a President's life is more valuable than yours? How about the VP? Justice Scalia? Senator? Bill Gates? A CEO as opposed to a Janitor? Dealt and punished the same--ideally.
The biggest difference is not how they are dealt with but by whom. If someone threatened to kill me it would be handled by local government, city police and parish courts, maybe state. If you threaten the president, it's a federal matter and dealt with by the Secret Service and federal courts. Different rules for different folks. That's just how the system works. There is no federal agency whos' major purpose is to protect me as an individual. This is just another example of the Ninth trying to undermine all that is decent.
Now don't get me wrong, I happen to disagree with the "living document" interpretation ideas about the Constitution. I am much more closely aligned with the conservatives on the Supreme Court (Rhenquist, Scalia, and Thomas) who call themselves "originalists" (meaning, they interpret the Constitution as it was originally written, applying what they feel was the original meaning of the document's text to this day). Scalia had it right when he said at a recent conference that the Constitution, though it's meant to be strictly interpreted and defined, is not an inflexible document that cannot undergo change. It can, and it should. The process for changing the Constitution is called AN AMENDMENT. Wanna change the Constitution? Fine, good for you. Convince 68% of your fellow Americans and 68% of your elected officials that you're right and get an amendment passed. Not that easy, huh? It's not meant to be. Radical change, the kind that comes in the form of a constitutional amendment, was originally meant to come only when most Americans are comfortable with it. And a constitutional amendment has no chance unless the majority Americans are indeed comfortable with whatever change is being made. Given that high threshold, it's no wonder that radical leftists and "progressives" prefer to push their agenda by means of a new judicial philosophy that makes new law and new Constitutional rights out of whole cloth. But the debate over how flexible the Constitution should be is another discussion for another day. My point was that what I found most disconcerting about the Yale conference is the participation of the Soros front group Open Society Institute. Soros and his group have been pushing for years the concept that international law supercedes the Constitution, a thought that I am very uncomfortable with. That trend is starting to show up in SCOTUS opinions. For example: -the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that gave Constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy, cited international human rights treaties and noted that most other Western nations (not all) had long ago legalized it as well, and we should just naturally follow suit. -the majority opinion in the recent decision prohibiting the execution of minor convicted felons (those under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed) quoted the "Declaration of the Rights of the Child," a UN convention on children's rights, as partial justification. The United States refused to sign DORC, mostly because of very controversial language in the treaty about the "sexual freedom" of children and because it failed to outright condemn the common Middle East practice of using children as suicide bombers. No matter how you feel about whether the Constitution is living and breathing or set in stone, it should concern us all when international law, especially bad international law, starts creeping into SCOTUS decisions. The Framers never, ever, EVER wanted any such thing to happen. And George Soros and OSI would love to see much, much more of that.
this case was decided on merits, not the influence of other countries. http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/02pdf/02-102.pdf thats the whole case, including the majority opinion. i read the entire opinion, and you are misrepresenting the facts. in the course of the case, the history of sodomy laws is discussed. they discuss a case, "bowers v hardwick" where a state law was upheld that a dude was engaging in criminal sodomy. in the bowers case, justice burger referenced the history of western judeo christian civilization to justify the law against homosexual sodomy. so in this case, counterpoint to burger's western civilization argument was pointed out. that not all of the judeo christian world cares about buggering. if burger wants to say that anal sex is evil because christians societies say it is, then it reasonable to mention that the christian societies dont actually all say that. in the bowers case, burger says: "Decisions of individuals relating to homosexual conduct have been subject to state intervention throughout the history of Western civilization." so in this case, the majority opinion says: " The sweeping references by Chief Justice Burger to the history of Western civilization and to Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards did not take account of other authorities pointing in an opposite direction." so a couple mentions of irish homos and crap are thrown in to demonstrate that the states of western civ do not always intervene in butt****ing. anyways, that had really nothing to do with the decision, and you are only complaining because jeebus told you that you are supposed to think gay stuff is wrong. we are not slowly letting our courts make decisions based on european precedent. no liberal progressive agenda is being forced through our courts via international justifications. in this case, the court has simply addressed an obsolete law against something that is merely disgusting, not immoral. god hates fags, and i can not really think of many things more disgusting than gay sex, but the government of the US shouldnt care about how nasty they are. this case is slam dunk, open and shut privacy issue. you are misrepresenting the facts, and you are doing it because you are christian. i have not read the other case you reference, but i will assume you have probably again misrepresented the entent to which foreign decisions were taken into account.
