Law is Politics

The legal system makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all politics.

There are those who insist that the law is absolute; that there is only one interpretation of it; and that only crazy radical liberals engage in “judicial activism.”

But the bottom line is that the law is whatever judges say it is.

Every judge has their own opinion as to what the “original intent” of the law was. If everyone agreed on what the “original intent” was, we wouldn’t need judges.

Even the Founders disagreed over the wording. The scales-personal-injury-lowConstitution was written to be specifically vague in parts because that was the only way they could get it passed.

You know — politics.

Within a few years of its passage, there were cases before the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution’s meaning. The very Founders who wrote the damn thing argued before the Court as to how it should be interpreted.

Whenever anyone says there is only one “original intent” they always amazingly also know exactly what it is and — even more amazingly — it always matches what they already believed. (Sort of like religious nuts who are convinced there is only one interpretation of the Bible and it’s always the same thing as their own.)

And the meanings of words change over time. “Cruel and unusual punishment” does not mean the same thing in the 21st Century as it did in the 18th. The 14th amendment gives rights to “people” but at the time it was written, it did not include women or gays (and barely included blacks). Meanings change. Society changes.

Conservative judges interpret the Constitution just as much as liberal judges do — the difference is that liberal judges tend to be more honest about it. Or maybe the conservatives ones are just deluded, like Scalia was, that he had some great “insight” into the Founders’ desires, like he was an avatar to the gods. It was the conservative justices who reinterpreted the 2nd amendment to turn it into a personal right after 200 years. It was the conservative judges who decided that corporations were “people” and money was “speech.” And a new Court could turn around and say “nope” and change it back, using the exact same words in the Constitution.

Politics.

I know some people want the law to be like a science, where you can do an experiment or do some research and know the answer, but it isn’t. It’s politics. It’s written by politicians. It’s judged by people who are elected (and are therefore politicians) or who have been appointed by politicians. The judges don’t all agree, just like politicians don’t agree.

And most of them (if they aren’t deluded) will admit that the Constitution is not a religious document written by gods; it’s a political document written by a bunch of politicians.

 

Editorial cartoon: Wish Fulfillment

 

Tom the Dancing Bug 1277 scalia - beyond the grave

Ruben Bolling

Don’t Listen to Republicans telling you the Democrats do the Same Thing

Republican Senators announced today that they would refuse to even consider anyone Obama nominates for the Supreme Court, despite the fact that the President has almost an entire year left in his term. (Apparently, in their minds, Obama only gets 3/5ths of a term).

This is completely unprecedented.w936uez3tdwl6tlcz20y (1)

But hey, don’t let facts stand in your way, Republicans. You never have before.

I’ve certainly seen a lot of it recently.

First, they claimed that Senator Chuck Schumer had given a speech where he said that the Senate should not approve of a Bush nominee in his final year. Of course, all you have to do is read the transcript of that speech to see that the comment was followed by “except in extraordinary circumstances” — and then he explained that the Senate should not approve someone so far out of the mainstream as to be unacceptable.

In other words, the Senate should do its job, have hearings, but should exercise its Constitutional duty to deny a candidate they disagree with.

This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.

Then they pointed out how Obama had objected to Justice Alito when he was a Senator, and had threatened a filibuster over it. Yet the Senate still had hearings about the candidate and ultimately did approve him.

This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.

Then they found a quote from Joe Biden which basically said that the Senate should not be a rubber-stamp and should refuse to accept any candidate they don’t think would be a good choice.

This is not the same thing as refusing to consider ANY candidate, no matter how qualified.

And it goes on. The right wing blogs post articles about how the Democrats have stood up to Supreme Court nominees in the past, and then they feebly try to fool their gullible readers into thinking this is the same thing as refusing to even hold hearings on any candidate.

It’s sad that some of my more intelligent conservative friends fall for this bullshit, but that’s what it is. There is no way to compare the Senate’s legitimate function to “advise and consent” and even to reject nominees they don’t want with the current Republican policy of sticking their fingers in their ears and saying “Lalalalala I can’t hear you” concerning any candidate.

 

 

 

Editorial cartoon: The Christian Choice

jewish guy

Pat Bagley

Who cares what Hillary thought when she was 15?

Sanders supporters: It is possible to make comparisons between your candidate and Hillary without making bad ones. There are issues that these two hold in opposition to each other. Talk about those.hillary

But the meme going around that compares Sanders’ work for civil rights in the 60s to Hillary’s family’s support for Barry Goldwater is ridiculous.

Hillary was 15 years old during that campaign. She couldn’t even vote for another seven years. She was following her parents’ lead, which is what most kids do at that age.

To criticize her for positions her parents held 52 years ago is a ridiculous comparison. You just make yourself seem petty when you post that meme comparing what a college kid did as opposed to a freshman in high school at the exact same time.

