The fighting words"no Legislating from the Bench" and "Judicial Restraint" were heard for years, from those with Right Wing views.
Remember the term "Stare Decisis", uttered so many times at the Roberts Senate confirmation hearings? The concept being that "established law" would be respected was affirmed by Roberts as part of his philosophy and portrayed as how he would guide the Court.
Yet, in it's recent ruling on a Union issue, the US Supreme court demolished those cherished principles, and its own rules and traditions, to reach beyond the issues before it and "made law from the Bench". Roberts himself put lie to his own testimony at his confirmation hearing.
Any question about the hypocrisy of those on the Right, at least those in actual positions of power, should be laid to rest now.
Where are the cries on the Right for impeachment that were so loud when Earl Warren was Chief Justice, for precisely those accusations?
Are Roberts, Scalia and Alito immune from that measure?
Add a comment
Seems like a lot of people are heated up about being "forced" to buy Health Insurance. As if this is somehow "just wrong".
Besides the well worn analogy of being forced to have car and other forms of insurance, which people accept almost without question, there is the matter of Taxes.
We are "forced" to pay Social Security, Medicare, etc, mainly via "payroll deduction". Mostly, that is accepted.
The "anti's" seem to believe that "ObamaCare" is the first "government mandated" assessment of a requirement to contribute a sum of money for the general betterment of Society. They are simply wrong. Not only as noted above, there are other parallels as well.
How are most Schools funded? Via Real Estate or "Property" Taxes. Everyone contributes to these Tax burdens, directly or indirectly, via Rent payments.
But, is it Constitutional?
Besides the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, one merely has to look to the Preamble, where the reasons for its existence are laid out. There it has the phrase "the General Welfare".
You know, that place where the "Tea Party" people get the "We the People" phrase from?
Here's the whole thing -
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
What a sad turn of events, the Obama should come out for "gay marriage".
The situation is fraught with personal passion and misunderstanding.
In a nutshell: What's "insufficient" abut Civil Unions? The Majority of Americans would support Civil Unions without much, if any, hesitation.
Yet, there are those who will accept nothing short of using the term "Marriage" to describe the conjugation of lives they wish to undertake.
To insist on this designation, is insulting, deliberate I believe, to those who hold that "Marriage" has one, and only one, meaning.
Since "gay marriage" cannot product biological offspring, sharing the DNA of both partners, it does not fit the traditional definition of marriage. It becomes a "special case".
Thus, clearly, "gays" do not want "equal rights" under the law, they want "special rights" under law.
They continue to insist on the term "marriage" when they know full well this provokes fierce opposition. Yet, they continue. One must ask, why? When civil unions would provide all the legal ties an protections they claim they want.