by publius
Those excerpts from Couric’s interviews give me more concerns about Biden than Palin. He seems to be under the impression that there’s a “liberty clause” in the Fourteenth Amendment[.]
Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution:
[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law[.]
And yes, courts do in fact refer to it as the “liberty clause” too (just a sampling):
McGhee v. Draper, 639 F.2d 639, 643 (10th Cir. 1981) (“In order to justify relief under [the] liberty clause of the 14th amendment…”).
Brady v. Dill, 187 F.3d 104, 119 (1st Cir. 1999) (“The quoted paragraph announces two linked propositions of constitutional law[:] (1) The “liberty” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.…”).
Davidson v. O’Lone, 752 F.2d 817, 839 (3d Cir. 1984) (“That mode of analysis would enable the state legislatures to deprive the life and liberty clauses of the fourteenth amendment of any real meaning.…”).
Mazaleski v. Treusdell, 562 F.2d 701, 712 (D.C. Cir. 1977) (“In one of its most recent decisions delimiting the scope of the liberty clause of the fourteenth amendment…”).
Manlove v. Town of Hymera, 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14722, at *9-10 (S.D. Ind.) (“This is just the sort of intimate life decision that is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s liberty clause.”)
Ross v. Pa. State Univ., 445 F. Supp. 147, 154-55 (M.D. Pa. 1978) (“[this] does not constitute the kind of injury to reputation entitled to be protected by the liberty clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”).
UPDATE: Ed Kilgore has more on Ponnuru’s uncharacteristically sloppy post.
A clause within a clause by judicial fiat.
Maybe Palin is contagious? Maybe in sympathy with McCain, Ponnuru refuses to be comfortable using The Google?
A clause within a clause by judicial fiat.
Damn those judges and their literacy!
I know that no one can be wrong every time, but Ramesh sure seems to be trying to make a run at it, doesn’t he?
Thank you. I was just trying to figure out how to vent my irritation over this. Sending him an email would be worse than useless.
It’s the the due process clause, folks. There is no separate, hidden “liberty clause” burried within the due process clause possessing substantive meaning, no matter how many cases Publius cites. All his citations prove is that courts/judges are often lawless.
I’m so disappointed in you, Publius: more gotcha journalism.
This reminds of the folks of complaining about the use of “they” for third person singular, even after you point out its use by Shakespeare.
There ain’t no sannitty clause.
feddie – there may well be a good debate about that, but that’s not at all what he meant.
he was ridiculing biden for even suggesting such a crazy notion.
“All his citations prove is that courts/judges are often lawless.”
Darn the legal system for being lawless!
gwangung–
“Quite a number of people also describe the German classical author, Shakespeare, as belonging to the English literature, because–quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon–he was forced by authorities of that country to write in English.”
(from the _Deustcher Weckruf und Beobachter_, circa 1940.)
can anyone, like, CALL Ponnuru, point this out to him, and say “Wow, I guess you’re a total arrogant dumbass, aren’t you?”
Well, to my untrained brain, since the States can’t deprive anyone of liberty without due process, it must follow that the person had liberty before the due process began.
Is it possible that Ramesh was auditioning to be Palin’s press secretary after she is elected VP?
Department of That Silly McCain: turns out Rick Davis and Davis, Manafort have also taken a lot of money from Russian interests that follow the Kremlin line.
At this point, it seems a safe bet that whatever McCain likes he claim he’s against, Rick Davis has taken money to be for.
tomeck-
Yes, but the point of the clause is not to define all of our various and sundry liberties. It is simply to require that before your liberty can be taken away, there must be process.
Also, and this is going to get into law-nerd territory, the meaning of “liberty” as used in the DPC at common law was that of physical restraint. So, even if one were inclined to pour substance into the DPC, that substance would be fairly limited in scope. Although if one is inclined to ignore the original/plain meaning of the clause’s text, then I suppose one won’t feel constrained by the common-law history underlying the text either.
That’s probably more than you care to know.
tomeck, I’m afraid that doesn’t follow. You might have had the terrorists sneak off with your liberty last Sunday, and then the government can do whatever it wants to you because no action of theirs will deprive you of any liberty. Bonus!
There is a privacy clause in the third amendment?????!!!!!!!
The only amendment that has never been violated. No English soldier has forced himself into an American’s home since the revolution.
No liberty clause (huh!) despite the explicit use of the word liberty in the 5th and 14th Amendments.
No more conservative action hires for wingnuts please. The stupid does not just burn but gives me agita.
conservative affirmative action hires that should be.
feddie knows his stuff on this, but he’s mixing up “is” with “ought.” we can argue all day about what should be.
But there HAS been a liberty clause/interest/right for nearly 100 years stretching back to pierce. you may hate it, but it’s true — and courts refer to it as such.
ponnuru (who i actually enjoy reading) spoke without having a clue what he was talking about here
right -t he other thing ponnuru does is to completely redefine “right of privacy” to mean something that no one ever uses it for
Defending Palin, Ponnuru also says (yes, I clicked through, and teh stupid does indeed burn):
There is nothing incompatible with either a pro-life point of view or originalism with saying that the Constitution protects privacy.
Nevermind that shorter “originalism”=”don’t buy that right to privacy crap.”
Publius-
Pierce was correctly decided, but should have been grounded on the Ninth Amendment.
And with that, I am off to bed.
Gocart, you overstate and thereby overlook the war of 1812. I don’t know if there was any forced quartering (though it seems a safe bet there was some, if only for a single night in one place), but British soldiers did invade at least one prominent American home.
The wingnuts are working themselves up into quite a frenzy over Ifill (maybe they’ll take up Don Imus’s name for her). I’ve been fighting a bit against the attempt to push and expand the book “story” in five or six election-related Wikipedia articles. I hope Ifill has her countertops in order.
So if Ifill doesn’t want her life to be hell, she won’t ask any followups. And if Palin screws up anyway, Ifill’s life will still be hell. All future debates will have to have Malkin-approved moderators or be drowned out by screeching monkeys.
Hmmm, my complaint is that there isn’t a liberty clause; there is a life, liberty and property clause. Liberal judges seem to think that the property part of the unitary clause doesn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as the other two parts. 😉
(Sort of tongue in cheek)
Apparently Ifill is guilty of living in federally subsidized housing at one point in her childhood as well as being over 50 and unmarried, and she got her first job in journalism only because someone wrote a racially offensive note to her when she was an intern and the newspaper was afraid she would sue. Presumably new horrors will be dredged up tomorrow and Friday.
Memo
From: Gwen Ifill
To: Debate Participants
Subject: My Life in Hell
FU and the moose you rode in on. Expect followup questions.
Doretta, apparently the Palinites have calculated that getting a head start on the excuse making is worth annoying the moderator before the debate.
gocart mozart said: “The only amendment that has never been violated.”
The 3rd amendment applies to the US government. There was a case not long ago where a soldier was transferred to a base in his hometown. He was eligible for a housing allowance, IIRC, but the commanding officer told him he should stay with his parents. His father didn’t take well to this and filed a suit claiming a violation of the 3rd amendment, and won.
So, Jon Stewart (the best interviewer on TV) had the unbearably unctuous Peggy Noonan as his guest tonight. Oozing self-importance, Noonan decried the “small-bore” nature of the campaign “on both sides”. Stewart, in his polite, funny, but tenacious manner, was having none of it. Why, asked Stewart, do the Republicans keep talking about “appointing judges who will not legislate from the bench”? Do they think we’re children? We all know that’s just code for judges who will try to overturn Roe v. Wade. I can respect Sarah Palin’s position on abortion, said Stewart, but why can’t we discuss these things straight-up, instead of pretending we’re talking about something else? Noonan responded by touting her book. (Has everybody got a book to sell nowadays?) Stewart brought it back to Republican code-talk about “small town values” and explained to Peggy that New York City is a bunch of small towns stacked up in the same building. I grow more and more convinced that what this country needs is a Presidential debate moderated by Jon Stewart.
