Saturday, June 29, 2013

SCOTUS/DOMA

Why have legislators?

55 comments:

  1. Legislatures make laws.
    Judges interpret laws.
    Administrations enforce laws.
    Alternatives? Anarchy, monarchy,
    oligarchy and various combinations
    thereof.

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  2. And so what are you thinking about the crazy former Marine on East Lake Boulevard in Mahopac (walking distance from where Scott grew up and I had a job working at an apartment complex right there)... who had a total of about 30 THOUSAND rounds of ammunition, homemade grenades, barrels of black powder, over a hundred firearms and an effing TANK in the backyard? He had so much firepower in his house they had to call in a special explosives team from Kansas or somewhere to handle it without blowing up the whole neighborhood. And what was it that happened to the erstwhile survivalist? Opinions differ but the general take is that he accidentally shot himself while cleaning one of the guns.

    Yep.

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  3. "Why vote?"

    If it mattered it'd be illegal.

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  4. This is a federalist teachable moment. When I went to Mt. St. Michael in the Bronx I learned in my history book that we have 3 co-equal branches of the government and they are:

    The Legislature enacts or passes laws.
    The Executive Branch enforces those laws.
    The Judiciary interprets those laws.

    Key word "interpret" as in define, tell you what the law is and its scope etc. etc. Now nowhere in my understanding of our Constitutional setup do I see it as being somehow forbidden for a legislative body to define marriage as solely between that of a man and a woman which doesn't mean they have to...alternatives BB? the judicial oligarchy we have now.

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  5. Maybe we should just let Anthony Kennedy write all the laws from now on. I thought Scalia's dissent rocked btw and is one for the history books. Now my personal opinion of gay marriage or "gayness" doesn't matter here and Sat and others can make it out to be. OK so it's not my cup of tea but far as I can tell NYS went about it the right way. Now seems to me the whole movement was making slow but steady progress in the States, the public was supporting gay marriage more and more so why the need to take it all the way up to the SCOTUS? because liberals always want to Roe their favorite social issues and short-circuit the whole democratic process. As I said Anthony Kennedy can write all our laws from now on.

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  6. To me it's not "gay" marriage. I don't use a modifier before the action. It's just marriage.

    Personally, I don't seek or endorse a sanction from the state with regards to my own relationship(s).

    But the government has goodies to hand out and it appears that a great many people are want to get theirs (heteros and homos alike).

    Those goodies come with strings attached dontcha know. With enough of them you can make a great noose.

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  7. I like your answer and personally I want the IRS to stay out of my business including my relationship business.

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  8. To date since the DOMA ruling I have not seen any cracks in the foundation of Western Civilization nor has society (in this area anyway) been reduced to a screaming anarchy of feather boas and glitter dust... I think we're all going to be just fine.

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  9. ...but the damage done to our Constitution and a proper understanding of the way the democratic process is supposed to function is more subtle and I think in this sense things are far from fine.

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  10. Things are probably far from fine,
    considering half the population is mad at Obama, 80% is mad at congress and pretty close to 100%
    is fed up with SCOTUS.

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  11. I notice few have seen the irony in conservatives contempt for the DOMA decision overturning a law passed by duly elected representatives of the people.

    It seems as if they are as up in arms over this supposed trampling of the will of the people about as much as they support SCOTUS doing the same with the voting right act which passed both houses by much wider margins in 2006 and was signed by Pres Bush.

    Why no outrage over that guys? because you agreed with the decision?

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  12. I really don't disagree with you Dave and you could make the case that the SCOTUS was wrong in both DOMA and the Voting Rights case. The way I've heard it argued among conservatives though is that that section of the original Act relied on old data from a racially-charged era and that we've made real racial progress since then. However I do agree Dave, it's a law that was duly passed just the same and the SCOTUS if anything should just interpret it but otherwise leave it alone.

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  13. & BB Obama is delaying his employer mandate until 2015. Don't get why he doesn't also delay the individual mandate until then too but turns out from what I've been reading is that even bureaucracy which just loves red tape can't seem to develop software programs and other things to make sure all the complexities and nuances of ObamaCare are met by all concerned parties. The gov't bureaucracy collapsing in on itself with no help from conservatives who can just lie back and watch the demolition, this is rich!!!

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  14. I agree its a mess, Z-Man. IMO, our
    healthcare has been a mess for the last few dozen years, though. If someone can explain why only three
    countries in the world spend over 17% GDP on healthcare*, I'd be
    interested.
    *USA
    Niue (pop. 1,398 500M S of Samoa)
    Tualu (pop 9,847 700M N of Fiji)

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  15. I'm guessing because we smoke we drink and we're fat, also unsavory sex partners.

