[Pc_Support] Re: Identity Theft to be even harder to fight with new ID card ... (CLARIFICATION)

[paddy]

Paul M Foster wrote:

On Mon, May 09, 2005 at 06:00:57PM -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:



<snip>

And no matter how "conservative" or "liberal" the Supreme Court justices

get, they will strike down things that go against the Constitution.

Sometimes it takes several iterations of a legislative law before they

recognize temporarily legislation is permanent, as they try not to enact

legislative-type rulings, but they come through for us, the people,

everytime.  


I don't believe the Supreme Court has any compunction about acting in

place of the legislature. Witness Brown vs Board of Education, Roe vs

Wade, and many others. And now, they're beginning to use international

custom rather than our Constitution as the yardstick against which to

measure their rulings. If the Supremes are trying "not to enact 

legislative-type rulings", they're doing a miserable job of it.



Paul

Snip

The makeup of the Supreme Court is of the utmost importance. A liberal 
majority on the Supreme Court will put you in chains both economically 
and physically.

Take the present makeup of the court, match it against their speeches 
and other public utterings, then consider the rulings and who voted for 
what.

The conservative members of the present court are Chief Justice 
Rehnquist, Associate Justice Scalia, Associate Justice Thomas and 
perhaps Associate Justice Kennedy. The Liberals are Associate Justice 
Breyer, Associate Justice Ginsburg and Associate Justice John Paul 
Stevens. The rest fall into different categories at different times and 
with different issues.

Listed below are just a few rulings and where various judges stood on 
those issues.

*Abortion:* Six justices (Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg 
and Breyer) support abortion rights, while three justices (Rehnquist, 
Scalia and Thomas) consistently have voted against a woman's right to 
end a pregnancy.

*Affirmative action:* In 2003, the justices upheld affirmative action in 
college admissions by a single vote. Favoring admission policies that 
give a boost to racial minorities under certain conditions were Stevens, 
O'Connor, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. The swing vote was O'Connor, who 
in other cases had been the key fifth vote to strike down racial 
preferences in federal contracting and to impede the creation of 
"majority minority" congressional districts. Such districts have been 
drawn specifically to consolidate black or Hispanic voters to try to 
boost their political power.

*Separation of church and state:* By a 5-4 vote in 2002, the justices 
upheld publicly financed "vouchers" for parents who want to send their 
children to religious schools. In the majority were Rehnquist, O'Connor, 
Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas. Two years earlier, the court's liberals led 
the way as the justices voted 6-3 to strike down pre-kickoff prayers at 
high school football games. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas dissented.

*Federal vs. state power:* The court's conservatives (Rehnquist, 
O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas) repeatedly have protected states 
from federal intervention in several areas. The court, for example, has 
prevented state workers who face discrimination because of age or 
disability from suing their employers for money damages under federal 
laws. Last term, however, O'Connor switched positions in a states' 
rights case to allow people with disabilities to sue states for access 
to courthouses under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The key vote here seems to be Justice O'Conner. We won't go into that 
land where people say a woman has the right to change her mind but this 
person has been the most inconsistent of all of the judges on this court 
when it comes to abiding by a political philosophy.

If I may quote from the website Discriminations, 
(http://www.discriminations.us/storage/002893.html) the following makes 
it clear what the liberal vs. conservative judicial debate is all about.

When the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the 2000 Florida 
controversy, supporters of Bush argued that the Florida Supreme Court, 
in extending the deadline for Al Gore to contest the election and later 
by ordering a recount, had violated Article II. The argument was that 
the court had usurped the legislature's power.

In its first decision in the Florida controversy, the U.S. Supreme Court 
suggested that such an argument might be plausible, though it failed to 
decide the issue conclusively. In the second decision, Bush vs. Gore, 
three justices - Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice 
William Rehnquist -embraced the view that the Florida Supreme Court's 
actions violated Article II. Dissenting justices argued that the Florida 
court decision was simply an interpretation of the legislature's 
existing rules.

Ah, there's the rub that frequently rubs conservatives the wrong way: 
"simply an interpretation." The Florida Supreme Court "interpreted" the 
statutory requirement that election returns be reported within seven 
days to mean ... *not necessarily within seven days 
<http://www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/historic/query=%5Blevel++++++++++++++++opinions%213A%5D%5Bgroup+00%212D949%213A%5D/doc/%7Bt123245%7D/hit_headings/words=4/pageitems=%7Bbody%7D?>*. 
Ditto with the amount of time required for contesting the results, 
several other matters.

As I have commented before (*here 
<http://www.discriminations.us/storage/001479.html>* and *here 
<http://www.discriminations.us/storage/001480.html>*), judicially 
rewriting a statute through the magic of an unrestrained power of 
interpretation is called "liberally construing" or "reading loosely." 
Liberal judges are quite adept, not surprisingly, at construing 
liberally. Nowhere was this talent on display more clearly than when the 
Supreme Court of New Jersey (see the first of those "here" links above) 
decided in the infamous Lautenberg-for-Toricelli candidate swap, much in 
the manner of the Florida Supreme Court, that "51 days" did not mean 51 
days. New Jersey law, you will recall, allowed (yes, here "allowed" is 
right) for a candidate to be replaced on ballot up to 51 days before an 
election. Since The Torch went down in flames closer to the election 
than 51 days this appeared to be a problem. But to the New Jersey 
Supremes it was a piece of cake. All they had to do was "construe" the 
statute liberally. This was easy, since after all the statute didn't say 
"absolutely, positively." You think I jest, but listen to New Jersey 
Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, quoted in my first "here" link above:

Chief Justice Deborah Poritz observed that the 51-day rule for 
substituting a candidate appeared to be arbitrary. She added that other 
states had deadlines ranging from 30 days to a handful, noting that New 
York State’s statute says that failure to meet the deadline is a "fatal 
defect."

"Our statute says nothing of the kind," she said.

When conservatives say they want judges who will interpret the law, not 
make it, they don't say enough; for the real problem is that liberal 
judges are loathe to recognize textual or other limits on their power to 
interpret. If "seven days" doesn't mean seven days; if "51 days" doesn't 
mean 51 days; if selecting presidential electors "in such Manner as the 
Legislature ... may direct" doesn't mean that the legislature -- not the 
state supreme court, not the governor, not the people through plebiscite 
-- must devise the electoral scheme, then there would seem to be few 
limits on the power of "interpretation" through "liberally construing" 
words that say one thing to mean something entirely different.

Writing in the /New York Times/ (cited in my second "here" above), legal 
reporter Linda Greenhouse called the 51 day limit a "formal deadline" -- 
as opposed to what, one wonders? An informal one? A real one? Similarly, 
New Jersey Democrats called the statutory requirement merely a 
"*technical guideline <http://www.discriminations.us/storage/001477.html>*."

If unaccountable judges with lifetime tenure are allowed to exercise 
unrestrained, unconstrained powers to interpret, constitutions and 
statutes do indeed become nothing more than the "parchment barriers" 
Madison warned of, and the people get royally construed.

So when you think that the government is acting in your best interest 
you had better be sure you are not bent over and grabbing you ankles. 
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty:...Thomas Jefferson.

Paddy