Naturally, I had to watch Colbert, too. He was on fire tonight. Sample: Sarah Palin can see Russia from Alaska, but the International Date Line runs through the Bering Strait, so Sarah Palin can also see the future. Then he did a great bit equating first-time voting with the loss of virginity, culminating in a public-service message (approved by John McCain) with the tag line, “If you’re old enough to vote, you’re old enough not to.” The rueful voter who laments “wasting his first time on Dukakis” was priceless. Colbert’s guest in the last segment was the founder of KIPP. Lo and behold: the rare TV guest without a book to sell.
Before turning off the TV, I flipped over to C-Span, and found myself in the middle of a replay of the 1992 VP debate. Gore, Quayle, Stockdale. Lord save us, the GOP talking points — and the Democratic proposals they are aimed at — have not changed in all this time. Quayle was definitive: Clinton-Gore will raise your taxes. Gore was clear: we want tax cuts for the middle class; we only want to raise taxes on those making over $200K a year. Obama is Clinton adjusted for inflation, I guess.
Interestingly, abortion actually was discussed openly in that debate. Gore tried to pin Quayle down by repeatedly asking him to say the words “I support a woman’s right to choose”. Quayle wouldn’t, of course, but I was struck by the absence of rhetoric from him about judges legislating from the bench. Had the GOP not fully evolved their word-code back then?
Incidentally, Gore was a sharp, witty guy in that debate. Quayle was actually articulate. Even that year’s laughing-stock, poor old Admiral Stockdale, was clear and concise at times: “I think a woman owns her body, and what she does with it is her business. Period.”
Usually, I scoff at the popular notion that America is going downhill, but after the 90 minutes of TV pot-pourri I just described, maybe I need to rethink my optimism.
–TP
TP – it’s funny you say that about the repeating of the tax themes, etc. I watched the nixon/kennedy debate on cspan once and was struck at how similar it was to modern debates.
kennedy was the tax-raising, foreign policy weakling, just like every other Dem. It was defiinitely interesting to see how little had changed.
Hmmm, my complaint is that there isn’t a liberty clause; there is a life, liberty and property clause. Liberal judges seem to think that the property part of the unitary clause doesn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as the other two parts. 😉
(Sort of tongue in cheek)
I absolutely agree that civil forfeiture is outrageous but I think you might have a problem with your memory if you’re blaming liberal judges.
Freddie, I’m failing to grasp your argument here. Clearly there is a clause in the 14th ammendment that contains the word “liberty.” As Publius demonstrates, it has been referred to by multiple sources as “the liberty clause” in the past. When you hear Biden talk about the “liberty clause” you know precisely the words to which he is referring. To the extent that language is intended to communicate ideas (rather than codify rules), I think this should be rather painfully clear-cut.
Reading the transcript of this VP debate from 1992, by the way, Admiral Stockdale doesn’t even mention that he was a POW for over 7 years.
Possibly because he felt he’d accomplished things in his life since such that the years he spent as a prisoner were not the largest accomplishment of his life.
Liberal judges seem to think that the property part of the unitary clause doesn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as the other two parts. 😉
And conservative judges think the life part doesn’t deserve such. Durrr hurrr hur.
“It was defiinitely interesting to see how little had changed.”
You can go back far far longer. These were the same themes used against Truman, and FDR, and by Hoover and Coolidge. Prior to Truman, though it wasn’t being a foreign policy weakling, but someone who would get us into war and entangle us in Europe; there was a flip there. Domestically, though, it was still evil tax-raising, regulating, Democrats. That was a legacy of not just anti-FDR Democratism, but Wilsonism, who passed the income tax in the first place.
Teddy Roosevelt vs. Woodrow Wilson mixed things up in a rather different mix, and with William Jennings Bryan, there’s the populism, but somewhat different issues — we don’t care about the gold standard and “free silver” any more. The 19th century also becomes less similar as we go back, but one can still find the thread of monied interests versus the people, certainly, back to at least Andrew Jackson.
KCinDC: Doretta, apparently the Palinites have calculated that getting a head start on the excuse making is worth annoying the moderator before the debate.
Exactly. The objective has been accomplished though. She now has to bend over backwards to appear to be impartial. Any hint that she’s going after Palin or taking it easy on Biden will only work to the benefit of Palin. Mission accomplished.
OTOH, pretend for a moment that the moderator was from a (perceived) right-leaning news organization with a book (perceived to be) supportive of John McCain set for release on Inauguration Day (which they failed to disclose to the CPD). Pretend said moderator was perceived to have reacted negatively to Biden’s DNC speech. There would have been at least three front page posts on it here by now with a hundred people ranting about it in comments. Just sayin’.
…and OCSteve lets us know what the loyal Republican is bloviating about this season. *yawn*
Palin seems confused about “liberty,” while Biden seems confused about “clause.” On the whole, I’d prefer Biden’s error.
Palin seems confused about “liberty,” while Biden seems confused about “clause.” On the whole, I’d prefer Biden’s error.
Probably he just had enough integrity to believe in the traditional military idea that it’s not honorable to publicly boast about your service, particularly if you’re using it for your benefit.
I’m with Feddie. The “strict interpretation” wingnuts demand that only rights explicitly defined in the Constitution exist. It’s exactly this kind of totalitarian attitude that the Founders were afraid of when they made the 9th Amendment part of the original Bill of Rights in 1791: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
It’s my understanding that MANY legal scholars who agree that Roe vs. Wade was correct in finding an inherent “right to privacy”, believe that it was a mistake to base it on the 14th Amendment, rather than the 9th.
But the gotchas from both sides are getting pretty silly, since neither Biden nor Palin is claiming to be a Constitutional scholar.
Biden gave a persuasive explanation of the rationale for giving the State more say in protecting the life of the fetus as pregnancy progresses, which is much more important than the footnote as to which amendment is the source for the right to privacy.
The fact that Palin couldn’t come up with a specific amendment other than Roe v. Wade is not a huge “gaffe”. What WAS a gaffe was her unwillingness to admit that off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of a particular decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagreed with.
Palin has apparently been spouting bafflegab bulls*t since high school, and never before has she been called on it, so apparently she just can’t keep her mouth shut. Like Poohbah in the Mikado, she repeatedly puts her foot in her mouth by adding “corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
Wilsonism, who passed the income tax in the first place.
Actually, the income tax was first enacted by a Republican Adminstration–Lincoln’s It was declared unconstitutional in 1895, on very dubious grounds. The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, was backed by rural and agricultural interests, who feared a potential federal property tax, the only other feasible alternative for raising the additional revenues needed to fund the federal government at early 20th Century levels.
If we acknowledge that Ponnoru is simply flat out lying for the sake of the children, over at NRO, when he tries to obfuscate Palin’s answer by attacking Biden what are we to make of Sebastian’s “tongue in cheek” accusation that “liberals” don’t defend property rights when, as vaux rien points out, this has it exactly backwards? I know its considered so un obi wi to actually hold posters accountable for the content of their posts, though one often receives a storm of meta criticism for the style of one’s posts, but really–a lie is a lie is a lie. The big seizure cases have almost entirely been at the behest of big, republican, business concerns, done by conservative lawyers and judges, with the help of a republican administration. And don’t get me started on things like the right to die cases and the medical marijuana cases. There is zero evidence that there is, or ever has been, a principled pro-liberty stance on the right side of the aisle *whether* you are talking about life, liberty, health, property, or anything else.
aimai
There’s a wonderful “we’ve always been at war with Eurasia” quality both to Ponnuru’s response to the Biden and Palin interviews and to the many right-wing pundits’ attempts at denying that there was ever such a thing as the Bush Doctrine.
