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January 17, 2014 06:27 AM UTC

Friday Open Thread

  • 28 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

–Mark Twain

Comments

28 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread

    1. Triangulation

      Obama turned off a generation voters by immediately losing his campaign promises from 2008 and 2012, and by being just a little too cute on many of these other issues. It might have been smart politics at the time, but if he had gone full progressive like he said he would, the Tea Party Repubilcans wouldn't be heard from in generations.

    2. Like I keep saying, the idea that Obama is a radical liberal, much less a socialist, is simply an outlandishly ridiculous rightie perpetrated myth. He ran as a corporate friendly centrist. He won as a corporate friendly centrist. If anything he's more center right than center left. 

      There pretty much isn't a significant elected left anymore. Dems are overwhelmingly centrist, very few more than very mildly center left, and Rs are overwhelmingly far right. And no, being  extremely conservative but not a complete wacko doesn't qualify anyone as a "moderate". Dems are the "moderates". Almost no one in office puts ordinary people first even though ordinary people with money to spend are the real wealth makers in our consumer society.

      Another rightie myth this should put to rest: Obama hates white people and favors black people.

  1. I have a question on abortion:  Do you all think that it is a "settled issue" or still open for debate?  The reason I ask is that in the discussion of the Bucks, et. al. no one cited the United States Consititution and the law according to Roe.Instead, we had all kinds of speculation, both political and metaphysical.  It is obviously a political issue, not a legal one; it is time to hit the respective bases over the  head with the abortion bat.  Drives me crazy.

     Where civil rights are involved, I think our first thoughts should be for the constiution.  Women have an absolute right to an abortion during the first trimester.  States have a right to regulate abortion in the second  trimester and prohibit it in the last trimester; providing adequate provision is made for the life and health of the mother.

    Why is Mrs. Buck trying to pass a law that is unconstitutional?  Doesn't she or her husband believe in the Constitution of the United States?  Is she interested in forming her own country?  She should be challenged on constitutional  ground.  

    Please, spare me the "soul" argument.  The jesuits did that for centuries…only male fetuses got their "souls" months before female fetuses did.

    1. I think it's open to debate because Roe was judicial overreach and it is fundamentally as you said a political, not a legal question. I think it should be legal, and I think if/when Roe is overturned and it is decided by the states, it will be kept legal.

      But yeah, it's going to remain open for debate pretty much forever. Because when a fetus becomes human isn't a scientific question, it's a moral opinion.

      1. Judicial overreach?  A fundamental right to not believe someone else's religious belief about when life begins is overreach?  If it's a moral opinion, David, what business does the government have dictating it?

      2. judicial overreach? DT.  You mean like civil rights legislation? the miranda decision?  Do you know the implications if Roe is overturned and the issue goes back to the states?

        1) Each state will be allowed to determine who is a person and who is not. That would make the Dred Scott decision the "law of the land."

        2) It also would weaken if not destroy the entire civil rights structure based on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.  You have daughters. Do you want them subject to job and housing discrimination?  What about being refused service in some establishments?  That is what we are looking at if the 14th amendment is weakened.

        Let me make myself perfectly clear (god, I sound like nixon)  I believe that access to abortion is a legal fact and a settled civil right. BUT, both sides treat it like a political issue because they use it to raise money and fire up the bases.  I DEPLORE THAT. 

        1. I believe we should operate as a Democracy, which imperfect as that is, beats any alternative. I think political decisions hould be made by the legislature, not handed down by a court. That the court should interpret & enforce the law, but not invent new rights.

          I think Roe was judicial overreach to an extent that the same logic could be used to find most any other "hidden" right. And while you may love when the court invents the right to an abortion, that then also gives any 5 justices the ability to find that a fertilized egg is a human being.

          I don't want 5 unelected people having that power.

              1. DT,

                You need to study the Constitution.  It is a beautiful document and it is why we are a constitutional republic and not a pure democracy.

                You are enttitle to your own opinions, but not your own facts. School  segregation was legal until the Supreme Court reversed Plessey v. Fergerson with the decison in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.  Jim Crow was  the law until The civil rights act of 1964.  None of those decisions would have be upheld in a natioal referundum, IMHO.  and I lived through the mess in the South.

                You are right that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment outlawed slavery after the Union won the civil war. It also gave black men the right to vote.  The 19th amendment gave women the franchise.  BUT, all the anti-discrimination laws that guarantee equal treatment to women, racial minorities, handicapped, etc. under the due process of the 14th amendment were laws passed by Congress and UPHELD By the SCOTUS.

