Free speech for me but not for thee. ACLU busted!

Hey, let's give credit where credit is due. At least these folks are steadfast in their delusions.

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I'll post this here both for its ACLU connection and because the ACLU has been working so hard to "protect us" from those evil eavesdroppers:

Sunday, August 27, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor illustrates why Democrats cannot be trusted with political power in time of war.

Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio ([email protected], 412-263-1476).

Judge Taylor, who is the chief judge of the federal district court in Detroit, ruled Aug. 17 that it is unconstitutional for the National Security Agency to listen in, without warrants, on telephone conversations between terror suspects abroad and people in the United States.

Her ruling was praised by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats.

"With a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do," The New York Times gushed in an editorial Aug. 18.

But the Times was pretty much alone in its opinion that Judge Taylor's decision was "careful" and "thoroughly grounded."

In its editorial the same day, The Washington Post said Judge Diggs' decision "is neither careful nor scholarly, and is hard-hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard-hitting."

"There is poor reasoning, and then there is head-spinningly, jaw droppingly poor reasoning," said The Washington Times.

By Aug. 20, The New York Times was backtracking. "Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge's conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision's reasoning and rhetoric yesterday," wrote the Times' Adam Liptak in a news story.

On Wednesday, the Times published an op-ed by University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse which described Judge Taylor as "a law unto herself."

"For those who approve the outcome, the judge's opinion is counterproductive," Ms. Althouse said. "It will be harder to defend upon appeal than a more careful decision. It suggests there are no good legal arguments against the program, just petulance and outrage and antipathy toward President Bush."

Activist judges like Ms. Taylor who attempt to impose their political views by fiat pose a significant danger to the constitutional separation of powers, Ms. Althouse said.

"Let's consider the irony of emphasizing the importance of holding one branch of the federal government, the executive, to the strict limits of the rule of law while sitting in another branch of the federal government, the judiciary, and blithely ignoring your own obligations," she said.

The Times' discomfort increased when Judicial Watch discovered that Judge Taylor served on the board of a foundation which gave $125,000 to the Michigan ACLU, the lead plaintiff in the case, and did not disclose this apparent conflict of interest.

"Judge Taylor's role at a grant-making foundation whose list of beneficiaries includes groups that regularly litigate in the courts is ... disquieting," the Times acknowledged in an editorial Thursday.

This wasn't Judge Taylor's first brush with judicial impropriety. In 1998, she tried to take from Judge Bernard Friedman (who'd been awarded it on the customary blind draw), the case concerning affirmative action policies at the University of Michigan's law school. She gave up the attempt when Judge Friedman complained loudly, in public.

Even if Judge Taylor had been awarded the case in the blind draw, it would have been improper for her to hear it, because her husband is a regent at the University of Michigan.
MORE HERE

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To repeat the quote from your post, Foxfyre, "The Times' discomfort increased when Judicial Watch discovered that Judge Taylor served on the board of a foundation which gave $125,000 to the Michigan ACLU, the lead plaintiff in the case, and did not disclose this apparent conflict of interest. "

I think that is pretty revealing. I had heard that, and thanks Foxfyre for posting it. When a judge rules on a case in which the judge has previously donated to the group involved in the case, I think it reveals something about the honesty of the judge. In short, the judge is a fraud. And the decision is a fraud. And the ACLU is a fraud. I hope we never end up ceding the decision making ability on how to defend ourselves to such people, or it will be a disaster. Such people are trying desperately to gain control.

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In China, there is no mental illness.

That is, or at least was two decades ago, the official party comment on the issue. There was no mental ilness in China because, the party held, communism is so aligned with human nature that such maladies never arise. Psychosis, neurosis, etc are the result only of the evils of social organization within a capitalist system. Interesting bit of propaganda and self-deceit, doncha think?

Would either of you two care to have a go at making rational sense of Harris's statement that "God chooses our leaders"? Let me clarify the problems here...
1) if so, what does one make of Pol Pot, or Stalin, or Clinton? Did god choose them too?
2) if so, how does one make sense of democracy and representative government? If god is doing the picking, what reason to have parties, elections, why bother voting at all?