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  16. ..and we text when we drive. Just
    wondering, though, what is the attraction of an unsavory sex partner?

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  17. And the reason we spend so insanely much on healthcare and get such rotten outcomes for our money is because healthcare in this country is run according to a profit motive, which by necessity places the making of money at a higher priority than actually caring for people's health. That's the absolute bottom line.

    Not until the entire healthcare industry is nonprofit will patient outcomes assume their rightful place as the first priority.

    Meanwhile, the collective boards of directors will continue to make decisions that benefit their shareholders to the detriment of the patient.

    Because that's the American Way.

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  18. I'm thinking though that a country that doesn't take care of itself is gonna run up the health-care costs. Wondering though if everybody jogged and rode bikes would that 17% of GDP level come down?

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  19. No, it wouldn't, for the same reason that Shell doesn't fix refineries even when they make $40 billion in profits per quarter.

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  20. ObamaCare is turning into a fiasco. Even if we all agree with you that American health-care sucks ObamaCare ain't the way to go. It has to be dismantled first and we have to start from scratch again. Don't pass a law even its own enactors don't understand.

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  21. Dismantled. And what do you do with the millions of people who couldn't get insurance before and now have? The millions who got dropped by their companies for actually being sick? The kids who can stay on their parents' insurance until they get out of school?

    It's so easy for you to say 'dismantle it' because for you personally there's no benefit, and for you, on paper, it's not working. And the fact that it is working for people doesn't matter to you, because it's not you.

    Because it doesn't matter how many millions of people are benefiting if it doesn't benefit you.

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  22. In what parallel universe is ObamaCare working? You two are like the Last of the Mohicans.

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  23. How bout you talk to the people who couldn't previously get insurance due to preeixistings or because they'd been dumped by their companies? Were it not for my job I couldn't het insUrance d/t preeixistings. I can't get life insurance because of it. You believe too much Republican hype...the same propaganda that has Republicans SHOCKED that Romney lost despite every sign it was going to happen. Expand your knowledge base. Then tell me how you explain to people that you're taking away the insurance they waited so long to get.

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  24. I work with liberals who are against ObamaCare, don't feel it's the way to go. The core of ObamaCare is the individual mandate, in other words get the whole country on health insurance by forcing them to buy health insurance. So now there's another wrinkle when you fill out your IRS forms as if our tax code ain't complicated enough. If it's so great why is Obama delaying the employer mandate until Jan. 1, 2015???

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  25. Everyone who isn't insured right now is riding on the backs of those who are. So don't you think it's more equitable that everyone carry their OWN share rather than just those who by luck or grace have insurance?

    Why does this not make sense to people?

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  26. And I have yet to hear from you on the arsenal in Mahopac.

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  27. Mahopac: guy had 111 weapons, several full auto, gun powder, time fuzes, a tank, blasting caps and grenades. A highly trained survivalist-was cleaning his shotgun which went off into his
    chest. Too much ordnance for the local police-they called in the
    Army's 725th EOD unit. Dunno guys,
    another NRA poster boy?

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  28. And to think, I worked at the Wendolyn Apartments, right behind the houses on East Lake Boulevard.... and Scott's house was walking distance from there.

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  29. You haven't heard from me yet on Mahopac for the same reason I didn't get back to BB on the Black Rat Snake. There's alot on the table in this blog and it takes me time to get to it all. Incidentally many years ago walking along the Amawalk Outlet behind Muscoot Farm in Somers saw the biggest black snake in my life curled around some branches of a bush. Not really sure if he or she was a rat snake or a racer, didn't go up to him and ask. As for the nut in Mahopac I heard about it but am not that familiar with the case. I often go to lohud.com on my cell at night and I read alot of stuff but I agree with you and BB on alot of the gun control stuff anyway.

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  30. What I don't get though Saty is you wax poetic on the wrongness of the gov't using force as regards women's reproductive decisions so why is it ok for the same gov't to force folks to buy an insurance package??? The business or employer mandate which the Obama Administration is now delaying by one year is bad for business and the economy plain and simple. Depressing full-time employment figures is not the way to go esp. in a sluggishly slow recovery. Look when I say dismantle ObamaCare and start over I'll say what Romney said, keep the good parts like the pre-existings but get rid of the rest. Dunno why it has to be an All-or-Nothing kind of deal here.

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  31. If the idea that the uninsured are getting a ride on the backs of the insured doesn't speak to your sense of personal responsibility, and hoiw ujnfair it is that a large part of the reason premiums are so high is because the insured have to pay for the uninsured then I am not sure how to explain it in a way you can see. If everyone has insurance the cost will level instead of the current clusterfk that we have, and everyone will pay their share rather than just the few. Which part of that is the less than obvious part?