Of course on Orwell’s Airstrip One, anonymous workers like Winston Smith are responsible for generating this sort of “information” at Minitrue.
Appropriately enough, our conservative movement has largely privatized this function, forcing individual pundits to issue the denials.
Ponnuru was the same fellow who assured us that Wasilla was a medium-sized metropolis with a population to rival the entire state of Delaware. Guy went to Princeton, so it must be true.
[i]There would have been at least three front page posts on it here by now with a hundred people ranting about it in comments. Just sayin’.
[/i]
Just like there were when Obama went on O’Reilly — possibly the third or fourth most hostile mainstream outlet he could visit, after Hannity, Limbaugh and maybe Hewitt — even though Palin can’t even be bothered to even do a serious press conference with, say the NYT, the LAT and USA Today, right?
Oh, wait. That NEVER HAPPENED.
Some day I’d like a *strict constructionist* to show me where in the Constitution it says that corporations (or unions for that matter) have rights.
Ben Alpers: on Bible Spice’s response to Couric’s Bush Doctrine question, there’s an interesting bit of comment/analysis here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR_JFpD02D0
The guy in the clip recommends that she find an excuse to pull out og the debate!!
But I’ve seen a bit of comment suggesting that Palin’s ignorance may come over as ‘refreshing’.
It’ll be interesting to see how her ‘unpretentious’ lack of competency plays out among the great masses / independents.
I mean, some pundits criticise Obama for being too cool and intellectual – I guess by that logic someone who is anti-intellectual (or comes across that way) might appeal to a lot of independent voters?
Pretty high risk strategy going into a live debate tho – play dumb and hope the public love you for it!
No, Feddie, your explanation was not more than I want to know since I don’t mind learning things once in a while. Thanks for the note. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind hearing from some of the legal scholars around here if “liberty” doesn’t mean more than not being incarcerated.
Ponnuru, I presume, is not a lawyer. Biden is. Nonlawyers would do well not to correct lawyers about the law.
Just to review:
Palin agreed, contra probably every other Christian conservative in America, that Roe’s “cornerstone” right to privacy exists.
And we’re supposed to believe that what really “concerns” Ponnuru is Biden’s nomenclature.
Michael: Palin agreed, contra probably every other Christian conservative in America, that Roe’s “cornerstone” right to privacy exists.
Actually, thoughtful Christian conservatives base their legal/activist support of forced pregnancy on “the personhood of the fetus”. That way they can retain a right to privacy for themselves, while at the same time allowing the government to have access to women’s bodies/women’s personal lives.
Also, like most women who assert they support forced pregnancy, Palin turns out to believe in the right to choose when it’s her daughter or herself that right applies to.
“Liberal judges seem to think that the property part of the unitary clause doesn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as the other two parts. 😉
And conservative judges think the life part doesn’t deserve such. Durrr hurrr hur.”
Hey if we had mandatory appeals and constant appellate court review of nearly every single property taking case I’d be thrilled.
Vaux-rien: You’re over-relying on 3rd party charts if you think that US v. James Daniel Good Real Property helps you much. (Hint, ruling of the Court as to disposition was unanimous, and as to parts I and III).
And worse it appears from that case that 100% of the Court believes that seizure of personal property does not require a pre-seizure hearing, the only split is whether real property (land/house) requires it.
And there is a long line of Lake Tahoe cases which you are pointedly ignoring.
Also you might want to look into the Court lineup in Kelo, a recent case of some note which has a rather interesting view of the ease of taking property (shorter Court, if the State authorizes it, it is OK). Welcome to standards of review that don’t protect anything whatsoever.
Way to keep those Constitutional rights from getting out of hand! Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Bryer, for those who don’t follow the link.
Re Biden’s answer: compared to anyone else that is a C+ answer at best.
He is wrong about the 2nd trimester completely: “And the second three months, where Roe v. Wade says, well then the state, the government has a role, along with the women’s health, they have a right to have some impact on that.”
He is misleading at best with respect to the 3rd: “And the third three months they say the weight of the government’s input is on the fetus being carried” isn’t right. At best Roe says that government can consider fetal interests. He makes it sound like they must.
Then his answer on unenumerated rights just looks silly if you take in to consideration his view on actually enumerated rights (2nd Amendment Mr Biden?).
Of course compared to Palin he looks freaking brilliant. Her answer is “blah, blah, blah, I can’t even get the obvious talking points right”.
Sebastian: (2nd Amendment Mr Biden?).
Ooh, another good reason to like Biden – he’s got an “F” rating from the deathmongering NRA. 😉
More seriously:
He is wrong about the 2nd trimester completely: “And the second three months, where Roe v. Wade says, well then the state, the government has a role, along with the women’s health, they have a right to have some impact on that.”
He is misleading at best with respect to the 3rd: “And the third three months they say the weight of the government’s input is on the fetus being carried” isn’t right. At best Roe says that government can consider fetal interests. He makes it sound like they must.
I would guess that Biden, not being a pro-life wingnut, is responding in line with what abortion legislation in most states actually says.
I’m stunned that nobody has mentioned the really, really huge elephant in the room here.
Biden had some clue what he was talking about. He knew cases, he knew concepts, he knew what he was talking about. You might or might not agree with him, but he was able to make some coherent points about the Constitution, and he clearly understood the background.
Palin had very clearly never even had a single conversation about any of this. Nobody with any knowledge AT ALL about the situation could insist there is a fundamental constitutional right to privacy but that abortion should be insisted on a state-by-state basis. It is a hideous embarrassment of an answer that would get her an F on any high-school civics test.
I understand the McCain/Palin objective re: Ifill.
My point is that it’s another roll of the dice with a significant downside and it’s entirely possible the numbers will come up bust.
I don’t know Ifill’s work but if she’s even moderately skilled she may well be able to do significant damage without looking biased and they’ve just given her tremendous motivation to do so.
It’s not like she’d have to go all hardball on Palin. The Couric interviews suggest that all she’d have to do is keep asking questions of both candidates like “Can you give us an example?” Biden will have no problem with those questions but has Palin improved enough not to disintegrate?
The campaign can try to spin that as a result of moderator bias but at some point that becomes so transparent to anyone who isn’t already a true believer that even the attempts at spin become a liability. It may still play well to their base but it appears to me that it’s been costing them with both swing voters and the media lately. I haven’t heard anyone outside the wingnutosphere blame Katie Couric for Palin’s difficulties in those interviews.
It may be that Palin will do much better in the debate. They’ve been airing the stuff with Couric over time and that makes Palin look as though she hasn’t learned a thing but those questions we saw yesterday for the first time weren’t actually asked yesterday.
If Palin does well, they’ll just drop the smearing of Ifill but it might cost them something with some of the media even in that case.
[I really should know better than to get into this, but I just can’t help myself.]
Let’s start with the idea of originalism. It is based on the purportedly “neutral” theory that the intended goals of a small fraction of the adult population in 1776, including upholding slavery, should control the interpretation of the Constitution today. This theory is supposed to “constrain” judges and prevent a “tyranny” of the judiciary.
yah, right. We can’t agree on the impact of the New Deal on the Depression, and that was within living memory. Does anyone really think that the historical record is so perfectly clear that it can effectively serve to constrain judicial interpretation? Let me introduce you to Judge Scalia and his 11th amendment and Commerce Clause jurisprudence.