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There are a fair number of fundamentalist Christians who believe that rulers rule by the consent of God. They do not attempt to second guess God by who does and who does not assume leadership of any nation.

I don't personally subscribe to that theory, but that doesn't extrapolate to thinking all those people are mentally unbalanced either. But then I'm not a judgmental liberal who thinks everybody has to think exactly alike in order to be acceptable or sane.

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Coward's way out, fox.

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How so? If I do not subscribe to the doctrine of divine rule, I would not have any argument in favor of who becomes heads of state via that doctrine.

But perhaps you could provide your argument for why anybody who does believe in divine rule and that it is not humankind's prerogative to second guess the mind of God would automatically be designated mentally unstable?

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Foxfyre wrote:

How so? If I do not subscribe to the doctrine of divine rule, I would not have any argument in favor of who becomes heads of state via that doctrine.

But perhaps you could provide your argument for why anybody who does believe in divine rule and that it is not humankind's prerogative to second guess the mind of God would automatically be designated mentally unstable?

First, the doctrine of divine rule normally refers to the claim (such as from a King or a Caliph) that he/she sits on the throne through God's will (so don't mess with me, you satan-facilitating democrats). This doctrine, a fount of injustice, was a key target of the enlightenment and your founders.

Harris' claim/argument is somewhat different, according to her words. "God chooses our rulers". Regardless of who might agree with her, the notion has the too ovious for words logical problems I noted. Harris, or anyone else forwarding such a notion, is left with the dilemma of making rational sense of those logical consequences. Of course, they can choose to just ignore them and go with "well, that's what I believe". Your founders would be so pleased with this attitude.

Second, my suggestion pages back that the lady was not merely being stupid in her comments, but that she might well be in some state of pathology, rested not merely upon this irrationality I've just discussed, but on other behaviors (which I noted there and which you didn't read, or didn't think about, or forgot, or something)

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blatham wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
How so? If I do not subscribe to the doctrine of divine rule, I would not have any argument in favor of who becomes heads of state via that doctrine.

But perhaps you could provide your argument for why anybody who does believe in divine rule and that it is not humankind's prerogative to second guess the mind of God would automatically be designated mentally unstable?

First, the doctrine of divine rule normally refers to the claim (such as from a King or a Caliph) that he/she sits on the throne through God's will (so don't mess with me, you satan-facilitating democrats). This doctrine, a fount of injustice, was a key target of the enlightenment and your founders.

That is what divine rule meant in the glory days of the Roman Empire, yes, and then also later in the Medieval period when monarchs jockeyed for equal power with the Pope. Our founders neither supported nor denied the theory nor did they base national policy on it.

These days it refers to the Biblical passages suggesting that no monarch rises to power without the consent of God or in other words a ruler is there because God wants him to be there which is what Harris said. This view is shared by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Christians around the world and it is not the least bit sinister, nor does it warrant some fanatically anti-religious paranoid liberal types declaring that it represents mental instability.

Harris' claim/argument is somewhat different, according to her words. "God chooses our rulers". Regardless of who might agree with her, the notion has the too ovious for words logical problems I noted. Harris, or anyone else forwarding such a notion, is left with the dilemma of making rational sense of those logical consequences. Of course, they can choose to just ignore them and go with "well, that's what I believe". Your founders would be so pleased with this attitude.

My founders would have had zero problem with this attitude since no doubt many of them shared it.

Second, my suggestion pages back that the lady was not merely being stupid in her comments, but that she might well be in some state of pathology, rested not merely upon this irrationality I've just discussed, but on other behaviors (which I noted there and which you didn't read, or didn't think about, or forgot, or something)

As I didn't find your other assessments of Ms. Harris's mental stability to be any more credible than your opinion of her religious views, I may have indeed missed your intent. Maybe you could give me the Reader's Digest condensed version and state them again?

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I will venture my personal opinion, which I do not believe is much different than a very large segment of people, and that is that God as Creator of all things is in ultimate control of the destiny of the earth and mankind. However, God has created Man as an agent that has choice, and therefore many of the things that happen are a result of the choices made by mankind, both on a personal level and a group level. So I believe that many rulers are determined by man, but ultimately there is such a thing as Divine intervention. And Divine intervention may occur from time to time in both small and large ways. Historians can tell us of some very minor occurrences that influenced world history in a big way. Whether these things were Divinely caused, I do not know, and I am not going to pretend to know which things in history are Divinely caused or brought about. I really do not know much about this, but that is my belief on the subject anyway.