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  32. And I am not sure how you can equate shoving a probe up against my cervix with having to buy an insurance policy. Please allow me to elucidate that even the most exhorbitant of policies will only rape you in a metaphorical and not a literal sense, which is what said ultrasound is.

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  33. Why do you always assume if I disagree I don't understand your point? the thing is you're against gov't coercion when it comes to women's reproductive decisions but you're all for the gov't forcing the average American citizen to purchase a product which is unprecedented up until now. You only seem to be pro-choice on abortion and gay marriage.

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  34. Transvaginal ultrasounds, some thoughts. First thought, what the abortionist is doing is kinda invasive imo. Now if I were a political strategist on the pro-life side I wouldn't go with this particular plank in any proposed bills and the reason that there's people like the two of you to make hay over it is reason enough to jettison it (I'm a real believer in not giving the opposition any ammunition). However the real reason why the choicers are against this is not only that they feel it's paternalistic but deeper than that it bothers them. The ultrasounds expresses the sheer humanity of the fetus.

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  35. Bobby Franklin, Georgia legislator.
    Look him up, interesting fellow.
    He introduced legislation to have
    any woman who has an abortion face the death penalty, and they should stop making lame excuses about the
    guys that rape them. Not that he is entirely about gov't police: he wants to ban driver's license, the
    roads belong to everyone; ban vaccinations, they are intrusive;
    ban both income and property taxes....and guarantee the right of
    everyone to harm another person.
    Hardly lends credibility to his fellow pro-lifers. We all here argue about what the government should do or not do (abortion, taxes, welfare..the whole gamut;
    but at least we seem sane in comparison.

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  36. Abortion is the only procedure it seems where a full informed consent doesn't apply. The sonogram - now chances are if I have a tumor within my body removed some doctor will show me an image of it whatever technology is in use, a fetus is being removed but we have to avert our gaze.

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  37. Informed consent is informed consent. You don't need a picture to have things removed from your body, tumours, organs or otherwise (I have had enough organs removed to know this is a fact), you need to understand the procedure and its risks and benefits.

    In several states the law FORCES providers to LIE about the risks of abortion and say for example that the procedure causes breast cancer, which it does not.

    You can manufacture special definitions of 'informed consent' to apply in special cases if you like but it doesn't make a difference, because legally it isn't so.

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  38. But we don't really have informed consent re abortion, never really did. The early abortions done at the mills, it's in and you're out kind of like a McDonaldlizing of abortion. Re abortion and breast cancer, I never really did a blog about this because I simply don't know and don't have the expertise anyway so I stay away but let me drop this out there. EVERYBODY has a bias, I don't care who you are and we'll hear about pro-life biases of certain researchers but never the pro-abortion biases of other researchers. Seems to me to get to the bottom of the breast cancer/abortion link or lack of a link every study done in this regard whether in the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet should have at the top of page one the political leanings of the researchers re abortion. Seems only fair and then we'll sift through it.

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  39. Biased research never goes far, Z-Man. 'Tis the antithesis of science.

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  40. My point is this. A sonogram is not necessary for informed consent. It's a state mandated unnecessary medical procedure with one objective, that has nothing to do with medical safety or science. It's a waste of money and a waste of time and an invasion of privacy.

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  41. BB let me ask you this since there are varying shades of bias including the subconscious and it's one of the stronger factors in the human makeup -- Let's use a fictitious example just for the sake of argument and in our fictitious world there IS a link between abortion and breast cancer and you're a strong pro-choice researcher are you telling me that despite your strong political stance you'd reach the conclusion that there is a link and have it published in The Lancet? just askin'

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  42. Saty I think you can have informed consent without a sonogram but with the current state of affairs we don't have full informed consent just Mc'Bortions/

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  43. "with the current state of affairs we don't have full informed consent"

    You want to explain what that means?

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  44. Informed consent re the abortion procedure - (a) the method used, (b) all possible physical and emotional risks (sequelae) and (c) fetal development. Actually if the choicers are really pro-choice and not pro-abortion they should be pushing this instead of the lifers.

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  45. Fetal development isn't part of informed consent for abortion, nor should it be. Basically what you're saying is that you'd like some sort of a special procedure to be devised, a special informed consent unlike any other kind of informed consent.

    Look, if a woman decides she wants to get an abortion, she already knows she's pregnant, she has already thought through the situation and she already knows what she wants to do. So informed consent means that she understands the type of procedure she's having, what it is, what it does, how it does it and the possible risks appertaining thereunto. That's what informed consent is. I'm not making it up, it isn't my definition, that is what it is. You don't get to make special rules for informed consent because you don't want people to have the procedure you're talking about.

