Back to the Important Stuff

Try to be careful, don’t take no chances, you better watch what you say

Well, I'll say this for the current administration and congress - they're forcing me to actually learn all that civics crap that I didn't really pay attention to in school.

Seems we have some rogue representatives who want to have their cake and eat it too. To wit - Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004. "To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court."

The specific details:

The Congress may, if two thirds of each House agree, reverse a judgment of the United States Supreme Court--

(1) if that judgment is handed down after the date of the enactment of this Act; and

(2) to the extent that judgment concerns the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.


You may wish to review, as I did, the Relevant section of the Constitution. (Maybe it's just me, but sometimes when I read portions of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, I feel like the writer knew what he wanted to say, but didn't get it all down on paper. Of course, that seems to by my style as well).

Searching for information on this bill led me to several other blogs, including Thoughtcrimes, where the entry included a link to Federalist Paper 78. Actually, their link is malformed, but that's not important right now.

Of course I realize that the Federalist Papers are not law, but one thing I do recall dimly from school is that they provide a damned good idea of what those guys were thinking as they worked on creating the basis of a new form of government (cf: my parenthetical comment above).

"The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex post facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing."



I'm getting pissed. It's not enough that they want to eliminate equal rights. Now they want to get rid of that pesky system of checks and balances. We go halfway around the world to ensure access to oil topple a dictator, all the while trying to distract the people at home from the efforts to move us closer to a totalitarian theocracy. It's not going to happen. We can't let it.

What I should be listening to:

Talking Heads - Life During Wartime