I'm starting to feel pity for McCain.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut


Yes, because the court system ultimately failed to make such changes. Obama points out two failures, the first being the failure of the Warren Court to "break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution" and "say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf." The second and seemingly greater failure he detects is, as you said, the choice of the civil rights movement to become so "court focused" that it neglected "the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change." Due to this choice, the civil rights movement was left without the ability to affect redistributive change when the Warren Court failed to take radical steps. Obama views this as a "tragedy" that "in some ways we still suffer from."

Again, I don't see any place in which Obama criticized the courts for not being something they aren't He seems to take it as given. I think your reading is fundamentally unsupported by what is written there.

One would imagine Obama would try to do something about this tragedy once he's President with large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.

Your argument is that Obama will work for greater redistribution? That's what Democrats do.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Again, I don't see any place in which Obama criticized the courts for not being something they aren't He seems to take it as given. I think your reading is fundamentally unsupported by what is written there.

It's clear that Obama supports redistributive change and I think it's implicitly conveyed that he would have liked to have seen the Warren Court make such changes. It can be read either way, though.

Your argument is that Obama will work for greater redistribution? That's what Democrats do.

I'm not sure there are many Democrats who view the failure to achieve more redistribution in the '60s as a "tragedy."

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut
I think it's implicitly conveyed that he would have liked to have seen the Warren Court make such changes.

You can think what you please, but given his legal background I suspect this is not the case. He doesn't expect the courts to be something they're not.

I'm not sure there are many Democrats who view the failure to achieve more redistribution in the '60s as a "tragedy."

a) I'm not sure there aren't
b) I'm certainly not sure there aren't many who would at least call it one while speaking on Chicago public radio

[Ramo]

It can be read either way, though.

No, it can't.

[Naked Gents Rut]

He doesn't expect the courts to be something they're not.

Whether he expects them to make such changes is rather irrelevant to whether he actually wishes they had. You can be realistic about the prospects of something happening (especially in hindsight) while still being disappointed about the outcome.

The important issue to a potential voter wondering how Obama will govern as president is whether he would have been supportive of the Warren Court taking more radical steps. The answer to this question would be a powerful indicator as to what kind of justices President Obama will appoint to the Supreme Court.

a) I'm not sure there aren't

Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of unreconstructed '60s liberals in the Democratic party. They're slowly dying off and are unpopular with the American populace at large, however, which is why Obama doesn't want anyone to think he actually agrees with Ayers and Wright ideologically. An examination of his record and statements from his days in Illinois sure make it seem like he does agree with them, though.

[Ramo]

Because he believes in social welfare and progressive taxation like just about every other Democrat in existence?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Naked Gents Rut
he actually agrees with Ayers and Wright ideologically. An examination of his record and statements from his days in Illinois sure make it seem like he does agree with them, though

This is a leap. A hell of one, if I might say.

[Naked Gents Rut]

This is a leap.

Not really. I don't want to bore you with the details, though. It's not like any of this matters. Obama's already won.

[-Jrabbit]

I read that quote as observation (as opposed to criticism), both of the intent of the constitution and the powers of SCOTUS. Clearly, Obama is in favor of redistribution as an agent of social change, and absent the ability of the courts to mandate it, he will attempt to affect it via progressive taxation. Probably successfully.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Here's an example of the type of person Obama is thinking of adding to the court and their ideas on how the Constitution can be interpreted...

Three decades ago, young stars of constitutional law like Larry Tribe were advocating a constitutional right to welfare. For reasons that are probably obvious, the idea has faded from sight over the past 20 years. A right to welfare sounds out of place in a world in which a Democratic president has successfully campaigned to "end welfare as we know it." Admittedly, advocates of constitutional welfare rights did not merely; or even primarily, mean the right of single unemployed mothers to receive government stipends; they had in mind a broader set of rights to protect basic "welfare" in the general sense of human needs. But constitutional welfare rights do appear to be out of rune with the zeitgeist, and arguments on their behalf have been scarce.

In The Second Bill of Rights, Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor who is one of today's academic stars, reopens this debate. He makes a surprisingly plausible case for resurrecting this idea with some modern twists. Recalling FDR's proposal for a "second of bill of rights" protecting basic human needs, Sunstein urges Americans to recognize a new list of constitutional rights, including access to a good education and health care, and the opportunity to work at a fair wage--in essence, economic rights in addition to the largely political rights enshrined in the country's founding documents. ...

One such argument is that the welfare state is contrary to the essential American character. Sunstein points out that recognizing these needs as rights has not always been outside the American mainstream. His main evidence comes from the New Deal, and particularly from FDR's thinking about social goals. In a now-forgotten speech that Sunstein spotlights, FDR called for a new Bill of Rights along the lines that Sunstein advocates. Twenty years later, the Warren Court flirted with recognizing constitutional rights to food, shelter, and other necessities. If Nixon hadn't squeaked out a victory in 1968 and appointed four conservative justices, Sunstein contends, the court might well have heeded the advice of liberal constitutional law scholars and recognized economic constitutional rights.

Thus, as Sunstein puts it, one can easily imagine an alternative universe in which the Warren court trends were continued, by new justices appointed by President Hubert Humphrey. (One could call this the "Sliding Doors" version of constitutional history, in honor of the Gwyneth Paltrow movie.) So, Sunstein maintains, it can hardly be said that such a Second Bill of Rights is an utter impossibility in America.

