Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Yesterday morning I had a few words to say about John Roberts, the new Supreme Court nominee about which everybody who’s anybody would like to know a little bit more than they currently do, and I confess to being poorly equipped to add much to that research project. But it’s always interested me how labels like “conservative” and “liberal” mean different things in the court, than they do in other aspects of politics. People who look upon nominees with great excesses of glee or dread, tend to forget that. In summary, anyplace outside of the court, “liberalism” means turning the clock back to the 1960’s — the childhood era for many of the people who are now in powerful positions today, so they can have a nostalgia trip at everybody else’s expense. It is loaded with contradictory positions and doesn’t have a lot of framework or principle anymore like it used to. It has morphed into just a big tootpaste tube full of a giant war-protestin’, baby-killin’, civil-rights-marchin’, scandal-mongerin’, global-warmin’, anti-capitalist mish-mash. “Conservatism” refers to an absence of this mish-mash.
You might say America is like the thirty-something woman who spent her young adulthood doing every kind of drug and screwing every wrong kind of guy, and is ready to take her flock of whelps and her sporadic child support receipts & offer a ready-made family to a Nice Guy. We’ve had our fun and are ready to grow up — bring on the mortgage payments, the tax forms, the yardwork. Conservatives are in favor of the growing up, liberals want a retreat. In that way, conservatives want progress, liberals want to stay the course. Kinda funny.
In the court system, “conservatism” refers to reading the Constitution, or whatever law applies to the appeal, indictment or suit, and using the text of that law as a primary means of handing down a reversal or affirmation. This is pretty simple stuff if the law is written well. The “conservative” branch starts to split up when the law is written poorly. But on the whole, people we label with this word agree on the general concept: If two laws conflict irreconcilably, point it out that they do, and if they don’t, point out that they don’t.
“Liberalism,” otherwise known as “activism,” means to indulge in a calculation about which interest groups would be hurt or helped by an affirmation, and which interest groups would be hurt or helped by a reversal. Once that is known, you figure out how to hand down a ruling that will help the group that possesses the greater political capital, then you have your clerks look up things that will help justify this ruling. Lately, this has evolved to the extent that those clerks can do their poking around overseas, pulling in charters from Europe and South Africa — anything to help the cause. With that in mind, I said the following about what little I know of John Roberts:
If John Roberts is what he appears to be, the effect would be a partial moderation of the Supreme Court. After all, this would have prevented the damage of Grutter v. Bollinger, but not of Kelo v. New London or Atkins v. Virginia. What do you call a successful confirmation here? A good start.
I don’t know if the Wall Street Journal editors read my blog. I would expect hardly anybody does. But how then do you explain this gem which appeared in “Review & Outlook” this morning.
It’s possible that the nominee might not be as willing to overturn precedent as Justices Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but he seems to be someone with deeper roots in the original Constitution than either Justice Sandra Day O’Connor or Justice Anthony Kennedy. While we won’t agree with every Roberts opinion, it’s impossible to see him making the law up as he goes along. And if confirmed he is thus likely to move the High Court marginally, but importantly, back toward where it was before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced Byron White in 1993.
I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.
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