supreme court

Chris Knight's avatar

If the local cult calling itself the “Church of Christ” (which as I’ve stated before has nothing to do with the mainstream Churches of Christ that most people respectfully acknowledge) has any sense at all, then its leader Johnny Robertson had better direct those mysterious attorneys of his to begin filing amicus curiae briefs with the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Shirley Phelps-Roper: his longtime nemesis (among many others) and spokesthing for the infamous Westboro Baptist Church run by her father Fred Phelps.

(Having been in the same room with both of these soulless wretches and witnessed them screeching at each other, I can only begin to imagine what the reaction of either Robertson or Phelps-Roper to that assertion would be like…)

But it’s true: if Johnny Robertson and his followers want to continue harassing innocent people in what should be the comforting environments of their places of ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Read about it here.

How the hell is this going to make him any different than Ted Kennedy?

“But Chris, he couldn’t get elected in Massachusetts if he were pro-life!”

There are more important things in this world than “getting elected”.

I have said it before and I will say it again: the vast majority of the Republican party’s leadership and elected officials do not care one iota about the abortion issue. And if they do, it’s only because it never ceases to provide a carrot that gets to be dangled in front of “the faithful” to keep them voting GOP in elections.

It just so happened that this time the carrot was “health care reform”, and that to many people that is more important than the abortion issue. Rather telling also, that Brown has publicly said he doesn’t want the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade… ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Few things convinced me that this country has gone completely off the rails more than did Kelo v. City of New London: the horrendous decision by the Supreme Court in 2005.

To recap: the city of New London, Connecticut set about in the late Nineties to use eminent domain to seize the land of private homeowners… so that it could lure big companies like pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to the area and sell them the same property! It was the very worst example of stealing from Peter to give to Paul.

How did the elected officials of New London justify this outrageous action? By claiming that seizing the property of Suzette Kelo and other homeowners and giving it to major industry, that they would be building up the tax base of New London. It was for a “public good”, ya see. At least that’s how they described it.

Suzette Kelo ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

A few weeks ago I arrived at a sobering conclusion, that no doubt better minds than my own have long ago already come to: that the United States government and the political processes associated with it have become a by-product of the lack of enlightenment on the part of collective America. The ability to self-govern was something that only a mature and more noble mind could take responsibility for, the Founders recognized. And for awhile, it worked pretty well… before Joe and Jane Six-Pack decided that voting for American Idol was of more pressing concern than having to worry about whether their elected officials deserved to be in office to begin with.

Anyhoo, President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace the outgoing Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. I ain’t crazy about her one bit, ‘cuz she’s already said that the courts are “where policy is ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

The decision was 5-4. Which is why I’m not happy about it. That’s still too close. In a saner day and age, the decision would have been 9-0 in favor of gun ownership.

Being one vote away from tyranny is still tyranny, in my book.

And then there are those of us among the citizenry who hold to the notion that this ruling has no real meaning at all, because we already know that the individual has the right to defend himself or herself. I sure as hell wasn’t waiting with baited breath as to what nine justices in some marble building in D.C. had to say about it.

Here’s the text of the ruling (in Adobe Acrobat format) if you’re inclined to check it out for yourself....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Today the Supreme Court of the United States is going to hear arguments in a case regarding the interpretation of the Second Amendment. Namely, whether possession of a gun is the right of an individual or whether it’s a “collective” one.

I would like to report that I am cautiously optimistic about how they will decide on this, but I can’t even muster up that much.

This is the same Supreme Court that a few years ago that effectively destroyed the security of owning personal property by way of the Kelo decision. They ruled in favor of “the community” then and against the rights of the individual. Why should we believe that they will do any differently this time, on this issue?

Actually, I must confess that part of me is secretly hoping that the Supremes will attack individual rights on this one. Maybe then some of the Christians ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Some good news out of the high court, for a change.

But the Supremes still insist that there is a “constitutional right” to have an abortion.

Partial-birth abortion is one of the most stomach-turning things you could ever imagine. I’m glad that this ban is being upheld. But abortion is still legal. And I don’t know if Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned in the foreseeable future. As I’ve noted here before, there are too many people on both “sides” of the abortion debate who have too much to lose if abortion simply “went away”. The so-called “right to choose” is one of the things keeping “feminists” attached to the Democrat party and opposing abortion is one of the the few things that have the “evangelical Christians” maintaining a tenuous connection to the Republican party.

You know, abortion and the war in Iraq have something in common: in ...

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