Well, it's not exactly new Red, it's been around for about 70 years, the idea or the concept of judicial activism or "living Constitution" (dating back to a few overzealous conservatives taking a chainsaw to FDR's New Deal and FDR fighting back by attempting court-packing) Actually, it was probably around before that; who knows whose decisions were a strict interpretation of law as written as opposed to the opinion. For example, on it's face, I'd like to think that the Dred Scott decision back in the 1850s was outrageously against the spirit of the Constitution. I haven't read the decision though, and maybe they were simply being prudent jurists, interpreting the 3/5ths clause to it's logical conclusion and going with the intent of the Fugitive Slave Act, and they were reluctant to reach so far as to declare that law unconstitutional. Who knows? Martin, I would really, really like to believe that, but if so, then why was reference to the laws of other countries even necessary? Again, it has no place in Supreme Court decisions. That's all well and good. Personally, I don't like anti-sodomy laws. I am not really cool with morality laws selectively regulating the nuts and bolts of completely private sexual behavior in graphic detail. There are much better ways to ensure the complete denial of any government sanction to homosexuality. I prefer definition of marriage/definition of family laws. That's not the main issue I have with the decision. I want to find where specifically the Constitution says that any branch of our federal govt., executive, legislative, or judicial, can or should weigh in on a sexual morality law either way, or where it says a state or a local govt. cannot pass a sexual morality law. Is that falling under that all-encompassing "right to privacy" that supposedly exists in the 4th Amendment? Not to disparage how important Western Civilization and Judeo-Christian values, because they are very important to our legal system, but why aren't they talking about what the Constitution says specifically about the intent and the Constitutionality of the laws in question? It seems like this modern SCOTUS is doing what it so often does; it takes it's eye off the ball and runs off chasing legal rabbits in an entirely different direction. And that's my principal problem here. I shudder to think what their legal logic is on strictly determining the constitutionality of laws of a much less controversial nature that come under far less scrutiny, such as a local ordinance against spitting on the sidewalk (of course, that would never make it to the Court). Then why was it even in there? Who is jeebus? I wish I were so confident as you are about that. It seems to me it's creeping into their decisions more and more. As for determining what is moral and immoral, I would like for that to be left up to local communities to decide, each according to their own, but the Constitution ought to say something about our national morality. God hates homosexuality, not homosexuals. I agree, the decision definitely should not be based on misplaced emotions or revulsions either way. I can't say with 100% confidence that it was. Yes, it should be private. But show me where privacy is explicitly mentioned as a constitutional right. Am I? You seem to have made a lot of assumptions about where I would stand on this case, but since I'm not really that rah-rah about anti-sodomy laws to begin with, what say you now? I, like Scalia, am simply an "originalist" about what the Constitution says and means. My concern is simply that SCOTUS is once again overstepping it's bounds. You think anti-sodomy laws are outdated and barbaric? Fine. But they don't seem to me to be explicitly unconstitutional. Convince 50% +1 of your fellow citizens that you are right and get them repealed. Advice: you probably won't be very successful in doing that if you insult and belittle their faith, and accuse them of misrepresenting things because of religious viewpoint. You know what they say about when you assume. Why don't you read about the case for yourself? Then decide whether or not that case was firmly grounded in the Constitution or if, like they've done so many times, the majority opinion made new law out of whole cloth with the help of more "progressive" legal codes from overseas.
All I can say about this thread is I'm not surprised. I never thought I'd see things like Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzalez or the killing of a person ordered by the court system either. Now its ok to threaten the president, sounds about right. Don't be too surprised if I head for the country soon, Mountains!