Also, you’d think that since the Constitution was remade after the Civil War that we could at least re-date the originalism period to the 1860’s, but apparently no.
I love the comment that judges can be lawless. It so perfectly encapsulates modern conservative thinking. Instead of recognizing that reasonable people can differ, it just attacks the very existence of one leg of our tripod form of government. No, judges don’t over-reach or use poor logic; they are lawless.
How does Feddie know? God knows.
doretta, I’m biased, and maybe I’m just flat wrong. But I felt that in the 2004 debate Ifill chaired she aided the Republican. Even if I’m right, I’d be crazy to impute motive, as I could never know whether it was overcompensation in aid of fairness, personal bias, or political bias. And I reiterate that I could well be flat wrong to believe that she tilted rightward in the 2004 debate. But I don’t think I was the only person to get that impression.
Also you might want to look into the Court lineup in Kelo, a recent case of some note which has a rather interesting view of the ease of taking property
Well, it was the same view that the Supreme Court has upheld for the last 150 years. Whether or not that makes it ‘interesting’ is, I suppose, a matter of taste.
Kent: I’m stunned that nobody has mentioned the really, really huge elephant in the room here.
If you recall the 2004 campaign, it ended up being all about how awful Kerry’s military and post-military career had been – nitpicking his time in Vietnam, the circumstances under which he’d been awarded his medals, how effective he’d been as a leader on the Swift Boats, how awful it had been that after he’d served in Vietnam he’d opposed the Vietnam War and supported Vietnam vets who spoke out against US military atrocities in Vietnam.
While the really, really big elephant in the room – that George W. Bush had got into a cushy berth by family influence, then failed to carry out the flight duties required after the air force imposed mandatory drug testing, to the point where it can literally be said that he deserted – was made unspeakable in the mainstream.
In 2000, until the Florida debacle, the really big elephant in the room was that throughout the 2000 campaign Bush and his campaign team lied their asses off, while Al Gore was being spun by the media as a chronic fabulist. (After the Florida debacle, even the media spin on Gore as chronic fabulist was dwarfed by the media spin that Bush had won and Gore was a sore loser.)
There is always a really, really big elephant in the room.
And it’s very seldom discussable.
Everyone knows Sarah Palin was barely qualified to be Mayor of Wasilla, and failed at being Mayor (ran her town into debt, etc). She was absolutely unqualified to be governor of Alaska. If there were a lowerlative below “absolutely unqualified”, she would be that for Vice President of the United States.
But she’s got a good chance of being President by 2012, given the US electoral system and McCain’s health and American apathy in the face of stolen democracy, so, wotthehell archy, wotthehell.
If you recall the 2004 campaign, it ended up being all about how awful Kerry’s military and post-military career had been – nitpicking his time in Vietnam, the circumstances under which he’d been awarded his medals…[etc]
and, along those lines, i’ve been wondering to myself at what today’s race would look like if Obama was the one who had gone to Vietnam, become a POW, offered military info in exchange for medical treatment from his captors, and eventually earned the nickname “Songbird”.
no doubt i’d be a very different race. and frankly, i’m pretty sure Obama wouldn’t even be the nominee.
She was absolutely unqualified to be governor of Alaska.
Jes, I agree with the rest of your comment, but this point I take issue with. Palin is absolutely unqualified to be the governor of a state with a diversified economy, but Alaska isn’t such a state. It is a petro state full of wilderness welfare, and as such, seems to require far less of its leaders than states that face actual resource constraints. She might still be unqualified for this much lower bar, I don’t know, but that’s a slightly different question.
“Some day I’d like a *strict constructionist* to show me where in the Constitution it says that corporations (or unions for that matter) have rights.”
Well, they’re made up entirely of people, and people have rights. How exactly would you go about denying a corporation rights without denying them to the specific people acting on behalf of the corporation?
The government uses the tax code and tort law to channel constitutionally protected activities into the corporate form, making it, for instance, infeasible to publish a newspaper of any consequence outside that form. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, property rights, they’re all vulnerable if corporations don’t have rights.
OT: Gilchrest unloads with both barrels:
Gilchrest isn’t done. “We’re in this bad place as a country because of the evangelicals, the neocons, the nasty, bitter and mean . . . very clever ideological groups that use money, technology, fear and bigotry to lead people around,” he says. “Voting according to your knowledge and experience — that’s out the window. Competence and prudence? Forget it.”
[snip]
“I haven’t stepped away from my party,” Gilchrest says. “The party has stepped away from Eisenhower and Goldwater and Nixon and Ford and even Ronald Reagan. It’s been driven away by this anti-government combination of Milton Friedman and Jerry Falwell.”
“and eventually earned the nickname ‘Songbird’.”
I haven’t seen any evidence for that that isn’t purely the unproven assertions of some former vets. Have you?
Ditto that he “offered” military info, rather than gave it up after being tortured. I’m not clear how anyone who wasn’t a witness could know the former, even assuming it were true.
Overreaching in unprovable accusations is a great way to make provable accusations lose credibility.
Brett,
LC’s point concerned the idea of corporate personhood. Nobody doubts that the people who work for corporations have rights. The question is whether the corporations are rights-bearing “people” in and of themselves.
The idea of corporate personhood was certainly not explicitly put in the Constitution nor was it, so far as I know, discussed by the framers. It’s a nineteenth-century invention. I don’t think it appears in Supreme Court jurisprudence until the 1880s.
And LC’s point didn’t concern the practical merits of the idea of corporate personhood (truly an argument for another day), but rather how a “strict constructionist” can claim to find any protection for such imaginary persons in the text of the U.S. Constitution. I’d add that those who preach “original intent” would have just as difficult a time locating protection for corporate persons in the Constitution, given the rather late invention of the idea of corporate personhood.
No, corporations themselves are a construct; they would never have existed without government sanction. Every one of those *people* who make up corporations are entitle to each and every right that the Bill of Rights guarantees, as well as those implied via the 9th amendment.
And it’s absurd to assume that the right to broad exercise of those rights are abridged by not granting them to corporations. What’s wrong with newspapers et al being sole proprietors or partnerships? Nobody is forcing anyone to choose the corporation as a form of business; it’s an election to avoid certain liabilities and aggregate capital. You want those advantages? Fine. But don’t claim that your artificial entity is tantamount to an actual person when it comes to rights.
And P.S. that’s pretty far afield from being a *strict constructionist*.
“How exactly would you go about denying a corporation rights without denying them to the specific people acting on behalf of the corporation?”
Huh? By doing just that: continuing to grant individual people their individual rights, and not granting individual rights to a group entity.
This has been simple answers to, etc.
“Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, property rights, they’re all vulnerable if corporations don’t have rights.”
Freedom of the press should be granted to everyone who writes or broadcasts something to more than one person at a time. How property rights and freedom of speech are vulnerable without corporations, I have no idea. Were the founders aware of this?
Brett, are you perhaps unaware of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886), and all its subsequent implications?
See also. I am by no means any kind of expert in the details of this history, and so cannot vouch for how accurate or not the Wikipedia account is in this case. Perhaps the lawyers amongst us might speak to that.
Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers
I haven’t seen any evidence for that that isn’t purely the unproven assertions of some former vets. Have you?
i haven’t seen any clear chain of evidence that links the claims out there back to any set of angry vets. as far as i can tell, this is widespread public knowledge.
Ditto that he “offered” military info, rather than gave it up after being tortured.
An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as “The Bug.” He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, “O.K., I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.”
— John McCain
according to his own account, in his own words, he hadn’t yet been tortured – he was wounded from the crash and had been “beaten around a little bit”, but not tortured, when he offered information.