                 

          1. Your constiutional scholarship and your political predicting skills are weak.

            Rights not specifically enumerated by the contitution are retained by the people.  To claim that the only constitutional rights are those specifically mentioned is a conservatism so pinched in its view that it has almost no proponents.

            If by "kept legal" should Roe fall, you mean abortion will be legal somewhere in the US, you're correct, but that's no succor to a poor woman in Texas or Misssissippi who would have to travel thousands of miles to obtain one.  The bible belt states will outlaw abortion given the opportunity, and the latest wave of restrictions have almost done so de facto if not de jure.

            To ensure the right to abortion nationwide, liberal legal scholars need to develop a movement to overturn the "undue burden" standard Sandra Day O'Connor invented from whole cloth in the Casey decision.  It allows any regulation, no matter how restrictive, to pass, so long as in a jusge's eyes, it has a plausible health and safety benefit, or the state favors it in expressing their preference for childbirth over aboortion.

             

          2. Well our founding fathers thought we should operate as a Republic with majority rule through elected representatives within a constitutional framework of limiting checks and balances, including an independent judicial branch playing a vital role. That was their quite brilliant way of avoiding majority tyranny or a majority handing over dictatorial powers to a leader for life or until the next coup, the pitfalls into which most experiments in democracy in Latin America, the Middle East, adjoining non-Arab regions and Africa have fallen. It's why their system is still operational unlike most other systems in place  in their day. It's why you can't get elected president, dismiss the judiciary en masse at any time if  they don't give you what you want and change the constitution at will.

      3. Indeed. Abortion is a contentious issues that isn't going away anytime soon. The crux of the problem is that the issue of when life begins is not one that lends itself to changing opinions.

        I believe that abortion should remain legal; however, I doubt I'd get real far trying to change the mind of  someone who thinks should be illegal. The reverse is also true: someone who thinks all abortion should be illegal is unlikely to change my mind that it should be legal. 

         

        1. Nope, pal.  There is no issue about when does life begin.  It is a biological fact that it begins at conception.  The issue is a legal one….at which stage of that life will it be granted legal personhood.  That issue has also been decided by the Supreme Court…the answer is with the first breathe.  

           

          1. The political area is in the second trimester—the area when a state can "regulate" abortion, if it choses …. and the third trimester, when a state can prohibit abortion.   Any state that prohibits or regulates abortion must not place an "undue burden" on the pregnant woman and must make reasonable allowance for the life and health of the pregnant woman.  Those are very complex medical as well as legal questions…..so everyone would much rather do the "angels on the pinhead dance" about when does life begin….that way everybody gets to fight…..and raise money for their side.

             

             

        1. I thought judicial overreach is when righties don't get their way. Isn't it what "activist judges" are guilty of? Citizens United was a pretty big stretch. Where were the conservatives, up in arms about activism when it was handed down?

            

  2. This also rhymes: "Christie is History"

    NJ Gov Chris Christie has lawyered up. And, David Wildstein, the aide who Christie said he hardly interacted with, was given a Port Authority job at the Exec level by…………wait for it: Chris Christie. 

    Then they went ahead and blocked the world's busiest bridge, that was already a known terrorist target, on the 9/11 anniversary out of politial spite.

    Go Hillary!

  3. @Zappatero,

    When I am not glued to the radio set, I listen to Mexican soap opera for the language training.  So, based on that, this is what I think may well have happened……Bridget Kelly had a romantic liason with either the head of Christie's campaign or his appointment to the Port Authority…..pillow talk, between two of the three resulted in  bridgewater gate and they, in turn, persuaded the third to go with the plan. ……

     

     

    1. Que chistoso, dwyer! OK, your new assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to mix the paranoid world of rightie politics and fake scandals with the bosom-heaving romance and triangulated transgressions of the telenovelas……adelante!

       

  4. Fundraising off lies makes bank.

    Wright masquerading as the root-out-government-freeloaders and fiscal conservative candidate is particualrly rich, if course.  But he seems to have some skilla t milking support from the craziest of the nutter wing of the TeaParty faction of the conservative Mesa County GOP.  

    http://wright54.com/auditobamacare.html

    MEANWHILE, OVER 300,000 COLORADAN'S HAVE LOST THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE AND OBAMACARE IS DRAMATICALLY FAILING.
    NOW IS THE TIME TO STOP THIS MADNESS. PLEASE HELP JARED WRIGHT STAY IN HIS POLITICAL FIGHT AGAINST TWO CANDIDATES WHO HAVE NOT STEPPED UP TO SHOW ANY
    LEADERSHIP ON THIS ISSUE.

                                               

  5. Obama spoke today about the NSA and what he intended to do about it.  Someone needs to remind him of this:

    Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

    Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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