Opinion of MarkD?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Same as what I said in the mathstatman thread.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If you hate him he must be a freedom fighter.

Why would you think I hate him?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If you hate him he must be a freedom fighter.

Why would you think I hate him?

Well, you certainly don't love me, now do you???

God calls us to love everyone. Love is the only superpower in the world.

[heatcharger]

Abstain.

But uh, Cath, why did you drop the second half of your ubiquitous username?

[Virginiá]

Pretty smart fella

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

FF

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Meh

[jamestroll]

Another fellow St. Louisian.

He is cool.

Just fyi most people from St Louis are friendly but weird.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Another fellow St. Louisian.

He is cool.

Just fyi most people from St Louis are friendly but weird.

Just ask JustinTimeCuber. He's quirky and fun.

[Mr. Morden]

Love is the only superpower in the world.

I see what you did there.

[Mr. Smith]

FF

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

In any case, I vote FF. He has a very interesting perspective. It can certainly lead to tunnel vision in some of the discussions I've seen him in, but it's clear that he knows where his priorities lie with the rule of law.

But uh, Cath, why did you drop the second half of your ubiquitous username?

A whimsical "rebranding" is perhaps the easiest explanation. In IRC I sometimes went by "Cath", as it was a nickname of sorts. Secondary to that would be my increasing inability to identify with any particular political movement or coherent (contemporary) ideology.

[MarkD]

He has a very interesting perspective. It can certainly lead to tunnel vision in some of the discussions I've seen him in, but it's clear that he knows where his priorities lie with the rule of law.

J'avoue.

[GlobeSoc]

I am severely alarmed by his ideology, and if anyone like him gets anywhere near the levers of power I'd oppose them every step of the way. In my view, the results of a SCOTUS of his desire would be a severe worsening of inequality, the collapse of America as world power, and state politics, particularly in the south, becoming extremely vicious and volatile. This may be an exaggeration, but that judicial philosophy might be correct if you look at the Constitution in the way they look at it, but even then the likely effects are so deleterious that I'd oppose them for pragmatic reasons.

I'd argue that the vagueness and ease of reinterpretation is a release valve to compensate for the difficulty of amending the constitution. In fact, if we stuck to the original interpretations of the constitution and their amendments dogmatically, it would have been replaced already, many times over. A hard to change constitution is a brittle one. It may stay the same under pressure, but it will break, especially in our polarized environment.

This is some exhausted ramblings, but this is my two cents.

[MarkD]

All I can say is ........ wow.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I am severely alarmed by his ideology, and if anyone like him gets anywhere near the levers of power I'd oppose them every step of the way. In my view, the results of a SCOTUS of his desire would be a severe worsening of inequality, the collapse of America as world power, and state politics, particularly in the south, becoming extremely vicious and volatile. This may be an exaggeration, but that judicial philosophy might be correct if you look at the Constitution in the way they look at it, but even then the likely effects are so deleterious that I'd oppose them for pragmatic reasons.

I'd argue that the vagueness and ease of reinterpretation is a release valve to compensate for the difficulty of amending the constitution. In fact, if we stuck to the original interpretations of the constitution and their amendments dogmatically, it would have been replaced already, many times over. A hard to change constitution is a brittle one. It may stay the same under pressure, but it will break, especially in our polarized environment.

This is some exhausted ramblings, but this is my two cents.

I mostly agree with this. But I have nothing personally against him.

[junior chįmp]

Very intelligent young man. I bet he's sexy

[Kingpoleon]

Very intelligent young man. I bet he's sexy

If you’re creepy and you know it...

[junior chįmp]

Very intelligent young man. I bet he's sexy

If you’re creepy any you know it...

God forbid...anyone should be complimented on this site

[MarkD]

Very intelligent young man. I bet he's sexy

Not young, Mondale.

Today is my 55th birthday, and to celebrate, I thought I'd give this thread a bump and see if anybody has anything new to say.

