What's new
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Wow, you missed all the venom directed at Sarah Palin because she knew she had a Downes Syndrome baby and yet gave birth to it anyway rather than abort it? Wow, how nice to be so insulated.

I am no Sarah Palin defender by any means, yet I found the media treatment of her, particularly in regards to this episode, despicable.
Yes, I did miss that; I'm honestly sick and tired of political venom and I've been ignoring as much of it as I can. I only peeked into this thread yesterday because of a lull at work and nothing productive to do. I'm not a big Palin fan either but I think that's pretty awful too.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

"If we list a set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no others."

Do you believe in tautology?

There are two different sets of "rights" and much confusion abounds as a result. Philosophers like Rousseau talked about "natural rights"; Jefferson et alii expounded on that theme in The Declaration of Independence, which refers to "rights" that are not specified in the Constitution yet are a vital part of the American tradition.

On the other hand, by definition, a "Constitutional right" is a right specifically provided in the Constitution.

To say that people have "no" rights other than those specifically enumerated in the Constitution is a problematic statement.

I would much prefer the Justices say "while there is no explicit right to [blah blah blah] in the Constitution, we believe that under [natural law / common agreement / well-established American tradition / common law / however you want to phrase it], [blah blah blah] is indeed also a human right" rather than go through ridiculous contortions to find something in the Constitution that doesn't appear there.

My statement is quite a bit different than what you posted. You are taking a thoughtful distinction, ignoring it, and then making up something different so that you can then ridicule this other thing you invented that I never said nor never would have agreed with.

By the way, the only "rights" that people generally agree upon are all intangible (except perhaps the right to own a gun). NONE of the "rights" are to material well-being.

Do people have a "right" to a certain minimum amount of food? Well, suppose there is drought and blight and famine and not enough food to go around relative to this putative minimum "right" to food. Are you going to sue Mother Nature to reinstate additional food supplies? (this is not so fanciful, as from time to time there are more "water rights" to the Colorado River than there is water in the Colorado River, because the "rights" were set when it carried more water than it does now). There is no "right" to material well-being because there is no way to enforce that right by insisting that the natural world be different than it is.


PS if you were being sarcastic or making fun of someone else (I see your original post had quotations marks), and I misunderstood the object of your derision, I apologize. :)
 
Last edited:
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Yes, I did miss that; I'm honestly sick and tired of political venom and I've been ignoring as much of it as I can. I only peeked into this thread yesterday because of a lull at work and nothing productive to do. I'm not a big Palin fan either but I think that's pretty awful too.

But you can ignore all of it and focus on the fundamental question of who has the jurisdiction over abortion: state or Federal. (Roe vs Wade basically answered that)

When the unborn is viable, Roe vs Wade took the 1st trimester ("quickening", Aristotle "vegetative soul") view.

The blinding black white line (life at conception) drawn by the pro life has united them but conversely that unyielding line has made it more difficult for them with the main stream over practical matters like contraception.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/abortion.htm
physician and anti-abortion leader Horatio R. Storer asked in 1868. "This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation." (It should be mentioned that the nineteenth-century women's movement also opposed abortion, having pinned its hopes on "voluntary motherhood" -- the right of wives to control the frequency and timing of sex with their husbands.)

Sounds like Prohibition and War on Drugs. illegal but widely available.
women were often able to make doctors listen to their needs and even lower their fees. And because, in the era before the widespread use of hospitals, women chose the doctors who would attend their whole families through many lucrative illnesses, medical men had self-interest as well as compassion for a motive. Thus in an 1888 expos� undercover reporters for the Chicago Times obtained an abortion referral from no less a personage than the head of the Chicago Medical Society. (He claimed he was conducting his own investigation.)
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Some of us can't get past the blindingly white line, because it is just that. A society can be judged by how it treats those who have the least voice. Let's hope we're not judged as harshly as we deserve.

