By SueN
- Paul Pillar, Security Studies Program-Georgetown University. We Can Live With A Nuclear Iran.
- Hans Von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation. Voter ID equals voter suppression...
- Stan Painter, American Federation of Government Employees. Privatized food safety inspections?
- Dr. Mark Post, Maastricht University. Everything You Know is Wrong... Is 'in vitro meat' moving closer to the menu?
- Bumper Music:
- Bomb Iran, Vince Vance & The Valiants.
- War/No More Trouble, Playing for Change (video).
- Free Your Mind, En Vogue.
- Vote, Emma's Revolution (video).
- If You're Going Through Hell, Rodney Atkins (video).
- I Won't Back Down, Tom Petty.
- Eat It Weird Al Yankovic.
- Grand Canyon, Dmitriy Lukyanov (you need to search for it) (with additional sounds by Jacob).
- Democracy, Leonard Cohen.
- Clip: Paul Weyrich (video).
"Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome. Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
- Letter: "Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane", 6 Sept. 1819.
In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived." If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se. For intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scarecrow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted with impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law. My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal. I will explain myself by examples, which, having occurred while I was in office, are better known to me, and the principles which governed them.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|