Michelle Malkin challenges Ponnuru in the heated competition for most embarrassing post about Couric’s Supreme Court question.
Thanks, OCSteve, for the link. I’ve admired Wayne Gilchrest for a long time (and would happily vote for his clone if ever given the chance; instead I get Rohrbacher). I feel bad for him, his constituents (like you), and the dwindling set of sane Republicans (which I don’t think is quite an oxymoron … yet) for whom his fate cannot be reassuring.
… and let me add – i’m not saying that i would’ve done anything differently than McCain did. i’m not saying he’s a traitor or anything like that.
my point is that our politics are such that a Democrat with this kind of history (even if we accept only the things McCain himself describes) would get excoriated by the GOP for it.
Excoriated? He’d be ineligible for office.
You’re over-relying on 3rd party charts if you think that US v. James Daniel Good Real Property helps you much. (Hint, ruling of the Court as to disposition was unanimous, and as to parts I and III).
And worse it appears from that case that 100% of the Court believes that seizure of personal property does not require a pre-seizure hearing, the only split is whether real property (land/house) requires it.
I knew I was getting in way over my head with you but ouch. I’d try to blame it on posting at 5am but that was still a poor performance on my part.
The Kelo case is interesting, I’m as offended by this kind of eminent domain as I am by the forfeiture stuff (i.e., I live in Brooklyn but I won’t be rooting for the Nets) and you’re right to point it out but the point I was trying to make is that the conservatives aren’t consistently the guardians of property rights.
I personally favor their view as to the takings clause of the fifth amendment re “public use” but they’re not so fond of property rights when they have to affirm due process under the fourteenth (which is what you referenced in your OP).
warrren terra, why would a foreign invading power be bound by our Bill of rights?
OriGuy, point taken. The 3rd Amendment has ALMOST never been violated.
OT but true story. A lawyer buddy of mine argued in court that his client’s 13th Amendment rights were being violated. The guy was ordered to pay $140 per week in child support for his three kids and was only making about $145. Needless to say, the judge yelled at him on the record. “Slavery! You’re accusing me of slavery counselor!” Funny as hell. Oh, and the client was a black guy.
“as far as i can tell, this is widespread public knowledge.”
I don’t know what that means; let me fall back on asking what your cites are, please, regarding McCain being known to the North Vietnamese, or his fellow P.O.Ws at the time, as “Songbird”? Something that isn’t just some after the fact declarations, that is; something more solid and verifiable than mere assertion?
“my point is that our politics are such that a Democrat with this kind of history (even if we accept only the things McCain himself describes) would get excoriated by the GOP for it.”
Of course.
Off topic but …
Rolling Stone on McCain
Gary,
I can think of an example where denying constitutional rights to corporations would impair free speech. The New York Times Co. is a corporation. In NYT v. Sullivan it was sued for libel, but successfully defended on 1st Amendment grounds. That defense would not have been available if corporations did not have constitutional rights. Without that defense Commissioner Sullivan could have won his libel case and seized the paper’s assets to satisfy whatever judgment he won. It would make no difference that the individual reporters could assert 1st Amendment defenses because the corporation itself was the defendant.
Now, that’s not to say that free speech requires the existence of corporations in the first place. It’s certainly possible to envision an economic system that does not involve corporations but still protects free speech. Nevertheless, we allow companies to do business in corporate form because it’s economically efficient. So, denying 1st Amendment rights to corporations would force media organizations to either (A) do business in an economically inefficient form or (B) forgo free speech protections. I don’t think that would be a good thing.
I don’t know what that means
it means Googling “mccain songbird” gives you 160K hits, which, try as I might, can’t all be tracked back to a handful of angry vets who wanted to smear McCain.
more specifically, there are hundreds of references to a 1969 AP article titled “PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral”. i couldn’t find the text of that article anywhere, but neither could i find anything that looked like it could be the source of a rumor about that; that is, i failed to find any evidence that anyone made that up as a smear. i couldn’t find a site that claimed to debunk the story or that claimed to debunk that there was such a story.
Gocart, they wouldn’t, of course, but I was responding directly to your assertion that:
which was demonstrably inaccurate.
warren terra, in retrospect, I meant American soldier. Truce?
Let’s pretend for a moment that the moderator was from a (perceived) right-leaning news organization with a book (perceived to be) supportive of John McCain set for release on Inauguration Day (which they failed to disclose to the CPD).
1) Does the name Tom Brokaw ring a bell? Is there any doubt after last Sunday he’s completely in the tank for McCain? And yet, no fuss from Obama or ObWi.
2) You mean the book that was reviewed by Time in August? Is that the book she “failed to disclose”? It was completely a surprise — yeah, right!
“Liberal judges seem to think that the property part of the unitary clause doesn’t deserve to be taken as seriously as the other two parts. 😉
And conservative judges think the life part doesn’t deserve such. Durrr hurrr hur.”
Hey if we had mandatory appeals and constant appellate court review of nearly every single property taking case I’d be thrilled.
Oh, and those two things as regards capital cases have been the ideas of conservatives, have they? I think that requires a cite, Sebastian. Actually more than one. Thanks muchly!
And, despite what Scalia and, apparently, you, think the differences between takings cases and executions are nontrivial.
Not to defend right-wing legal theory, but this statement is incorrect:
“Let’s start with the idea of originalism. It is based on the purportedly ‘neutral’ theory that the intended goals of a small fraction of the adult population in 1776, including upholding slavery, should control the interpretation of the Constitution today.”
1. Originalism does not deny the validity of constitutional amendments. The 13th Amendment was clearly intended to abolish slavery, and any reasonable person at the time that amendment was adopted would have understood it to abolish slavery. There is simply no originalist interpretation of the Constitution today that would uphold slavery.
2. Also, the Constitution was not “remade” after the Civil War — it was simply amended. When interpreting an amendment originalism dictates that it should be accorded the same meaning a reasonable member of the general public would have attached to it at the time of its adoption. So, yes, when interpreting the 13th, 14th, or 15th amendments we should look to the 1860’s. But there’s no reason to look to the 1860’s when interpreting provisions that were adopted at other times.
3. The Constitution did not exist in 1776.
Originalism is a respected theory in legal academia. Although many liberal scholars believe that originalism should be tempered with concern for stare decisis or public policy, hardly anyone rejects it outright as a constitutional heuristic. It’s simply not accurate to caricature it as some whacky idea entertained solely by pro-slavery rightwingers.
“it means Googling ‘mccain songbird’ gives you 160K hits,”
Indeed.
And Googling “hollow” and “earth” gets “Results 1 – 30 of about 1,200,000 for hollow earth”
Needless to say, this goes nowhere in proving that the earth is, indeed, hollow.
Neither does “Results 1 – 30 of about 345,000 for ‘hollow earth’.”
Surely you’re not offering the number of hits for words in proximity as proof of something, so the relevance of this fact is unclear to me.
Surely you’re not saying that people should pass along as alleged fact something simply because they haven’t run across a debunking of something that would require proving a negative?
Because all this would be completely fallacious reasoning, of course. So I’m sure you’re not advocating any of these things.
I find it interesting that when I google “Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral”, the front page gives me hits which include the claims that:
Some say June 4th, some June 5th. This is all quite possible if there were such a wire service story. It should be a simple enough matter for anyone with access to Nexis, which I don’t currently have, to verify the truth or falsity of these claims.
