Clarence Thomas Wants To Abolish New Deal
Clarence Thomas Wants To Abolish New Deal
The Supreme Court today upheld a law which allows prisioners to practice their religion from behind bars. Media coverage has focused on the unanimous vote by the Court, and on the atypical religions which the law protects. The Washington Post’s coverage, for example, begins “[t]he Supreme Court sided with a witch, a Satanist and a racial separatist Tuesday, upholding a federal law requiring state prisons to accommodate the religious affiliations of inmates.”
What the media has not mentioned is a radical concurring opinion by Justice Thomas which would eliminate the New Deal and roll back the Civil Rights Movement. Among the laws which would be doomed by Thomas’ approach are “the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the sick leave portions of the Family and Medical Leave, the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, as well as minimum wage and maximum hour laws and labor and environmental laws.”
During his 2000 campaign, President Bush touted Clarence Thomas as a model Justice, and promised to appoint more Justices just like him.
– Ian Millhiser
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Remember, if it was up to Bush we’d have 9 Clarance Thomas’ and no New Deal. People like the New Deal. How can so many people who like the new deal like Bush, it doesn’t make any sense.
June 1st, 2005 at 10:54 amJack says: “People like the New Deal”.
People in the Confederacy liked slavery. That doesn’t make it right.
Likewise Palestinians support the elimination of Israel (it’s in the PLO charter!).
June 1st, 2005 at 11:20 amnice way to compare a progressive social program designed to help, with some of the worst parts of this countries history, and genocide in other parts of the world. Such straw man arguments are a terrible waste of time and reading. Like many of our posts Tony, this one is stupid and ill informed.
June 1st, 2005 at 11:24 amIgnore them. They will go away. There is a reason that wingers have no comments sections on the blogs, like Powerline, or Malkin. They are lazy. Freep and LGF have them, but they like to PC policing. You would be banned after one comment if you didn’t didn’t know how to ‘blend”.
June 1st, 2005 at 11:53 amSlavery is unconstitutional. Your arguments against the New Deal on the basis of constitutionality are specious to ridiculous, hence the move to privatize. All Palestinians are members of the PLO? Is that what you are asserting? I could just as easily assert that all Israeli’s are Zionists. It wouldn’t be true, either.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:51 pmSlavery was constitutional in the Confederacy? That’s news to me.
Regardless, where is socialized retirement income mentioned in the Constitution?
June 2nd, 2005 at 10:46 amYour first question is another example of your ridiculous rhetoric.
Where is the prohibition against SS mentioned in the constitution? calling it socialized retirement income is like calling the inheritance tax a death tax. Can’t you people speak english?
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:02 amMark D.: The tenth amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
The federal gov’t was designed to have limited power, not unlimited power.
According to your logic, the federal gov’t could spend tax money to plant a tree in my backyard, pay my cell phone bill, and bathe my dog. None of those are prohibited by the constitution!
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:41 amTony, you clearly know nothing about the Constitution.
The federal government may, should the Congress authorize it, spend as much money as it wants on tree planting, cell phone bills or dog baths. It’s called a Democracy. The people we elect have very broad power to spent government dollars as they see fit. If you don’t like it, your recourse is at the ballot box, not the courts.
The Tenth Amendment also does not provide the kind of limit you are describing. That Amendment only reserves to the states or the people those “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,” but Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” The Supreme Court quickly accepted the Hamilton/Madison definition of “general Welfare,” and held that a Congressional Act authorizing the spending of money shall only be deemed outside of the “general Welfare” when there is “no reasonable possibility can the challenged legislation fall within the wide range of discretion permitted to the Congress.” In other words, as long as there is any reasonable way that the challenged spending would benefit the nation, the law is constitutional. If you had any legal training whatsoever, Tony, you would be aware of just how broad a power this is, and that when the Supreme Court uses the word “reasonable” or “rational” in the context of a Congressional power, what they are really saying is “Congress may do as it pleases.”
I could go on, but imagine challenging you to a battle of wits would be a bit like challenging a window to a boxing match, and I really hate to pick on the helpless.
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:07 pmJackson,
1) We are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. Do you see the word democracy appear anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution? No.
2) Democracy does not respect the rights of the minority. In a pure democracy, a 51% majority could vote to redistribute the wealth of the 49% minority amongst themselves. The constitution set up gov’t to protect individual rights through checks and balances. Any change to the document requires a supermajority of people, which serves to have the constitution cover only such things that a supermajority agreed on–basic rights like life and liberty. Everything else was left to the states, or people per Amendment 10.
3) Here’s what James Madison said about democracy:
“Democracy is the most vile form of government… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
4) Here’s what James Madison said about the federal gov’t:
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:21 pm“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.”
5) Here’s what James Madison said about the general welfare clause:
“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
6) Here’s what Jefferson said about the general welfare clause:
“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”
7) Why do we even have Article I, Section 8 if Congress can spend on anything they want? What are the enumerated powers listed for? Are they suggestions?
8) If the majority decided to put you in jail simply because they didn’t like you, according to your views, you would see this act as just because it benefits the general welfare of the majority.
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:21 pmThank you, Jackson. As you can see, it’s like arguing about a passage in the Bible with a different religious sect from your own. Apparently you were unaware that the Constitution is the revealed word of God, handed down to us from the Prophets and disciples, Jefferson, Madison… blah blah blah.
The religious right does the same ridiculous cherry-picking to “prove” we are a “christian nation”. Blithering idiots one and all, except these guys are atheists. Most atheists are far more intelligent than these boneheads.
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