Hillary wised up in college, and very publicly resigned from the Young Republicans group specifically due to their position on civil rights. Got that? When she got as old as Bernie was when he was fighting for civil rights, she too took the same position.

I am a Bernie supporter, and the fact that he fought for civil rights and was even arrested for protesting only makes me like him more. Comparing his actions to what a young girl did at the same time doesn’t change that — all it does is make me think less of you.

 

 

Editorial cartoon: Duty

Rob Rogers

The Illuminati Killed Scalia!

All the evidence is there, clearly. How can you sheeple not see it? It must be the chemtrails Obama is spraying into the air.

Look, Obama wanted him dead and we all know Obama runs the Illuminati (I mean, I don’t think I need to go into the obvious evidence for that). antonin_scalia3-620x412And Obama is clever — he has a lot of enemies, and he is throwing us off his track by having someone near the bottom of his enemies list killed instead of ones at the top! Further, instead of having Scalia killed near the start of Obama’s term in order to prevent Scalia from voting against Obama’s wishes (as he has done for seven years), he decided to wait until his term is almost up where the death does him the least amount of good!

What a distraction! Good thing we aren’t going to fall for that (mostly because our tinfoil hats prevent the chemtrails and hidden radio waves from brainwashing us).

Obama is even clever enough to plan this at a time when Scalia was surrounded by his friends instead of when he was alone in his home. Obviously, he used mind wave technology to make the friends hear Scalia say that he didn’t feel well just before he went to bed and then to have all of the friends not notice the ninja assassins creeping into Scalia’s bedroom. But we’re not fooled!

It’s perfect! It’s so perfect because absolutely no one, including his own family, thinks there was anything suspicious about an overweight 78-year old dying in his sleep, and so have they have not requested an autopsy.

Clearly Obama did this. Who else would want Scalia dead?

No. Wait. I just realized. Who would most want Scalia dead? Scalia, the “strict constructionalist” who could convince a majority of the court that someone born in Canada should not be considered a “natural born citizen” and thus ineligible to be President? Someone from Texas, maybe (where Scalia died)?

The plot thickens!

Editorial cartoon: Big shoes

Clay Bennett

Why you should be happy Scalia’s gone

No, I am not celebrating Scalia’s death. I am celebrating him not being on the Court any more. I am happy that he can no longer cause harm. I would be just as happy had he merely resigned. CbIYxk6UAAAdFXX

Much of the problem with Scalia concerned his religious beliefs. He believed in a literal devil — that Satan was coercing other people to support gay rights and liberal politics. Since Scalia saw himself as doing God’s work, therefore anyone who held a different position from him was not only wrong, but evil. That is a dangerous and frankly unAmerican view for someone on the Supreme Court to have.

Intertwined with that was his conviction that not only should we consider what the Founding Fathers wanted when they wrote the Constitution, but his belief that he, and he alone, knew exactly what that was — and, amazingly, it always fit perfectly with his own views!

I’ve ranted against this kind of Constitutional fundamentalism before, pointing out that writing from the time clearly indicates that even the Founding Fathers disagreed. Hell, within a few years there were cases before the Supreme Court to determine the meaning of the Constitution because they couldn’t agree.

This attitude of “there is only one interpretation of the Constitution and it’s mine” falls squarely into his religious belief again, since he had the same view of the Bible.

And then for him to pretend that politics had nothing to do with his decisions! He’d claim to care about “state’s rights” unless a state wanted to manage its own electoral process (“but that could allow Gore to be President and we can’t have that!”). He’d say “we can’t overturn the decisions made by a democratically elected legislature” while striking down the Voting Rights Act passed by a huge majority. The only consistent thing about his decisions were his arrogant opinions that insulted everyone who disagreed with him.

But mostly I loathed the man for being so evil, so hateful of anyone different from him — for comparing gays to child molesters and saying blacks should attend lesser colleges because they’re not as smart as white people; for not caring if innocent people get executed; for arguing that discrimination against women was perfectly fine; for saying the sort of thing that, had he been head of the KKK (where he’d fit right in), you would all be saying “I’m glad he’s gone.”

Scalia is one of the main reasons that trust in the Supreme Court has dropped over the years. We used to hold our Court in high esteem, because they were the best and brightest, separate from politics, incorruptible. Then Scalia came along, thumbed his nose at Court ethics (claiming that he didn’t have to follow the same rules other federal judges follow concerning conflict-of-interest laws, “gifts” from people who had cases before the Court, and so on), insulted the other judges in his opinions, ranted publicly about “homosexual agendas” while commenting about upcoming cases, pushed the court to make political decisions like Bush v. Gore, and otherwise did everything he could to ruin hundreds of years of the Court’s image.

Damn right I’m glad he’s gone.

 

 

Editorial cartoon: Graffiti

12705267_877787299000702_1056751737483336085_n

Darrin Bell