[Orser67]

Seems like a very intelligent person but I differ a lot from him ideologically. I will say that it's nice to have someone on the board whose politics are radically different from everyone else's but not in a socialist/libertarian/Constitution Party kind of way. I doubt anyone else on this board would say this:

I'm a single-issue voter too, but I'm pro-choice and abortion is not my single issue. Mine is the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

[lfromnj]

Appreciate the strict constitutionalism of him. I wouldn't agree with the effects of ruling strictly constitutionally like MarkD and bowers but I also would prefer a strict constitutionally Supreme Court however that has more to due with the stretching of the Commerce Clause than the 14th amendment for me. It also isn't my sole issue unlike him.

[PSOL]

I haven’t noticed him much, he hasn’t said anything inoffensive or controversial in the boards and times I frequent at least.

[TWTown]

Seems like a very intelligent person but I differ a lot from him ideologically. I will say that it's nice to have someone on the board whose politics are radically different from everyone else's but not in a socialist/libertarian/Constitution Party kind of way. I doubt anyone else on this board would say this:

I'm a single-issue voter too, but I'm pro-choice and abortion is not my single issue. Mine is the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

What a weird but interesting single voter position.

[MarkD]

Seems like a very intelligent person but I differ a lot from him ideologically. I will say that it's nice to have someone on the board whose politics are radically different from everyone else's but not in a socialist/libertarian/Constitution Party kind of way. I doubt anyone else on this board would say this:

I'm a single-issue voter too, but I'm pro-choice and abortion is not my single issue. Mine is the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

What a weird but interesting single voter position.

“Weird,” yes, but it is consistent with my feelings on a topic that I’ve been concerned about for much of my life.

I first started being suspicious about how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution when I was a junior in high school. The Court’s rulings on topics such as busing for desegregation, prayer in public schools, and the “malapportionment” of state legislative seats were confusing and suspicious to me even as a sixteen-year-old. But although these things were a concern to me, they weren’t what I was going to choose as my career path and I didn’t major or minor in law when I was in college. I didn’t start studying constitutional law until after I graduated from college.

Robert Bork’s book “The Tempting of America,” (published in 1990), was the first book I studied to start learning more about how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution. That book taught me that most of the judicial activism that the Court engages in – by “activism” I mean striking down laws with what is actually a misinterpretation of the Constitution – is done in the name of one of the clauses in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

I continued reading a variety of other books about constitutional law, and I have spent hundreds of hours reading Supreme Court opinions – majority opinions, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions – from hundreds of Court cases. The first Supreme Court case from which I read the opinions was Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965. A dissenting opinion in that case – and I completely agree with the dissenting opinions there, not the majority or the concurring opinions – quoted from a dissenting opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1930 case called Baldwin v. Missouri.

Holmes had been a young man in his early 20s when he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was wounded three times while fighting the causes of re-uniting the country and ending slavery. He went to law school after the war, and the 14th Amendment was adopted while he was in law school. He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1902 at age 61, and during the 29 years he served on the Court, there were 16 occasions in which he cast a dissenting vote from a Court majority that was striking down a state or local law and the majority invoked either the Due Process Clause of the 14th or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th. Baldwin v. Missouri was the last of the 16 occasions. Part of what he said in his dissenting opinion (and this was quoted 35 years later in one of the Griswold dissents), was this:

I have not yet adequately expressed the more than anxiety that I feel at the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down what I believe to be the constitutional rights of the States. As the decisions now stand, I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they happen to strike a majority of this Court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions. ... [W]e ought to remember the great caution shown by the Constitution in limiting the power of the States, and should be slow to construe … the Fourteenth Amendment as committing to the Court, with no guide but the Court's own discretion, the validity of whatever laws the States may pass.

(States have POWERS, not "rights," but other than that, the quote is bang-on correct.)

In the time I have spent studying the 14th Amendment, and reading all the Supreme Court decisions that I have read invoking the 14th, I have seen the Court striking down laws that pertain to contraceptives, abortion, marriage, childbirth outside of marriage, extended family living arrangements, sodomy, gay rights, immigration, and voting rights, and nearly all of what I have read have caused me to have the same kind of high anxiety that Holmes spoke of. And being gay myself, this naturally comes as the greatest political concern to me.

I believe we need a new constitutional amendment to rewrite Section 1 of the 14th to make its meaning narrower and clearer. I suggest including a clause about sexual orientation equality in the rewrite (so people will stop accusing me of being like a Jew who helps Nazis).