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You went coward again fox in precisely the way you'd done before avoiding address to the logical problems of Harris' statement and re-stating the logical fallacy that the fact of folks believing something gives that something a special licence for acceptance or credibility.

And, what really puts you beyond the pale is your notion of what the founders were up to and thus your lack of understanding regarding their purposive revolt against concepts such as divine right. Either you favor theocracy over democracy or you are just too damned lazy to bother thinking clearly.

Okie, on the other hand, at least makes a good-faith stab at trying to reconcile the dilemma posed when one posits a God overseeing human affairs while still validating the fundamentals of democracy and representative republican government.

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blatham wrote:

You went coward again fox in precisely the way you'd done before avoiding address to the logical problems of Harris' statement and re-stating the logical fallacy that the fact of folks believing something gives that something a special licence for acceptance or credibility.

And, what really puts you beyond the pale is your notion of what the founders were up to and thus your lack of understanding regarding their purposive revolt against concepts such as divine right. Either you favor theocracy over democracy or you are just too damned lazy to bother thinking clearly.

Okie, on the other hand, at least makes a good-faith stab at trying to reconcile the dilemma posed when one posits a God overseeing human affairs while still validating the fundamentals of democracy and representative republican government.

No, I think I have a very good understanding of what our founders believed and they had no problem whatsoever with how anybody believed or interpreted the Bible. They only had concerns that the Federal government not be able to impose a particular interpretation of the Bible on anybody else or punish somebody for what what he or she believed. THAT was what they were about. And they would have taken HUGE exception to you attempting to bar her from political office based on her religious beliefs. They took great pains to write a specific clause into the Constitution to prevent you or anybody else from being able to do that.

There shall be no religious test.

And my point was that if you hold her to be mentally unstable because she holds a particular religious view, do you hold the hundreds of thousands of others who hold similar religious views to also be unstable? Do you hold the very founders of our Constiution at least some who almost certainly shared those views to be unstable?

Further, I did not make any kind of statement about what I though was acceptable or not acceptable, thus I was not making a case for that based on any kind of number. I was only making a case of you using one point of religious belief to declare somebody unstable when such belief is actually quite ocmmon. Tp assign a different intent to what I said than what I did say makes you the dishonest one.

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Foxfyre, the Left is dangerously close to trying to make a case for disqualifying anyone with a religious faith, especially a Christian faith. They have hinted at that for Supreme Court justices, and I think if the trend continues, their ilk will increasingly attempt that line of reasoning. Unless of course it is a liberal that uses religious reference to try to connect to the populace. They have bemoaned the fact that Republicans have an edge on them in this department, and so they have tried to figure out how to negate this advantage. Democrats of course have no problem with campaigning in churches, especially black churches. Remember Al Gore hollering like an old time black preacher. It was so phony, it made me ask, how gullible does he really think people are? Apparently the answer is "very." And of course we have the old tired and worn out Jesse Jacksons of the world that has the label of Reverend, but that is perfectly fine with the Democrats. They see no double standard whatsoever, and of course the press never mentions this either.

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okie wrote:

Foxfyre, the Left is dangerously close to trying to make a case for disqualifying anyone with a religious faith, especially a Christian faith. They have hinted at that for Supreme Court justices, and I think if the trend continues, their ilk will increasingly attempt that line of reasoning. Unless of course it is a liberal that uses religious reference to try to connect to the populace. They have bemoaned the fact that Republicans have an edge on them in this department, and so they have tried to figure out how to negate this advantage. Democrats of course have no problem with campaigning in churches, especially black churches. Remember Al Gore hollering like an old time black preacher. It was so phony, it made me ask, how gullible does he really think people are? Apparently the answer is "very." And of course we have the old tired and worn out Jesse Jacksons of the world that has the label of Reverend, but that is perfectly fine with the Democrats. They see no double standard whatsoever, and of course the press never mentions this either.

