Free Republic

"I just keep wondering why no one (including O'Reilly tonight) has said anything about Senator Byrd being a KKK member."

Because it isn't relevant. Byrd was a KKK member decades ago. Thurmond was a segregationist decades ago. They have both changed their views. What makes Lott's statements so indefensible is that he is uttering them now. He is saying, in 2002, that we should have followed Thurmond's 1948 segregationist platform. This is insensitive, racist and offensive. And stupid. It's pretty basic to me. And I don't give a hoot about what party it hurts or help. There are some things that transcend party. This was a despicable thing to say. He needs to apologize.

He went to high school in Houston.

"What's PC / lefty about " The Lottery " ? "

In the words of my favorite former President, "I'm glad you asked that question. Let me say this about that." The Lottery is a leftist novella of ideas because, although it is very well written, it denigrates the concept of tradition. It implicitly says that typical American small-town values are not based on any moral structure, but just exist because they have always existed. Now, I know that not every tradition is a good tradition. But I think that Jackson was saying a little more than that. Perhaps I am wrong. It almost never happens, but it is a remote possibility. I very much admire some of her other works, such as, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In The Castle.

"I am studying history as my college major and one topic I like reading about is New England colonial history, especially the Puritans. I still get riled up about the complete and total nonsense that is peddled in that play. It is crap and does a major disservice to a people we should be admiring, despite that mistake."

What mistake?! Are you soft on witches? The last thing we need is another witch-symp at FreeRepublic.

"Do you think JFK is in heaven?"

I don't know. This reminds me of an old joke, however. Harry Truman dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter asks him if he's ever cheated on Bess. "Cheated on the Boss?", Harry asks indignantly. "Never!" St. Peter praises Harry as the savior of Western Europe and gives him a gold Cadillac in which to cruise the streets of heaven.

Ike dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter asks him if he ever cheated on Mamie. "Well yes," Ike says. "I have to admit that I did." St. Peter praises Ike as a great world military leader, but tells him that he will have to cruise heaven in an Oldsmobile because of his transgression. Ike understands. He is happy just to be in heaven.

One day Ike is cruising the streets of heaven in his Olds and spots Truman's Caddy turned over in a ditch. Ike rushes to Truman's side and says "Harry are you all right? What happened to you?" "Oh I'm okay," Harry says. "It's just those damn Kennedy boys again on their Mopeds."

The flavor can't be beat!

Don't forget "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Did anybody else have to read that little gem EVERY SINGLE YEAR?

"The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. Absolute garbage!


I've never read it. It is generally considered by critics to be the finest American novel since WWII. It was highly praised by Russell Kirk--the Godfather of American conservatism.

"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. Tried to tie the Salem Witchcraft Trials to McCarthyism. That wasn't fair to the good citizens of Salem. A lot of those broads got what they deserved!

"Lot of ways out of Seven Corners. Might be wise to avoid 110 though, as I believe the Va State Troopers and Pentagon Police are still stationed on 110 to enforce the "no trucks" ban. Have not been on 110 for some months though, so perhaps someone that travels that route more frequently can comment."

I wasn't thinking of that. You're right. 110 has had even more police cars in the past few weeks.

Arlington and Falls Church are loaded with government workers.

There are so many avenues of escape (or hiding out) from that location. I think he could get to DC in well under 15 minutes. Monday Night Football was on and traffic would have been fairly light. He could have taken Route 50 to 110 and headed to 395 south or north. He could have headed to Carlin Springs Road and out to Columbia Pike in little or no time.

"Of all the points you raised, this is the one I'd have to take the greatest issue with. If we're going to establish, as a rule of interpretation, that we should go with the original understanding behind a particular amendment, then we also need to give equal if not greater consideration to the understandings of those who ratified it. And if the drafters deliberately set out to conceal what they considered the true meaning of what they were drafting, then it was an act of fraud, and such "original intent" on their part should be considered null and void."

I agree with you. I simply think this is one explanation for why they may have used more general language. As for original understanding, I prefer the term original meaning and I start with the text. The ratifiers in most cases could not know what was in the minds of the framers. But they could read a proposed text. My copy of the constitution does not include what was hidden in the minds of the framers and ratifiers. If the text is clear, we should go with the text--unless to do so would be widely recognized as absurd. (See Barron v. Baltimore where Marshall acknowledged that some of the first 8 amendments did not literally apply to the national government alone, but recognized the historical absurdity of applying them to the states.) If the text is unclear, we look to historical sources with an emphasis on ratifiers over framers.

