We may go back to "Just Us" for lunch today. John and Leslie have taken the last puppy to Texas to meet Esther's daughter to deliver it to her. They don't like to go to "Just Us". I haven't discussed this with Bob yet and he is driving. We will see.
Yesterday morning Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found unresponsive in his room in Texas where he had gone to go hunting. I have had problems with many of his decisions. He was very conservative.
Scalia’s conservatism was more than simple political leaning. He championed a constitutional philosophy known as originalism. He believed and taught that the 226-year-old Constitution must be read exactly as written, that its words should be interpreted as an ordinary person would have understood them at the time of its ratification. He had no patience for its liberal reading as a living document that breathes and grows with changing times and values. And that’s what is at stake in the choice of the next justice: whether the court will retain its originalist majority for another generation or return to the living, breathing spirit that dominated for generations before Scalia joined in 1986.
The best-known case, of course, was the notorious Bush v. Gore, in which the five conservative justices took it upon themselves to choose the nation’s president by arbitrarily halting the recount of Florida votes that was required by Florida law. The decision was such a shameless overreach that the justices themselves took the unprecedented step of specifying in their own ruling that it should not be taken as constituting legal precedent, which is what Supreme Court rulings are supposed to do by definition. They weren’t exactly ruling on what the Constitution required. They were simply choosing the president they preferred.
That's just one of many reasons I disagreed with him and the rest of the ultra conservative members of the court. They had no business interfering with the vote counting process and choosing our president. Furthermore that kind of philosophy has been a hindrance to bringing the constitution into the 21st century.
Another example is the 2nd amendment. The amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
It's obvious that the amendment was appropriate for the time in which it was written but we no longer have a militia since we have a standing army and also a national guard. Therefore, the amendment should be read with the culture and time in which it is presently set in.
More later...
We did go back to "Just Us" for lunch. There were ten of us. We had a great time and some good food.
Afterward, I came home and did my newsletters and then read the rest of the afternoon. I went to Country Mart and bought a few things and also to Braum's for ice.
Bob came over later and stayed until almost 7:00 and then after my bath, Missy and I watched "The Seventies" on CNN. We went to bed about 9:30.
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