June 26, 2008
By: Jim
Category: Uncategorized
In a ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that would have allowed the state to seek the death penalty for people convicted of raping a child under the age of twelve. Some people will agree with the ruling and some won’t. That is the way of such rulings. Win some, lose some; it’s the nature of the process.
What leapt off the page to me when I read Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was his mention of a “growing national consensus” against this particular use of capital punishment.
What? What “national consensus”? I am not aware of any such consensus, national or otherwise. In fact, the good people of Louisiana elected their representatives (by consensus) and those representatives enacted law (by consensus) and the Governor signed it. The consensus seems clearly in favor of the law, not against it.
But then I read Kennedy’s opinion again.
WHAT?! Since when does the Supreme Court, or any court for that matter, decide anything based on “national consensus,” whether real or imagined? It is the duty of the voting public and their lawfully elected legislators to determine law based on public consensus. Then, it is the duty of the Supreme Court to decide whether a given state, by enacting a given law, has violated the higher law of the land which we respectfully call “The Constitution.” National consensus? Absurd.
But, hey, while we’re at it Justice Kennedy, let’s decide some more hot-button legal issues based on national consensus, shall we? How about so-called gay marriage? Immigration? Partial-birth Murder? How about making English the official language of the land? The list could be endless…but, alas, Liberals only make claims like that in the moment. They never require any intellectual consistency of themselves. As Ann Coulter has said, “Words mean nothing to Liberals.”
Today, the High Court did do something right. They determined (albeit by a razor thin margin) that the Founding Fathers meant what they said when they promised Americans the right to bear arms. Not to allow a moment of common sense to sweep accross the land, Senator Dianne Feinstein said the ruling “made citizens in this great Country less safe.”
No, Senator, the only people less safe today are the criminals that Liberals like you are always trying to protect.