"Agreed. Otherwise, we'd have high school dropouts with a mail order doctorate degrees on law running for the office of Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. ;)"

I thought it was the OTHER Don Yarborough!

"The first is that I don't believe that the BOR represents privileges of citizenship, because a privilege implies something that is unavailable to people outside the group (i.e. non-citizens), whereas the BOR applies to "persons", not just citizens."

[Excellent point--and one not often made. On the other hand, the drafters of the 14th Amendment weren't known for their attention to these particular kinds of details.]

"Second, the 5th amendment provides against violations of due process. So I'm at a loss to understand why such a protection would be explicitly repeated in the 14th, if it's already implied by the P&I clause."

[Maybe because the P&I clause was only intended to cover citizens, while the due process clause covered the broader category of persons. But this goes against my point above that the 14th amendment's framers were not exactly the Elders on the Rhine.]

"And third, and perhaps most important, if the framers of the 14th had truly meant to incorporate the BOR against the states, I see no reason why they couldn't have made that explicit. Especially for something as momentous as this, I would think they would have wanted to be very clear about it. "No State shall abridge any of the rights enumerated in the first 8 articles of amendment to the Constitution." Done. In fewer words than they ended up using. I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't just come out with it if that's what they wanted to say."

[Fair point--and in my view a pretty good one. Maybe they wanted incorporation plus natural rights. Maybe they intentionally kept it vague because they knew they couldn't otherwise get it ratified.]

"How true. - The rest of your post only removed all doubt. - It was a 'hoot' of opinions dressed as pronouncements from on high."

I supported my view of your constitutional illiteracy with a statement which you are apparently incapable of factually refuting.

I think you and I are talking about the same category of rights--the Corfield v. Coryell rights. But I don't think it is inherently unbelievable that a ratifier in the 1860s would have thought that the Privileges and Immunities of U.S. citizens meant more. The first 8 amendments had applied against the federal government. Would it have been so crazy to think that the privileges of U.S. citizenship included the rights protected by these amendments? If I remember correctly, the Senator who introduced the Amendment in the Senate specificaly stated that it covered the bill of rights (or at least the first 8 amendments). Many of the 14th Amendment's opponents made similar claims. Again, I come down with those who argue against incorporation on textual and historical grounds. But I see it as a pretty close question. And this has serious implications if you are talking about rolling back 60 years of constitutional rulings.

Yes, but not only a rule of construction.

"I don't believe that the privileges-and-immunities clause has any such effect (and neither, by the way, do the courts, as they've opted for the "due-process clause" route for incorporation of the BOR, which I still disagree with)."

Well, the courts sometimes get things wrong. The debate over the meaning of the 14th Amendment has gone on too long for me to re-enter it in detail tonight. One thing that most scholars agree on, however, is that whatever substantive rights (be they expansive or narrow) the framers meant to protect in Section 1, the P&I Clause was the vehicle intended to convey such rights. In other words, the Slaughterhouse Court got it wrong.

This is a separate question from the incorporation controversy. I agree with you that the weight of historical evidence is against the incorporation theory, but the evidence both textual and historical is a lot closer than conservatives would like to admit.

#19
The ninth, as it was originally conceived, was to apply only to the federal government,
and as such, it made perfect sense
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"Simply untrue. The 'supremacy clause', Art VI, specifically says that states laws are BOUND to obey the supreme law of our constitution.

The ninth ALL-ways made perfect sense. The Marshall court in 1833 simply decided to ignore this 'sense' for 'states rights' political reasons. -- You still do the same.
#19"

There really should be some minimal educational requirements for posting on constitutional issues. The original Bill of Rights applied only against the federal government. Any uncertainty on this point was settled by Barron v. Baltimore in the 1830s. There was a lunatic abolitionist fringe that thought it shoudn't be that way, but that fringe was vastly outnumbered.

To say that the Marshall Court was a "states rights" court is a hoot. John Marshall epitomizes the judicial quest for broad national powers. His court included Justice Story, another national power man. The fact that a Marshall-Story Court would unanimously apply the bill of rights only to the federal government merely underscores the extremist/meshuganna nature of those who thought otherwise.