Archive for the Move To Amend Category

Has Scalia Gone Feral? (March 4, 2013)

Posted in Judges, Law, Move To Amend, Politics, Supreme Court on March 4, 2013 by e-commentary.org

. . .

LS2      “Scalia has gone feral.”

LS1      “In the past, he demanded that the Court and the courts construe congressional language in a statute or provision literally – or as he defined literally – even in the face of clear contrary legislative intent and then took great delight in often perverse or unintended consequences or interpretations.”

LS2      “Now he is transforming the High Court into a MegaCongress to proclaim what he thinks animated Congress when it passed legislation.  In the face of crystal clear Congressional language and equally clear legislative intent regarding the Voting Rights Act, he appointed himself to second guess Congress and impose his personal prejudices on the populace.”

LS1      “At least he is blatant and blunt about it.  In his capacity as the Law Czar, however, he surely will not allow a person to bring and maintain a claim to instate the Move To Amend legislation on the ground that Congress would have passed the legislation except for the overweening influence of corporations.”

LS2      “That’s a new possibility.  Introduce a bill in the Supreme Court and let them pass judgment.  Two can play that game, yet only one person is allowed to play the game in the American legal game.”

. . .

LS2      “His great contribution to legal thinking is a grand sophistry.  ‘Originalism’ is an admixture of equal parts hypocrisy, dishonesty, perversity and absurdity.”

LS1      “And risibility, but it is a serious matter.  He is becoming even more grating and obnoxious.  Sarcasm is the first cousin of anger.  He is angry.  Ergo, he is sarcastic.”

LS2      “Sourcaustic.  In contemporary patois, Scalia is a bully of the worst kind.  A bully and a coward.  He uses the bench as a bully pulpit and then cowers behind the guards and security detail.”

LS1      “If someone asked him to step outside, Scalia would soil his panties and then curl up in a fetal position and cry for help.”

LS2      “He should take senior status and take over a hate radio show on Anger Mongering (AM) radio.”

LS1      “A festschrift of his proclamations does not require more than a few hundred words.  He is worth a footnote perhaps but much less than a chapter.  Someone, probably a former fawning law clerk, will spawn a 900 page idolatrous hagiographic piece.”

. . .

LS1/LS2  “He fails to realize that civility is not unconstitutional.”

. . .

[LS1 = Legal Scholar 1; . . . ]

[See the “e-ssays” titled One Gun Per White Adult Male? A Flintlock Musket? The “One Man, One Gun” Decision (October 4, 2010), Are Courts Irrelevant? Are Courts Illegitimate? (October 3, 2011) and The Supreme Court – Unrepresentative And Illegitimate: The 33.3 Percent Solution (October 1, 2012), three of the “First Monday in October” commentaries on the Supreme Court.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

I don’t like some lawyers because some lawyers are not likable.

Do Supreme Court Justices get rabies shots?

Brave 1984 Farm: The Best Of All Possible Worlds (March 19, 2012)

Posted in Civil Rights/Civil Liberties, Consumerism, Facebook, Google, Internet, Military Commissions Act, Move To Amend, National Defense Authorization Act / FY 2012, Occupy Movement, Pogo Plight, Privacy, Society, Solstice, USA PATRIOT Act on March 19, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

C1          “All I really needed to know I learned in junior high school.  Three junior high school standbys provide the road maps delineating our current collision course.  Brave New World chronicles a craven world sated and sotted with diversions and divertissements.”

C2          “Some say the phrase ‘bread and circuses’ captures the contemporary zeitgeist.  But bread will soon cost a lot more bread.  And a day at the circus may cost a month’s wages at the job lost by the breadwinner last May.”

C1          “And 1984 is the ‘how to’ manual for the emerging police state in America.  The USA PATRIOT ACT and the NDAA of 2012 provide the ‘legal’ cover.”

C2          “Some are concerned.  For over a century, the thinking set has struggled with the emerging notion of privacy.  An academic treatment in 1890, a judicial pronouncement in 1965 and a trenchant comment or two today raise real and troubling concerns.  However, without a real debate, discussion, plebiscite or referendum, we surrendered our privacy a few years ago.  It appears to be over.”

C1          “So now we good citizens can watch our favorite gladiators invade another town and vanquish fellow citizens on plasma tv while the government videos us on closed circuit video tv and Google and Facebook monitor us on our home monitors.  We should heed the warning in Animal Farm and the advice in the Old Farmer’s Almanac and make the sojourn back to the farm and the garden.”

C2          “The Occupy Movement and Move To Amend are the Black Swan taking slow flight and moving us off the couch and into the streets.  Six months ago, a few kids looked around and concluded that something is wrong and something must be done.”

. . .

[See the Fresh Air radio program on drones and the threats to privacy at http://www.npr.org/2012/03/12/148293470/drones-over-america-what-can-they-see]

[See the “e-ssay” titled “USA PATRIOT ACT (April 4, 2005)”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

T For Truth; J For Justice

Panem et Circenses

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.  We must cultivate our garden.  Candide, Voltaire

Do something different on the Equinox

Move To Amend: Occupy The Courts (January 23, 2012)

Posted in Citizens United Decision, Courts, Move To Amend, Occupy Movement, Supreme Court, Vietnam on January 23, 2012 by e-commentary.org

. . .

C1          “Friday was a formal ‘Conference Day’ for the Supremes.  I doubt they conferred and expressed doubts about their decision.”

C2          “Citizens United is uniting citizens.”

C1          “These rallies unite the old Vietnam War protest crowd and the kids who recently were able to drink legally.”

C2          “The gathering of the gray hairs and the long hairs.  I looked around and wondered what the kids of the Vietnam crowd were doing on an overcast day.  And what the parents of the protesting kids were doing.” 

C1          “Working, if they are lucky.  To be have a job and get time off is a rarity today.  You have to hand it to the Supreme Court Police who handled the situation judiciously.”

C2          “The right presence and not a riot presence.  Wearing their blue uniforms and regular hats and not sporting the black Darth Vader riot gear, riot shields and riot clubs was a calming influence.”

C1          “Another day at the office.  The ceremonial barrier ringing the stairs was well positioned to allow the public to assemble and the police to establish a reasonable buffer.”

C2          “That ‘three percent’ is always there and made up what . . . about three percent of the crowd?  The dozen kids who trashed some of the barriers and advanced up the stairs did not advance the cause.  I understand their outrage, yet replacing the broken barriers will require public resources that could be used to provide fencing around a playground.”

C1          “When the group knocked down the barrier and moved up the steps of the Court, the Supreme Court Police had to make a quick decision.  Allowing the group to advance up three steps was about as much real estate as they could reasonably yield.”     

C2          “The violence done inside the Court does not justify or excuse the destruction done outside.  There is something about the right to peaceably assemble.”

C1          “No mace, no beatings, no arrests.  Nice touch.”

C2          “However, there may come a time when it will be necessary for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country and to storm the ramparts.”

. . .

[See the “e-ssays” titled “Bill/Melinda and Warren, It Is Time To Get Into The Game (January 25, 2010) and “Corporations United (Feb. 15, 2010).”]

[See “www.movetoamend.org.”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Do courts exist for the benefit of judges and corporations or for the benefit of the people?

When money speaks, the Truth is silent.

The system is not broken.  It is fixed.

Negroes are not citizens.  Dred Scott (1857) (mooted by the 14th Amendment); Corporations are persons.  Citizens United (2010) (mooted by the 28th Amendment?)

I won’t believe that a corporation is a person until Texas executes one.