Yes, on the Bush supporter thread this week I posted an article re yet another study on academia that shows that it is increasingly left wing ultra liberal and admits to being less and less religious. I know many religious liberals, but I believe they may now be in a minority class. Attacking a person's faith in the relentless pursuit of the politics of personal destruction would not be tolerable if many, possibly most, liberals were not now anti-religious.

I find the ACLU, however, to be so completely hypocritical and disingenuous in the values they claim to hold, that I do not believe it is an anti-religious sentiment per se that drives them. I think it is strictly a profit motive that is driving them at this time.

Some, maybe many, liberals like Blatham, however, get these burrs under their saddle and try to demonize people who think outside the box or believe anything other than the current mantra or acceptable liberal point of view. Putting anything into its proper context beocmes entirely out of the question. And, yes, I do believe it is harmful to the process.

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Foxfyre- Be compassionate please!!! Don't belabor him too much since he has had a very dangerous period of unconsciousness which may have lessened his reasoning abilities!!!

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I think, Foxfyre, that it is hilarious that liberals attack religious beliefs of those in this country who still believe in God on the grounds that we pose a danger to the society at large.

The capture of the two journalists in Gaza and thier subsequent release shows that it is the fanatical Islamo-fascists who the liberals NEVER criticize who are the TRUE RELIGIOUS FANATICS>

They forced the Journalists to swear allegiance to Allah- to become Muslims, while in our "terrible" and "inhuman" camp at Gitmo, all we do is give the prisoners food which is prescribed by their religious dietary laws, and prayer rugs as well as Korans.

It is the idiot left who thinks that the religious people in the USA are dangerous and that the fanatic Islamo-Fascists who cut off the heads of infidels and threaten to kill others unless the convert to Islam, are MERELY 'FREEDOM FIGHTERS"

And all of this hypocrisy, Foxfyre, is because they cannot stand the fact that they have not been in power in the House and Senate since 1994!!!

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Foxfyre-I note that you have strenuosly avoided letting people put words in your mouth. You are very wise!! The left wing brain damaged idiots always try to set the stage for the argument by framing it in such a way that it is not possible to answer the question except in the way they wish to have it answered.

The question of whether God makes decisions or does not make decisions which affect us directly is UNKNOWN to us. Anyone who says that they KNOW is an idiot!! Anyone who says that no one knows is much smarter!!!

As Mortimer Adler said in his book "How to Think About God"

"The conclusion that God exists has not been proved or demonstrated. Nothing that has been said should result in conviction with certitude.
I, for one, am left with something less than that, but something which is, in my judgement, more desirable than its opposite. I am persuaded that God exists,either beyond a reasonable doubt or by a preponderance of reasons in favor of that conclusion over reasons against it. I am, therefore, willing to terminate this inquiry with the statement that I have reasonable grounds for affirming God's existence>"

Mortimer Adler is fifty times more knowledgeable and wiser that any left wing liberal!!!!

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Thank you for your support, but a few less personal aspersions at the other side, please Bernard. I really enjoying testing my beliefs and opinions on the theory that if they cannot be defended, they aren't worth having. The board would be pretty darn boring if we all thought exactly alike.

I think Blatham and like minded persons will go ballistic however if they knew that many of those fundamentalist Christians have a deeply held belief that it is the Church that is holding evil at bay on the Earth. Based on her beliefs about rulers and heads of state, I'm going to guess that Harris is of tha school that when the Church goes, the Holy Spirit goes with it, and all that is evil on Earth will be unleashed to do its worst with nothing to restrain it. And they're pretty sure that those attacking the Church and Christians these days will be beneficiaries of that.

I wonder how unbalanced he'll think that is. Smile

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Actually, that's the version of American christian beliefness which served as the model for the sophisticated theology underpinning Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who wouldn't enjoy it?

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okie wrote

Quote:

Foxfyre, the Left is dangerously close to trying to make a case for disqualifying anyone with a religious faith, especially a Christian faith.

Like, say, Jimmy Carter? Garry Wills? Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King? Walter (our friendly catholic from germany)?

On the other hand, what do you suppose might be Harris' response if a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim was running for office? You know, given what she said.

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Free speech for me but not for thee. ACLU busted!

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