Really though, abortion is just one offshoot of a much broader philosophical consideration of whether we as a society have a culture of life, which values life across a wide span of issues, whether death penalty, euthanasia, human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, stem cell research, caring for your fellow man, etc. or not. Abortion is just one of the most heatedly debated aspects of our society's struggle as to how much we value life or not.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Some of us can't get past the blindingly white line, because it is just that. A society can be judged by how it treats those who have the least voice. Let's hope we're not judged as harshly as we deserve.
This knife cuts both ways, Bob. And deeply.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

No it doesnt, because he is right and you are wrong ;)

(Bob...that was mostly in jest)
I've been wrong about many things in the past and I'm sure I'll be wrong about many things in the future. When one realizes this, it should give one more capacity toward those who one disagrees with, to at the very least show respect to one another.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

You expect me to disagree?


It's fun when you think I'm in a box that I'm not in. :)
It's also fun when you put words in my mouth I didn't say.

I actually realize you're a lot smarter and kinder than your rhetoric, Bob. After all, you aren't on Ignore.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

It's also fun when you put words in my mouth I didn't say.

I actually realize you're a lot smarter and kinder than your rhetoric, Bob. After all, you aren't on Ignore.
Your response made assumptions about me that to the best of my understanding aren't true. Feel free to correct me by explaining what you meant, which to this point you haven't done.

My rhetoric is pretty mild for what I get thrown at me around here. If you have any issues with the level of my rhetoric, you would have left here long ago given the much stronger statements others make, although it doesn't seem that you mind lots of rhetoric when it's in favor of your side of an issue.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Your response made assumptions about me that to the best of my understanding aren't true. Feel free to correct me by explaining what you meant, which to this point you haven't done.

My rhetoric is pretty mild for what I get thrown at me around here. If you have any issues with the level of my rhetoric, you would have left here long ago given the much stronger statements others make, although it doesn't seem that you mind lots of rhetoric when it's in favor of your side of an issue.

The point is that almost nobody is as rude as they sound when they are making a rhetorical point. Argument has a higher tolerance level for impoliteness. I find a lot of what you write over the top by the standards of having say a side by side in person conservation. Then again, I find a lot of what I write over the top, too, by that measure.

Now if you stop trying to read my mind, I'll pretend to stop trying to read yours.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

Hopefully a judge will come to the sane conclusion that a corporation is just as much a person as an Orca.

No judge has ever ruled that a corporation is a person.

A corporation is an assemblage of people, and as such has rights to petition the government and to have protected speech comparable to labor unions, political parties, charitable and religious organizations, etc.
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

No judge has ever ruled that a corporation is a person.

Really?

The Supreme Court of the United States (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819), recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a headnote—not part of the opinion—the reporter noted that the Chief Justice began oral argument by stating, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
 
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"


Yup. Did you actually read the quote you posted or merely post it?

Nowhere does anyone say corporations are people. Either they say that corporations "have the same rights as" people or that corporations will be "treated as if" they were people. That's straight from the first amendment: people have the right to peaceably assemble and petition the government. Assemblages of people will be treated as if they were people in these situations.

I don't like it either that labor unions and PACs and non-profits can spend the money they do to influence elections*. the fact that I don't like something is not sufficient for it to be outlawed.

If you don't like the plain language of the First Amendment then you are free to petition your government to get a new amendment added that restricts those rights. I will not pretend that words mean something other than what they say just because I don't like what the words actually do say.



* I like it even less that career politicians in the legislature will dangle an opportunity to exempt a certain industry from the provisions of a bill as long as corporations / unions / non-profits give money to their re-election campaign. the way votes are traded for money is really despicable to me, be they Wall St bankers and hedge funds being protected by Chuck Schumer (who happens to be one of the biggest defenders of carried interest, by the way....he's from NY first and a D second in this regard!), defense contractors being protected by representatives of either party just because said contractor has a big plant in said representative's district, etc. etc. Both parties do it and I'm fed up with it from either "side" of the aisle.

Don't ask me to defend the Court's ruling because I think corporations "should" have those rights. Don't ask me to believe you can't read either. You choose to be disingenuous because it makes you feel clever and superior. Just think how much better you'd feel if you actually earned those feelings on their merits.
 
Last edited:
Re: The Power of the SCOTUS II: "Release the Kagan!"

I love this line of reasoning. Sure, corporations have the same rights as people, but they aren't actually people. Right.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KlPQkd_AA6c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top