Free Republic

MADISON, Wis. – A federal judge on Friday tossed out former Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson’s civil rights lawsuit and declared Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment that forced Abrahamson out of her long-standing seat of power does indeed pass “constitutional muster.” U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson said he wasn’t persuaded by Abrahamson’s case. His ruling puts to rest the liberal justice’s claims that the amendment approved by Wisconsin voters in April unfairly led to her ouster as chief justice. “This court has been asked whether the immediate implementation of an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution concerning the structure of its court system...

Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that otherwise would be deemed tyranny. Think about it. How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to have made through majority rule or the democratic process? How about the decision whether you should watch a football game on television or "Law & Order"? What about whether you drive a Chevrolet or a Ford, or whether your Easter dinner was turkey or ham? Were such decisions made in the political arena, most of us would deem it tyranny. Why isn't it also tyranny for the democratic process...

An epic battle played out on two levels at the California Supreme Court on March 5. On a surface level, attorneys fought over a technical issue of whether the Proposition 8 prohibition on gay marriage represented a revision or an amendment. On the deeper level, the question asked was whether there are any limits on the majority to impact the rights of the minority. It was a powerful argument - that the people of the State of California have the “raw power” to change the state constitution in any way that they please. Ken Starr, an esteemed advocate, may have...

President Thabo Mbeki received a stinging rebuff yesterday from supporters of his bitter rival, Jacob Zuma, in the lead-up to a crucial leadership vote at the national conference of the ruling African National Congress. Moments after Mbeki's speech, his last chance to win over support, thousands of delegates signaled their disapproval by standing up and singing Zuma's trademark song, which loosely translates as "Bring Me My Machine [Gun]." ...Results of a vote by 6,000 delegates are expected today. Mbeki is barred from seeking reelection when his term as national president expires in 2009, but wants to be reelected as party...

Many people with whom I talk about politics with are stunned by my constant assertions that America is not supposed to be a democracy. I credit public education for this. The fact is that most people are almost totally ignorant of history and completely brain-dead about the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers did not give us a democracy, nor did they intend to. They were very well-educated men (especially by today's standards), and they knew, historically, democracies had never worked, even on the small scales when they had been attempted. They knew if democracy wouldn't work on the small scale of...

In the heat of the electoral controversy — the worst possible time to make constitutional decisions — many people, such as Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, are calling for an end to the Electoral College. Big mistake. Someone once said, Don’t knock down a wall merely because you cannot immediately see what it’s good for. The same can be said for the Electoral College. We should keep in mind that the Founding Fathers were of somewhat better caliber than the politician you are likely to see on television, including those with presidential ambitions. The Electoral College was not an idea floating...

Harare admits land reform has failed as the deadline passes for the last white farmers to leave their land. Zimbabwe's bakeries have shut and supermarkets have warned there will be no bread for the foreseeable future as the government admitted that wheat production had collapsed following the seizure of white-owned farms. The agricultural ministry announcement that the wheat harvest is only about a third of what is required, and that imports are held up by lack of hard currency, came as a deadline passed today for the last white farmers to leave their land or face prosecution for trespass. The...

That gets the support of the Legislature's most fiscally conservative member, veteran Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks). Let the majority party rule and be accountable for the consequences, McClintock says. Give 'em the rope to hang themselves. And with a two-thirds vote still required for tax hikes, he notes, "spending can't run away."

Montenegro's independence could open a Pandora's box for other separatist movements in Europe and the former Soviet Union, with some already claiming the right to follow the same path. Separatists in Spain's Basque and Catalan regions were among the first to welcome Montenegro's independence vote as a positive omen for their aspirations of loosening ties with Madrid. But Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed the situations in his country and Montenegro were "politically, diplomatically, juridically" incomparable and that making such a comparison would represent a "great irresponsibility". His view was supported by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana,...

Starting this year, every educational institution receiving federal aid must teach about the U.S. Constitution on the September 17 anniversary of its signing (September 16 in 2005...) The requirement is ironic, given that it came from the Senate's leading Constitutional scholar, yet clearly conflicts with the Constitution, and on many grounds. Last year, Senator Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.) inserted it into a spending bill packed with pork that was blatantly inconsistent with Americans' general welfare, which is the Constitution's rationale. There is nothing in the document that permits the federal government to tell local schools what they can and cannot teach....

