"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Originalism

Timothy Kincaid has come up with a thoughtful commentary on Antonin Scalia's latest bullshit about the Fourteenth Amendment. He's much more polite than I'm inclined to be about it.

My only comment is that the text of the amendment says quite plainly "all persons." At that point, I don't really care about Scalia's fantasies of what the drafters intended. That's what they wrote. We go from there.

2 comments:

Nigel said...

The Box Turtle article is excellent. It's hard to know what ppl had in mind when they designed a clause in the constitution. To imagine you know as Scalia is doing is surely a dangerous innovation.

Hunter said...

Scalia is nothing more than a Republican hack. I've read some of his opinions -- they're laughable as legal arguments, but as political diatribes, they have a certain perverted charm.

"Originalism" is garbage from the word go -- one thing I can tell you, the Founders never intended for the Constitution to be taken as Holy Writ -- that's why they gave us the means to amend it.