joyfulchristianMy musings on politics, religion, and the world.Mona Charen's wrong on one point- June 29, 2008 She says: When the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments speak of the right of the people to free speech and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and so on, no one interprets these as collective rather than individual rights. In fact, Stevens' dissent in Heller does claim that our first amendment rights to assemble and petition the government are, in essence, collective rights.http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/mona-charens-wrong-on-one-point.h... Justice Stevens is an Imbecile (Part 6 of )- June 29, 2008 Stevens claims that contemporary commentators are largely useless because 1) they discuss the 2nd amendment and Article VII of the English Guarantee of rights and because 2) they appear to be unfamiliar with the drafting history of the 2nd amendment. Stevens 1st argument is especially illustrative. He had previously claimed that Article VII has little use because it was worded differently and written at a...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Justice Stevens is an Imbecile (Part 5 of )- June 29, 2008 Arggh. What is important about Blackstone is the instruction he provided on reading the sort of text before us today. Blackstone described an interpretive approach that gave far more weight to preambles than the Court allows. Counseling that the fairest and most rational method to interpret the will of the legislator, is by exploring his intentions at the time when the law was made, by...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Justice Stevens is an Imbecile (Part 4 of )- June 29, 2008 A good 9-10 pages of Stevens' dissent is spent looking at all the different proposed languages set forth for the 2nd amendment and then concluding that because Madison chose not to base his language on proposals that more explicitly protected civilian usage, that he MUST not have had any intention to protect civilian usage. This statement is not based on any historical evidence whatsoever. Stevens...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Justice Stevens is an Imbecile (Part 3 of )- June 29, 2008 Here we go again: Although the abstract definition of the phrase the people could carry the same meaning in the Second Amendment as in the Fourth Amendment, the preamble of the Second Amendment suggests that the uses of the phrase in the First and Second Amendments are the same in referring to a collective activity. By way of contrast, the Fourth Amendment describes a right...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Justice Stevens is an Imbecile (Part 2 of )- June 29, 2008 Good grief. So apparently, the right to petition the government is only "sort of" an individual right. In the First Amendment, no words define the class of individuals entitled to speak, to publish, or to worship; in that Amendment it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of the...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Justice Stevens is an imbecile (Part 1 of )- June 29, 2008 So I finally started reading Stevens' dissent in Heller and I find this: While the Court makes the novel suggestion that it need only find some logical connection between the preamble and the operative provision, it does acknowledge that a prefatory clause may resolve an ambiguity in the text. Ante, at 4.7 Without identifying any language in the text that even mentions civilian uses of...http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/justice-stevens-is-an-imbecile-pa... Firefox 3.0- June 29, 2008 Really wishing I hadn't "upgraded". The new version is constantly crashing and my Scribefire blogging tool plug-in now eats every post. Great work guys.http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/firefox-30.html Heller- June 28, 2008 I had a somewhat lengthy discussion of Heller drafted, but when I hit post, only the title showed up. If I have time, I may try writing it again.http://joyfulchristian.blogs.com/joyfulchristian/2008/06/heller.html |