Politics: A new beginning

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
stuff

Damn. Read the re line, thought it was about drugs, came back in.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The next purportedly liberal organization to rush to Rush Limbaugh's aid will be:
[list=a][*]NORML[*]MoveOn.org[*]ABA[*]Alan Dershowitz and his Harvard lackeys[*]Amnesty International[/list=a]

Bonus question: Will he have the decency to thank them?

I'm hoping it's "E" (post-conviction), but "D" seems more likely. If he gets a gig on NPR, I'm tuning out and going iPod 24/7.

not NORML, they are single issue- at most it will help Bush get back to running.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
I would decry further comment with a "I don't piss into the wind", but my last four attempts with you would prove that wrong.

Pissing into the wind is a good description of your efforts to deny what O'Neill said. Here's a quotation from your original post on this, #3914:

• "He described the reaction to Suskind's book as a "red meat frenzy" and said people should read his comments in context, particularly about the Iraq war.
  
  "People are trying to say that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be a regime change in Iraq."
  
  What surprised him, said O'Neill, was how much priority was given to Iraq by the president.
  
  Asked about comments he did not believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the main reason cited for going to war, O'Neill said he never saw "concrete evidence" of such weapons.
  
  "I think the fact that we have not found them makes the point. But that doesn't make the point that we should not have got rid of Saddam Hussein."
  
  Asked about his comment that during Cabinet meetings Bush was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," O'Neill said he regretted some of the language he used to describe his former boss.
  
  "If I could take it back, I would take it back. It has become the controversial centerpiece."

He says people should read him in context, he says they draw the wrong ultimate conclusion, and he says he regrets some of his language. He does not say anything was incorrect.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I think there's a difference between, for example, strict scrutiny analysis and "it's all about utility." If your "utility calculation" includes the possibility that x > y^10 where x is a single individual right and y is the social benefit of banning x, then I gots no beef with you.

The Constitution is just our way of saying that x in the abstract is better than y in reality, even where y has a substantial exponent. That, my friend, is the diametrical opposite of "it's all about utility," unless you take utility to be broad enough to include enduring soluble social ills in individual cases for the sake of a more general value, like freedom qua freedom.

Mine does, but the S.Ct.'s obviously does not. And I'm not sure whether y having a multiple really has any meaning. These are still qualitative judgments that need to be made.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yeah, exactly. The guy has no conception of the "think, then talk" paradigm. He never understood (understands?) that, if a soundbite contains a discrete thought, it will be used without the footnotes and addendums. If you say "John's an idiot", followed by "but then, I think everyone in the world is an idiot", guess which part gets quoted.

Perhaps O'Neil, as Carville said about Dean on national television, "does not understand the glory of the unexpressed thought."

S_A_M

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Mine does, but the S.Ct.'s obviously does not. And I'm not sure whether y having a multiple really has any meaning. These are still qualitative judgments that need to be made.

Any test that has "compelling" in it is a self-justifying analysis, the same way that calling something "remarkable" is of course true, because you have just remarked upon it. To say that the Supreme Court found something to be a "compelling state interest" simply means that it found it was compelled, against abstract principles, to favor group interest over individual interest.

But the fact that individual interests are the hump over which group interests must mount, and not vice versa, means that it's not simply a matter of deciding we'd all be better off if group interests prevailed in this instance. That's why I say a simple utility analysis is what the legislature does; the court is supposed to stymie group interests when a valuable individual interest, harmful in the individual instance but beneficial in the abstract, would otherwise be lost.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
That's why I say a simple utility analysis is what the legislature does; the court is supposed to stymie group interests when a valuable individual interest, harmful in the individual instance but beneficial in the abstract, would otherwise be lost.

But not what it should do. Do members of Congress no longer take the same oath as federal judges? While I agree with your thought, I might say that the court (or Court, or courts, or judges) are uniquely situated to do what the legislature is unwilling to do because of majoritarianism..

Ahh, the countermajoritarian problem. good times, good times.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Any test that has "compelling" in it is a self-justifying analysis, the same way that calling something "remarkable" is of course true, because you have just remarked upon it. To say that the Supreme Court found something to be a "compelling state interest" simply means that it found it was compelled, against abstract principles, to favor group interest over individual interest.

But the fact that individual interests are the hump over which group interests must mount, and not vice versa, means that it's not simply a matter of deciding we'd all be better off if group interests prevailed in this instance. That's why I say a simple utility analysis is what the legislature does; the court is supposed to stymie group interests when a valuable individual interest, harmful in the individual instance but beneficial in the abstract, would otherwise be lost.

My point is that all qualitative judgments are arbitrary. Sure we can have a rule of "strict scrutiny" where certain presumptions exist. But what does this really mean. A qualitative subjective judgment still needs to be made. So in practicality, I see little difference between your "simple" utility analysis and what the court does.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
But not what it should do. Do members of Congress no longer take the same oath as federal judges?

Congress gave up on any responsibility for the constitutionality of legislation sometime after Marbury v. Madison. Now it's simply a matter of running it up the flagpole to see how many justices salute.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Congress gave up on any responsibility for the constitutionality of legislation sometime after Marbury v. Madison

Well, that pins down the time precisely. I would have thought 1994 would have been the posited time.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
...the court is supposed to stymie group interests when a valuable individual interest, harmful in the individual instance but beneficial in the abstract, would otherwise be lost.

But after its Gore decision, the court has increasingly little legitimacy in this area. The analysis of equal protection would have been flunked on a law school exam!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
But after its Gore decision, the court has increasingly little legitimacy in this area. The analysis of equal protection would have been flunked on a law school exam!

And yet we should buy the idea of "the court's expression" = "constitutional principle" in other contexts?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
And yet we should buy the idea of "the court's expression" = "constitutional principle" in other contexts?

Yes, that is a fundamental principal of our government. That is why outcome oriented decisions from the court are so harmful.

If the court were just another partisan formum, then when the battle on any given issue were over we'd just shake hands and move on to the next one. Queensbury Rules.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Yes, that is a fundamental principal of our government. That is why outcome oriented decisions from the court are so harmful.

If the court were just another partisan formum, then when the battle on any given issue were over we'd just shake hands and move on to the next one. Queensbury Rules.

Need I even name the case here?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by bilmore
Need I even name the case here?

you mean cases.