Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse made this comment recently during the Elena Kagan hearings that described perfectly, in a liberal safe kinda way, our current conservative activist supreme court:
WTVR-TV: "There may be judges on the court who have a particular mission right now and are selectively knocking out precedent that does not coincide with their ideological views."Precedent prevents strong political points of view from changing the meaning of the constitution year after year, or decade after decade. It's the stabilizing force on the judicial branch. Like everything else the conservatives crap all over, the constitution is now being defined "their way" while they have the court, and by tea party activists who call our country a "constitutional republic." Good-bye Democratic Republic, whatever that meant.
Now let's gaze through the looking glass, and listen to the upside down, down the rabbit hole musings of Sen. Tom Coburn:
"I think we've learned a couple of things.... No. 1 is precedent trumps original intent. That is very worrisome for a Supreme Court. What that says is you discount what is in the Constitution, and the learned men of today have more wisdom and more knowledge than what our foundersPrecedent typically means that for many decades, even centuries, parts of the constitution were generally understood to mean one specific thing, decision after decision. For conservative ideologues today, driven by an all knowing authoritarian streak, the original intent by the founding fathers had been a victim of revisionist history since its inception. It's time to channel the actual thoughts of our founding fathers, through our God given powers of freedom and liberty, and tell every other clueless American how wrong they were.
did."
They know, and that's all that matters.
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