    Before my surgery I had to go to an informational seminar in which they discussed the different options and so forth, the three different procedures that were done. The third procedure was one I had never heard of and there was frank discouragement from the speakers regarding that particular procedure; they made it sound like something awful that had no merit to it whatsoever.

    I went home and did some thorough research on the procedure and found to my surprise that in all respects it was the BEST of the offered procedures. It was also the most complicated and therefore also the most risky but all the clinical research trials placed it at the top of the list.

    I was wondering why on earth the speakers talked down this procedure so insistently to make it sound like something awful that no one would ever want to have, and then I discovered that only 50 doctors in the country (and only ONE doctor at the practice I was working with) did the procedure. And suddenly it all became crystal clear: to honestly lay out the merits of this procedure would effectually decimate business for the rest of his colleagues.

    So, that was a clear case of information being presented with a bias. The average person not having a medical background or the desire to do some research would have unquestioningly accepted that this procedure had awful sequelae and would essentially ruin their quality of life forever.... a blatant lie.

    So your special version of 'informed consent' is qualitatively no different than the 'informational seminar' that I attended, where the 'information' was presented with an obvious motive to direct behavior in a certain direction. It's dishonest, deceitful, and manipulative, and that sort of behavior has no place in medicine.

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  46. "Fetal development isn't part of informed consent for abortion nor should it be"

    That's because for you abortion is not a moral issue or even one with ethical overtones.

    "You don't get to make special rules for informed consent because you don't want people to have the procedure you're talking about"

    There's no special version or form thereof, just basic information inherent in the procedure itself and that obviously includes the fetus a separate organism inside the mother. Your statement is contradictory because if I don't want people to have the procedure I'm talking about I'd simply call for an outright ban. Informed consent does nothing to bar someone from having a certain procedure, it doesn't even point them in any particular direction as you allege. It's not even on a par with a 24-hour waiting period or parental notification it's simply that at its root the pro-abortion movement doesn't want certain basic information presented.

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  47. because if I don't want people to have the procedure I'm talking about I'd simply call for an outright ban.

    ....that's what people are trying to do.

    Which part of 'certain basic information' don't we want presented?

    Abortion is a medical procedure. The woman is informed what the procedure is (an abortion), what it does (terminates the pregnancy), how it does it and the risks it involves. What more do you want? That is what informed consent IS.

    You want special rules and special information, and it don't get to be that way.

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  48. you abortion is not a moral issue or even one with ethical overtones.


    Here's the difference between you and me.

    I think that if a woman is pregnant and she decides she wants to have an abortion, that she's addressed the issue according to her own moral convictions. I think that it's up to her to make the decision, up to her to deal with those issues as she feels best. She's made the decision to take this route based on her own personal situation and based on what she feels is best.

    You would prefer to impose your morality on her, to make her conform to your sense of what morals and ethics are, not knowing what her situation is or what circumstances led her to make this decision. Instead, you feel that your morals and your convictions are more important, more inherently valuable than hers and therefore you have the right to impose them on her.

    That's the difference.

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  49. What a wealth of mobile comments last night but then I had to recharge my phone and this heat...what an aggravating night. You're making informed consent into some type of a special program but as for what you don't want covered we can begin with the possible emotional risks of abortion. There's a reason for this, abortion is big business. It's all about the profits which are considerable the kind of profit margins you otherwise condemn in other contexts. At 300-450 dollars a pop I don't think they're in danger of overinforming anyone.

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  50. "...according to her own moral convictions..."

    Situational ethics of which Joseph Fletcher was the founder. As someone at Hannity once said an objective morality does exist we just don't know what it is.

    "You would prefer to impose your morality on her, to make her conform..."

    HOW??? I don't have the power, never did and never will. Let's look at the physics of the situation -- Jane down the street is considering having an abortion, just a few doors down I'm blogging my usual pro-life thoughts. Chances are I don't even know what she's gonna do, probably not canvassing the neighborhood either trying to find out (too busy). Even if I want to do this I don't have the power, never had much power in my life and can't even have a parking ticket nullified. It's a pro-choice phantasm inside your own head, you're somehow threatened by my POV but if I do have the power and I don't know about it please let me know.

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  51. The power.... do you even see what's happening all across the country as these Republicans write law after law trying to ban all abortion for any and every reason? Are you completely dissociated from the anti-choice movement? Are you not part of them, do their goals not coincide with yours?

    Republicans, who campaigned on promises of how they were going to fix the economy, have spent virtually every waking moment destroying women's access to safe and decent healthcare. The Republican insistence on giving its own moral standing the force of law is sending us as a society back into the dark ages.

    Do you not align yourself with these people who are working so hard to achieve the same ends you dream about in these posts?

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  52. I am not affiliated with any formal group or party. I have the right to vote as do you.

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