“Nevertheless, we allow companies to do business in corporate form because it’s economically efficient. So, denying 1st Amendment rights to corporations would force media organizations to either (A) do business in an economically inefficient form or (B) forgo free speech protections. “
Yup, that’s my point. Want to abolish the corporation? Fine. But don’t pass laws to force people to organize into corporations, (And it’s not remotely voluntary, in many instances, it’s legally obligatory. In a larger class of cases, it’s economically obligatory, ’cause you’d go broke trying to run a newspaper without forming a corporation!) and then use the fact that they did so as an excuse to deny their rights.
Perhaps you think this is not an “originalist” argument, but I think it is, in the sense that it follows the general view of the time, that rights restricted the aims the government could pursue, not just how it could pursue them.
Ifill discussed her book May 8th in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Ifill’s book was also mentioned in an AP article on July 21st:
It was also written about in the Washington Post on September 3rd by Howard Kurtz:
That’s just what I ran across at first glance.
cleek: according to his own account, in his own words, he hadn’t yet been tortured – he was wounded from the crash and had been “beaten around a little bit”, but not tortured, when he offered information.
According to McCain’s own account, he knew he was most likely going to die pretty soon if he didn’t get medical treatment.
Denial of medical treatment to an injured prisoner can be torture – if medical treatment is available and deliberately withheld, the injured prisoner is being tortured. It’s one of the methods known to have been used in Bagram Airbase and Guantanamo Bay.
While it’s possible McCain talked up his injuries in order to make his breaking under torture seem more acceptable (ironically, he is no longer able to identify what was done to him as torture, since it all qualifies only as “harsh interrogation” according to the Bush administration) his account is plausible enough.
Ponnoru responds.
Apparently, he’s concerned that Biden called it a liberty *clause*, when liberty is just a *word* in the 14th Amendment, adding that “it’s not a sensible way to talk about the Constitution.”
Not sensible? Inartful, arguably, but it made sense to me and most everybody who heard it and knew the 14th Amendment.
Odd that Ponnoru wasn’t nearly concerned about *Palin’s* “sensible” way of talking about the Constitution.
Jeff: Does the name Tom Brokaw ring a bell? Is there any doubt after last Sunday he’s completely in the tank for McCain? And yet, no fuss from Obama or ObWi.
Doubt? Sure. He mainly seems to have been lately trying to repair damage between NBC and the campaign (which was going to shut NBC out of the debates).
But are we really going to compare a Sunday morning news show watched by around 3 million people with the one and only VP debate in a historic and critical election? I’m thinking that tonight’s debate ratings are going to top the 52 million who watched the first prez debate. Not really the same thing IMO.
NPR is to much of the right what FNC is to many of you here. Democrats wouldn’t even attend a debate with them hosting when it was all Democrats debating. So it’s Brit Hume hosting the debate tonight. It’s likely to be the largest audience in history to ever watch a debate. He has a book supportive of McCain coming out on Inauguration Day. He panned Biden’s DNC speech. No fuss here at all, nope. You’d all be just fine with it.
You mean the book that was reviewed by Time in August?
I didn’t say she was keeping a secret or that the information was not readily available. I said she failed to disclose it to the commission. And the McCain campaign was apparently not aware of it when they accepted her as the moderator. (We know how good they are at that whole vetting thing.)
Beyond the book there are interviews where she is just gushing over Obama.
I mean come on – if she was a judge presiding over a lawsuit between the two campaigns she would have to recuse herself. (I swiped that from somewhere but I forget where.)
Incidentally, how a couple of undecided voters thinks.
as to the date of adoption of the Constitution, oops. Glad i’m not running for VP.
As for remaking the Constitution, I think there’s a very powerful argument that that was the intent of the 14th Amendment, functionally reversed by the Sup. Ct. in the Slaughter-house cases.
Originalism / textualism may be a respected theory of constitutional interpretation among conservative & libertarian academics. Yet somehow whenever the leading conservative jurists of our age are faced with adverse consequences from applying that theory in a particular case, they cave.
Which makes them legal pragmatists / realists. oh, and hypocrites.
And McCain is apparently giving up in Michigan.
I guess he shouldn’t have bought those foreign cars.
No, the comparison is between the moderator of the VP debate and the moderator of one of the presidential debates. The significance and audience will be similar.
Cite? I’ve been following the evolution of the Wikipedia articles on Ifill and the debate for the last 24 hours or so, and if “gushing” quotes exist I’m astonished that none of the many people pushing the Ifill “bias” story into the articles has mentioned them.
Ifill is not in any way equivalent to a Brit Hume of the left.
Sure. I didn’t mean to make a big deal; I was just nitpicking last night, and honestly I was surprised to see that anyone responded other than to mock my nitpicking.
Besides, I learned from someone else’s comment that there had been an actual third amendment case, which quite surprised me.
(And I do realize that Brokaw is moderating the Oct. 7 debate if that was your point rather than MTP. I just don’t really see him in the tank for a Republican.)
Quite frankly I find it hard to believe that the McCain campaign hasn’t known about the whole Ifill thing for weeks, and only started to make a stink about it after it was too late to pick another moderator in order to give themselves a pretext to dismiss the debate should Sarah Palin continue to make an a$$ out of herself and to play into their general “teh mediaz loovze Obama” meme.
OCSteve, I think the idea was that Brokaw’s bizarre “in all fairness” summing up on MTP Sunday — in which he declared that the most important thing is that the American people a few weeks back thought McCain was better for commander in chief — was evidence of his being in the tank.
Hmmm…I was wondering what Palin’s inability to tell us what newspapers she reads reminded me of…
Couric: Stop! What is your name?
Palin: Sarah Palin of Alaska.
Couric: What is your quest?
Palin: I seek the Vice Presidency of the United States.
Couric: What is your favorite color?
Palin: Blue. No yel– Auuuuuuuugh!
Phil, “Oh, and those two things as regards capital cases have been the ideas of conservatives, have they? I think that requires a cite, Sebastian. Actually more than one. Thanks muchly!”
You’re using Palin-like analysis. My point relies on those things having been done by liberals. My statement wouldn’t make sense if they had been done by conservatives. Otherwise I would be saying something like “I would like it more if liberal judges would vote the way that liberal judges vote”. So, maybe you could revist your comment.
Needless to say, this goes nowhere in proving that the earth is, indeed, hollow.
wow. taking a single sentence out of context in order to build a strawman around it? that was pretty cheap. congratulations.
—
Denial of medical treatment to an injured prisoner can be torture …
take it up with John McCain. he didn’t call it torture and i’m talking about his reaction to events as he described them.
For tonight’s debate: Palin Bingo.
KCinDC: Cite?
Should have been Obamas with an “s”. I get my talking points mixed up some times. “Gushing” is a relative term I guess. Here’s a couple from MM just because I’m lazy and that’s the go to place for stuff like this.
Take about any paragraph from this I guess.
DNC:
A lot of people have never seen anything that looks like a Michelle Obama before. She’s educated, she’s beautiful, she’s tall, she tells you what she thinks and they hope that she can tell a story about Barack Obama and about herself.
Maybe that’s purely objective. YMMV. She spent time with the family working on the book. She seems to like them. But the perception on the right, especially given the book, and the monetary incentives thereof, is that she is not an objective moderator.
And perception is what it’s really all about. In my original response to you, I used “perceived” three times. I agreed with you as well (excuse making) but added that I thought it was also about forcing her to “bend over backwards to appear to be impartial.
But I think it’s also a legitimate point that many here would take exception if a perceived McCain supporter was hosting this debate.
Ifill is not in any way equivalent to a Brit Hume of the left.
That’s your opinion. But many on the right perceive anyone from PBS just the same way you perceive anyone from FNC. That’s just how it is. It’s exactly equivalent IMO.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I think that the primary goal was to pressure her to be careful not to do anything that can be perceived as biased.
