wish both clans would be banished to a remote island somewhere, along with all their retainers, to run against each other in perpetuity.