Foremost among those victims are the Shiites of Iraq, of whom I am one. Shiite parties and 111 coalitions are poised on the verge of a great electoral victory. But who is this mass of people, politically speaking? What do they stand for? What kind of a state do they want? Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead. True to their word, they killed...

NASHVILLE - Lt. Gov. John Wilder left many Republicans feeling shortchanged with his distribution of state Senate partisan power Thursday, but East Tennessee Sens. Jamie Hagood and Mike Williams were not among them. Wilder kept five Democrats as chairmen of the Senate's nine standing committees. Republicans have majority membership on seven committees, but Democrats continue to dominate two of the most powerful. In the House, Speaker Jimmy Naifeh stuck with his tradition of excluding Republicans from committee officer positions in the Democrat-dominated body. Among East Tennesseans, the most notable House change was the elevation of Rep. Harry Tindell, D-Knoxville, to...

There’s a reason that our forefathers were wise enough to declare that this Republic’s future and fortune be decided by the majority of Americans rather than any of the individual groups of minorities. This was a new nation then, filled with the rejects, the hopeful, the wounded, the ambitious from many lands, and it was important that we come together and start thinking like a united and unique country. For anything to be accomplished in this great experiment called America, people were going to have to be capable of coming to a consensus, regardless of their roots, and voting accordingly....

SO, WHAT IS A MANDATE? According to the dictionary, a mandate is “a command or an authorization given by the political electorate to its representatives.” Unfortunately, the dictionary doesn’t specify whether a mandate begins at 20%, 10%, or 3%. In the popular vote, Bush has a margin of 3 percent. This is lower than the margin held by any president since 1916, with the exceptions of Kennedy in 1960, Nixon in 1968, and Ford in 1976--and of course, W himself's negative margin in 2000 (remember, he lost the popular vote that time). Bush also has the smallest Electoral College margin,...

Fascinating and thought-provoking article that highlights an overlooked problem around the world. Conservatives understand that democracy has prerequisites, and Amy Chua's work draws our attention to some situations where promoting free-market deregulation and democracy at the same time can literally be a recipe for ethnic persecution and even genocide. As Chua notes, similar dynamics exist in some parts of the USA - she uses the American-Koreans in black neighbourhoods of L.A. as an example of this dynamic where a "market dominant" minority becomes a target for racial demagogues, leading to violence (and in the end, more poverty as investment leaves)....

The Betrayal of Checks and Balances The philosophy of Ayn Rand has taught me and numerous other thinkers of the new intellectual Renaissance the moral groundwork for laissez-faire capitalism as the sole economic system which fully and unequivocally recognizes the individual’s objective prerequisites to survival, his natural rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and property. With slight loopholes, this was the implicit philosophy behind the founding of America, and the principal force in its first one hundred fifty years of development. Yet, in the words of Aristotle, "The least initial deviation from the truth gets multiplied later a thousandfold.”...

The bromide, often quoted today, that we have won the war but now we have to "win the peace," is meant to remind us that we have to turn from achieving our military goals to achieving our political goals in Iraq. But what if our political goals were such that accomplishing them would obliterate the meaning of our military victory? Such is the nature of the Bush administration's stated goal of bringing "democracy" to Iraq. What Iraq needs is not democracy, but liberty. "Democracy" is the most dangerous term in the American political lexicon. It has become a vague, warm-and-fuzzy...

By John C. Armor From the Washington Politics & Policy Desk Published 3/13/2003 7:40 PM HIGHLANDS, N.C., March 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate is conducting an episodic filibuster against the nomination of Miguel Estrada to be a U.S. Circuit Court judge. But the Senate is not voting, only arguing about the subject for four weeks and counting --- interrupted occasionally by other business. What's happening here? Doesn't the Constitution require a majority vote for judicial nominees? Yes. Don't most Senators favor confirming Estrada? Yes. The Senate's filibuster rule requires 60 senators to end debate. Absent that, Senate opponents can...

The election of 2002 was a curious affair. It was a contest between two sets of candidates, none of whom appeared on any ballot, anywhere. Yet in that contest, the lead race was the overwhelming defeat of former President William J. Clinton by President George W. Bush. In the other national race, sort of a “Vice Presidential” one, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani handily defeated the tag-team of Senators Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle. Before we get into that, some words are in order about the candidates who were on the ballot, and who won or lost public office because the...