On Brokaw… I don’t know what that last MTP deal was, other than as I mentioned, he’s been working to mend bridges with the campaign. Bias or Olbermann damage control? Plenty on the right also think Browka is biased the other way. There’s an August MTP where he was pretty brutal with McCain’s surrogate (Lieberman) on the negative ads.
J. Sidney McCain III was never tortured.
He may have been enhancedly interrogated, but there is no evidence that he was ever tortured. Don’t take my word for it, ask Bush or Yoo or Cheney or McCain himself. Please ask, someone, anyone?
Sebastian:
You’re using Palin-like analysis.
Durrr hurrr hur redux.
My point relies on those things having been done by liberals. My statement wouldn’t make sense if they had been done by conservatives. Otherwise I would be saying something like “I would like it more if liberal judges would vote the way that liberal judges vote”. So, maybe you could revist your comment.
Try to follow along like a big boy, Sebastian:
YOU say: “I sure would like it if liberals would pay attention to the ‘property’ part more.”
I reply: “And I would like it if conservatives would pay attention to the ‘life’ part.”
YOU reply (paraphrasing): “Hey, I’d love it if property cases were subject to the same scrutiny capital cases are.”
Now, I never had to take the Miller Analogies Test, but I can read, and the statement you’re making here is that you would prefer liberals to treat takings cases like capital cases are treated; except your riposte makes no sense in context, as a reply to me about how conservatives treat capital cases. Do you have something constructive to say on that front, or would you like to be pissy some more?
OCSteve:
NPR is to much of the right what FNC is to many of you here.
Perhaps, but this is what’s known as “false equivalence.” FNC is what it is to Democrats because they simply lie on the air and engage in rampant boosterism for right-wing ideology. NPR is what it is to “the right” because it doesn’t kowtow to right-wing shibboleths.
It’s like saying, “FDR is just as bad to a lot of libertarians as Hitler is to Jews.” Why give that statement anything but a snort of derision?
Beyond the book there are interviews where she is just gushing over Obama.
To which, conveniently, you aren’t able to link a single one.
I can think of an example where denying constitutional rights to corporations would impair free speech. The New York Times Co. is a corporation. In NYT v. Sullivan it was sued for libel, but successfully defended on 1st Amendment grounds. That defense would not have been available if corporations did not have constitutional rights. Without that defense Commissioner Sullivan could have won his libel case and seized the paper’s assets to satisfy whatever judgment he won. It would make no difference that the individual reporters could assert 1st Amendment defenses because the corporation itself was the defendant.
Your last sentence doesn’t follow from your premise. If corporations didn’t have legal personhood, Sullivan would not have been able to sue “The New York Times Corporation,” as should be obvious. You can’t sue something that can’t be a party to legal ongoings.
He’d have had to sue the individual reporter and, perhaps, the owners and publishers — who could have then, indeed, gone on to assert their individual free speech rights. Which is exactly what happens in the case of newspapers or other organs that are self-published.
cleek: take it up with John McCain. he didn’t call it torture
McCain does not get to define what constitutes torture.
Try to follow along like a big boy, Sebastian:
YOU say: “I sure would like it if liberals would pay attention to the ‘property’ part more.”
I reply: “And I would like it if conservatives would pay attention to the ‘life’ part.”
YOU reply (paraphrasing): “Hey, I’d love it if property cases were subject to the same scrutiny capital cases are.”
[NOTE: the actual quote is “Hey if we had mandatory appeals and constant appellate court review of nearly every single property taking case I’d be thrilled.” Weird to paraphrase something almost as short as the paraphrase. ]
Now, I never had to take the Miller Analogies Test, but I can read, and the statement you’re making here is that you would prefer liberals to treat takings cases like capital cases are treated; except your riposte makes no sense in context, as a reply to me about how conservatives treat capital cases. Do you have something constructive to say on that front, or would you like to be pissy some more?
You seem to have forgotten your reply. To refresh your memory it was “Oh, and those two things as regards capital cases have been the ideas of conservatives, have they? I think that requires a cite, Sebastian. Actually more than one. Thanks muchly!”
This clearly implies that my argument ought to rely on conservatives coming up with the scrutiny for the capital cases. But that doesn’t make any sense.
I noted that liberals paid attention to the property part less than the life part.
I noted that I would like it if property cases were subject to the same scrutiny as the capital cases and since I already noted that liberals paid more attention to the life part I’m clearly aware that they have a bigger part in the life part.
You sarcastically replied with “Oh, and those two things as regards capital cases have been the ideas of conservatives, have they? I think that requires a cite. Sebastian. Actually more than one. Thanks muchly?”
And you worry about me being pissy? 😉
But even as a sarcastic throw-away quip it doesn’t work well. My statements don’t require that conservatives have created the large number of appeals in the *life* cases. In fact it wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever if I believed they had been. Clearly my statement relies on the fact that the life cases which liberals pay attention to get more scrutiny than the property cases which they pretty much ignore. If they didn’t pretty much ignore the doctrine around the property cases, it wouldn’t make sense to be thrilled by applying that level of appeals scrutiny.
Are you following along?
Phil: FNC is what it is to Democrats because they simply lie on the air and engage in rampant boosterism for right-wing ideology. NPR is what it is to “the right” because it doesn’t kowtow to right-wing shibboleths.
NPR is what it is to Republicans because they simply lie on the air and engage in rampant boosterism for left-wing ideology. FNC is what it is to “the left” because it doesn’t kowtow to left-wing shibboleths.
What’s the difference? They are just as sure as you are, just as convinced they are right. I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that FNC engages in rampant boosterism for right-wing ideology. Are you willing to admit NPR leans left? Or is this a one sided issue?
To which, conveniently, you aren’t able to link a single one.
Excuse the use of the word “interviews”. It’s been a long day. I linked to an article she penned. It wasn’t worth taunting the s-p-a-m filter to also link her DNC reporting, which I assume anyone can find if they actually have an interest.
Columbia Journalism Review, for the record:
Conflict of interest is often about appearances. There appears, to us, to be a conflict in Ifill moderating tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate.
What’s the difference? They are just as sure as you are, just as convinced they are right. I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that FNC engages in rampant boosterism for right-wing ideology. Are you willing to admit NPR leans left? Or is this a one sided issue?
You are very balanced, OCSteve, but are you fair? Flat-earthers and Scientologists are also convinced they’re “right”. Strength of conviction is one thing; objective reality (with its well-known liberal bias) is another.
–TP
OCSteve, I think you cover up a multitude of sins when you talk about Ifill’s book so obliquely. The problem with having Brit Hume moderate a debate isn’t that he’s conservative, it is that his conservatism causes him to lie and distort the truth. Ifill may have that problem, but you’d need to make an affirmative case that she does. Simply writing a book that says some good things about Obama isn’t really sufficient: Obama, no matter what you think of him, has done some impressive things that really should be praised. In a country where Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are thought of as representative black politicians, Obama has had far more electoral success and has demonstrated far more political skill. Now, one could easily write a highly critical book about Obama, but if it doesn’t start from those premises, it is not a book grounded in reality. Therefore, the mere fact that the book says some nice things about Obama doesn’t tell us whether the author is so biased about him as to behave dishonestly and unprofessionally when moderating a debate. All it tells us is that she’s not totally nuts.
I’m open to real evidence that Ifill both likes Obama AND is sufficiently dishonest so as to skew her debate moderation. This should be easy enough to find: the woman has been writing about politics for a few decades, right? Hasn’t she moderated debates before? Did you see examples of obvious bias in her previous performances or writings? If not, what is it about Obama that suggests she would be especially prone to dishonesty on his behalf? Is it just the theory that black people can’t resist helping each other out because, you know, that’s just how they are? I kid, I kid; I know you don’t believe that, but I’d be willing to bet that some people on the right that are “concerned” about her do believe it.
