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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (13569)	11/8/1997 11:30:00 AM
From: MSB	Respond to of 108807

Well I can see, judging by the blues, that ya all are in the midst of some serious debating so I'll stay out of the fray lest I confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt my total lack of knowledge concerning all the afore mentioned subject matter. Just dropped by to say Hi. Was glad to see you pick up the ball and learn how you came to be with Mr. CGB. Not to distract, but is there anything which stands out as unforgettable during the unification ceremony? Try this one on for size. The minister died the day of our, S.J. and I, wedding, but we didn't learn of it until someone began to wonder where he was at. Everyone is in their respective places waiting for the ceremony to start and there is no Rev. Being a bit on the superstitious side I was beginning to wonder if this wasn't some kind of a bad omen. As it so happened, unbeknownced to us, there were two other ministers in the audience. One stepped up to the plate and we proceeded to hit a home run. Another time Hope you're well

To: Grainne who wrote (13569)	11/9/1997 12:32:00 PM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Since you were wistfully speaking of your fondness for the Warren Court, here's some musings by Joe Sobran on one of that Court's stalwarts, the late, unlamented William Brennan: (Brennan's) legacy is summed up in the phrase "judicial activism". In an editorial salute, the New York Times praised his belief that "the Constitution was a living document that could and should be interpreted aggressively," as opposed to "the narrow, static doctrine of original intent, the notion that the Constitution can best be interpreted through the eyes of the Framers." (Or maybe by just reading what it says). As a key figure on the court for more than thirty years, during which it changed American life more profoundly than either Congress or the last ten presidents, Brennan was arguably the most influential American public figure since Franklin Roosevelt. Brennan developed to the limit the use of the 14th Amendment to establish the power of the federal judiciary to strike down almost any state law, virtually voiding the 10th Amendment and the whole principle of federalism. Brennan's career is widely misunderstood as a record of broadening the Bill of Rights to favor the individual vis-a-vis the government. But this simplistic and congratulatory reading leaves out the key fact: more than anyone else, Brennan helped consolidate the power of the Union over the several States. It was secondary that he did this in the name of individual rights. Many of the "rights" he claimed to find in the Constitution aren't to be found in the Bill of Rights (or any other part of the text). They were mere pretexts for stripping the States of their reserved powers. Civil libertarians argue that any censorship, however slight, puts society on a slippery slope toward total thought control. Maybe so. But any usurpation of power puts society on an even more slippery slope toward monolithic (or "consolidated") government, which, as the Founders agreed, is almost the essence of tyranny. Thanks in large part to William Brennan, the Union has ceased to be "federal" in any real sense, since the central government now has the prerogative of defining both its own powers and those of the State and local governments, which have become virtually defenseless against Union claims and usurpations. Far more than before Brennan joined the Court in 1958, the Constitution now means whatever the Court says it means. It was part of Brennan's judicial philosophy to insist that it couldn't be otherwise. He held that the "original intent" of the Framers was unknowable and irrelevant. He oddly called the Constitution "a magnificent oration on the rights of man," ignoring the whole texture of the actual document, which eschews such wooly-minded universalism. Interpreting the Constitution, he once said, "demands of judges more than proficiency in logical analysis." Maybe so, but our guard should be up whenever logic is disparaged. As he put it, the "genius" of the Constitution lay in "the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and needs." In plain language, Brennan practiced judicial ventriloquisim, imposing his own liberal agenda and saying it was just the Constitution speaking. But it was idle to refute him: his view authorized him, in his own mind, to give the Constitution whatever content he chose to give it. One of the essential marks of the judicial temperament is the ability to suppress one's own sympathies and preferences and to apply the law with rigor...But Brennan rarely (if ever) bothered to pretend he was doing anything but voting his own preferences, in spite of what the Constitution said, meant, or had always been taken to mean. If he opposed capital punishment, he would find a way to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. In fact, the striking thing about the many eulogies that poured in after his death is that his liberal admirers actually praised him for this; after all, his preeferences were also theirs. His heart followed a party line. Though he was predictably liberal, Brennan's jurisprudence did much to rob the law of its necessary predictability. The Constitution could no longer be assumed to have a stable meaning as long as he and his ideological soulmates had any say in it. The "fundamental law of the land" became subject to liberal caprice, and the rule of law reverted to the arbitrary will of men.