McCain does not get to define what constitutes torture.
it’s not about what you think. it’s not about modern definitions. it’s not about Guantanamo. it’s not about anything but John McCain, his experience, and what he felt he was experiencing at the time. he says he was merely “beat up a little” before he offered information.
now, to the point: substitute “Barack Obama” for “John McCain” in this scenario, and imagine the race. Barack Obama says (his own words, in writing, in a major news magazine) before he was tortured, he offered military information. imagine you’re Rove, or Schmidt, or Jerome Corsi, and run with it (actually, Corsi already did).
that’s the point.
f’n a
There appears, to us, to be a conflict in Ifill moderating tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate.
I’m not thrilled about the potential conflict of interest, but I’m looking at this from a different perspective than CJR. I look at the media landscape and I see an astonishing number of profoundly stupid people. I’d actually be OK with a moderately conservative debate moderator, on one condition: they have to be really smart. At this point, I just want smart people guiding our discourse; that’s a lot more important to me than ideological purity or objectivity. Maybe that’s just me though.
I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge that FNC engages in rampant boosterism for right-wing ideology. Are you willing to admit NPR leans left? Or is this a one sided issue?
Do you understand the difference between “leaning left” and “lying?”
“I just don’t really see him in the tank for a Republican.”
But the liberal blogs have been filled with evidence that he is that is not dissimilar to that thrown at Ifill.
And — unremarkably — few Democrats who have watched the PBS Newshour and seen the scrupulous fairness that they go at politics with, and noticed how many more Republican/conservative interviewees they have than leftists of any sort, don’t see Ifill as remotely in the tank for Obama. Your point?
The conclusion mostly seems to run along the lines of “she’s black, and writing a book on black politicians, therefore she must be sure to act in a biased fashion towards Obama.”
Personally, I don’t think Brokaw will be seriously biased towards McCain — though he will surely be less hard on him than, say, Amy Goodman would be. And I don’t think Ifill will be remotely seriously biased towards Obama — though she’ll surely be less hard on him than, say, Hugh Hewitt will be.
All that’s going on is working the refs, save that any effort regarding Brokaw is pretty minor, no matter that the evidence is more or less on the same level.
“wow. taking a single sentence out of context in order to build a strawman around it? that was pretty cheap. congratulations.”
Huh? What was your point, then?
Sorry, if your point isn’t that 160k hits for those two words is somehow significant, I have no idea why you brought it up and what point you’re making; I don’t get what the significance of googling words and counting the number of hits is, as regards whether a particular claim is true or not. I’m perfectly prepared to believe I’m being slow, and it’s shot over my head, but, with apologies, you’ll have to unpack it for me, please.
Huh? What was your point, then?
i think i’ve written it enough times here already. so maybe we should just let this go.
Who on NPR, specifically — which shows? — are the equivalent of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly?
Does NPR send out memos to anchors giving direction each day on how stories should be slanted? Fox does. Cite on NPR doing it?
The difference is that Fox News has a directed slant to the news. I don’t see how this can be denied in the face of the clear evidence. NPR, on the other hand, is accused of things like a “liberal sensibility,” which even if true, isn’t remotely the same things as deliberately slanting the news. There’s no, so far as I know, person sitting at NPR going “how can we make our coverage more liberal?” There are, on the other hand, people at Fox News doing that.
That’s the difference.
“Are you willing to admit NPR leans left?”
Even you yourself can’t bring yourself to draw an equivalence.
To respond: not without evidence, no. But, to be sure, I hardly ever listen to NPR (or any radio) myself. But since your erstwhile pals on the right either almost never use a definition of “left” that makes sense to me (“Barack Obama is an extreme leftist”), or they come up with insane theories with no evidence, that they find convincing, I’m inclined to suspect that I’ll find little different as regards NPR. But, hey, by all means, give us some cites on NPR actually being leftist, rather than simply not crazy right-wing.
cleek: now, to the point: substitute “Barack Obama” for “John McCain” in this scenario, and imagine the race. Barack Obama says (his own words, in writing, in a major news magazine) before he was tortured, he offered military information. imagine you’re Rove, or Schmidt, or Jerome Corsi, and run with it (actually, Corsi already did).
Oh, right: yeah, no if that’s your point, I totally agree – it’s not just the torture/POW thing, it’s everything about McCain that, if it were true of Obama, would mean he wouldn’t stand a chance – that’s white privilege.
“I think there’s a very powerful argument that that was the intent of the 14th Amendment, functionally reversed by the Sup. Ct. in the Slaughter-house cases.”
Slaughterhouse was in 1873; it interpreted the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment.
More generally though, I agree that conservatives will sometimes break with originalism when it leads to [perceived] unacceptable outcomes. Scalia’s admitted that and called himself a “faint-hearted originalist.” Thomas actually seems willing to follow things through though. That’s why I said that liberal scholars will temper originalism with concern for stare decisis and public policy. Since, as you point out, conservatives do this too, I think it’s better to be open about it. But even the most liberal jurists rely on originalism to some degree. For example, in Heller, Justice Stevens tried to counter Scalia’s originalist argument with an originalist argument of his own; he did not simply reject the methodology.
Nevermind (original) Francis, I completely misread your point, sorry. Yeah, Slaughterhouse gutted the P&I clause. There’s a good originalist case against it. But everything P&I was supposed to do ended up getting done by the due process clause, which is how we ended up talking about a “liberty” clause in the first place.
Also, making state citizenship derivative of national citizenship rather than vice versa was hugely important. I didn’t mean to suggest the reconstruction amendments didn’t radically alter constitutional law. Sorry again for completely missing your point.
“Your last sentence doesn’t follow from your premise. If corporations didn’t have legal personhood, Sullivan would not have been able to sue “The New York Times Corporation,” as should be obvious. You can’t sue something that can’t be a party to legal ongoings.”
That’s true, but that’s not what I had in mind. I was thinking of a scenario in which corporations law existed as it does now, but that corporations did not have constitutional rights because the word “person” in the constitution was held not to include them as a matter of constitutional law. If they exist at all, corporations by definition have to be juridical persons. As I said, we can imagine a world without corporations, I just think that would be economically inefficient. But I can’t imagine a world with corporations that weren’t persons. Personhood is inherent in the meaning of the word itself.
There’s definitely white privilege involved, but a lot of what’s going on is Republican privilege. IOKIYAR.
NPR is to much of the right what FNC is to many of you here.
There are lots of differences between the two which, I think, show that the two are not really equivalent. Some of them have been mentioned already.
My take, personally, is that NPR does, in fact “lean liberal”, which is not the same as “lean left”.
For example, there’s a very popular NPR show called “Marketplace”, but I’ve never heard of a program called “Organized Labor Today”. Nor have I ever heard anyone on NPR call for, frex, the kind of aggressive negotiation for compensation for publicly held mineral rights that seems to be Sarah Palin’s claim to fame.
More’s the pity.
IMO, while the quality of the actual journalism on NPR is pretty good, the tone and editorial stance is more about being nice than about taking a strong position either to the left or right.
Even so, I’m sure they still get up lots of conservative’s noses, especially when they think about the deli sandwich and bag of chips that they could have bought with the tax money they, personally, spend on NPR each year.
The only counter-argument that I’ll really make to your point is that many folks on the left-to-liberal side of the spectrum also find NPR’s commentary feeble and annoying. Many jokingly claim that the acronym stands for “Nice Polite Republicans”.
Thanks –