Second, there is nothing about American constitutional law that would preclude the recognition of these rights. True, these rights are not mentioned in the Constitution. But the Constitution also has nothing to say about gender equality, and as originally understood, it did not prohibit segregated schools. This has not prevented the Supreme Court from recognizing these rights. Despite conservative arguments for narrow constitutional interpretation, Americans do not seem ready to tolerate segregated schools or limits on the fights of women merely because they were accepted at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, it would not be necessary to actually amend the Constitution in order to give economic rights constitutional status.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_9_36/ai_n6332297

Awesome...

[Ramo]

In that long piece, nowhere does Sunstein actually advocating having the courts enshrine these rights.

Googling around his name, you get things like this:

Post by Cass Sunstein
In my dialogue with Bruce Ackerman, I will be arguing for the importance of focussing quite narrowly on the Constitution in 2020 -- the founding document as it is interpreted in courts. I will be urging that it is important to resist, on democratic grounds, the idea that the document should be interpreted to reflect the view of the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party. This idea, sometimes masquerading under the name of originalism or strict construction, represents a form of judicial hubris; it is bad history and bad law. It should be exposed and rejected as such.

For 2020, what should be asserted instead is a form of judicial minimalism, one that also gives the democratic process wide room to maneuver. The appropriate path is not charted by Roe v. Wade; it is charted instead by West Coast Hotel, upholding minimum wage legislation, and Katzenbach v. Morgan, allowing Congress to ban literacy tests. Moderates and liberals should not want the Supreme Court to march on the road marked out by the Warren Court. They should celebrate instead rulings that defer to Congress and that invalidate legislation rarely and only through narrow, unambitious rulings, akin to the Court's recent decision in the Hamdi case.

Minimalists insist on a democratic conception of the free speech principle and also on procedural safeguards for those deprived of their liberty. But they reject any Citizen's Agenda if it is understood as part of constitutional law proper.

In other words, it is exceedingly important to distinguish between the Constitution in 2020 and what would be good in 2020. Unlike Ackerman, I do not favor "a political coalition that will ultimately be in a position to name Supreme Court justices who will repudiate The Slaughterhouse Cases, and give constitutional meaning to the 'privileges' and 'immunities' of citizenship that make sense in the twenty-first century."

One qualification is that the United States does not only have a Constitution; it also has a set of constitutive commitments, beyond mere policies but without a formal constitutional status. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights was an effort to establish several such commitments, including, above all, decent opportunity and minimal security. I will briefly discuss the value of seeing the Second Bill of Rights as part of the nation's self-definition in 2020 -- though not of seeing it as part of our formal constitution. The insistence on the Second Bill of Rights is best regarded as part of democratic deliberation, not as part of constitutional law.

-- Cass Sunstein

http://constitutionin2020.blogspot.com/2005/03/post-by-cass-sunstein.html

So we're back to the supposed "radicalism" of a larger welfare state...

[Ramo]

And it should be noted that your first article specifically refutes the premise that you're misreading out of your second article...

[Kuciwalker]

In that long piece, nowhere does Sunstein actually advocating having the courts enshrine these rights.

Yes he does:

Second, there is nothing about American constitutional law that would preclude the recognition of these rights. True, these rights are not mentioned in the Constitution. But the Constitution also has nothing to say about gender equality, and as originally understood, it did not prohibit segregated schools. This has not prevented the Supreme Court from recognizing these rights. Despite conservative arguments for narrow constitutional interpretation, Americans do not seem ready to tolerate segregated schools or limits on the fights of women merely because they were accepted at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, it would not be necessary to actually amend the Constitution in order to give economic rights constitutional status.

[Ramo]

I suppose that's ambiguous, but it doesn't explicitly say that Sunstein wants the Courts to provide this direction, rather than Congress. It also doesn't use a direct quote from Sunstein. The author of that piece admits:

But Sunstein is ambiguous on the nature of these proposed new rights. It's not clear whether these rights would be enforceable in court; in any event, the "Second Bill of Rights" is only a metaphor because Sunstein does not advocate an actual constitutional amendment. If they aren't enforceable and aren't written, what they amount to is a conscious commitment to make these rights part of our conception of America, with the expectation that doing so will force the political system to make good on that commitment.

What I quoted, OTOH, is crystal clear. It's a direct refutation of Drake's premise from Sunstein's actual words.

[KrazyHorse]

And the circular firing squad continues to pick up steam...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/palin.tension/index.html

Palin's off-script comments irk McCain aides

(CNN) -- Some aides to Sen. John McCain say they weren't happy that running mate Sarah Palin went off script Sunday and turned attention back to the controversy over her wardrobe.

The Alaska governor on Sunday brought up the recent reports regarding the Republican National Committee's $150,000 spending spree on clothing and accessories for the Palin family.

Palin denounced talks of her wardrobe as "ridiculous" and declared emphatically: "Those clothes, they are not my property."

"Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I'm not taking them with me," she said at a rally in Tampa, Florida.

A senior McCain adviser told CNN that those comments "were not the remarks we sent to her plane." Palin did not discuss the wardrobe story at her rally in Kissimmee, Florida, later in the day.

A Palin aide, however, told CNN that the governor clearly felt like she had to say something to defend herself, because "that's really not who she is."

LOL at the McCain campaign telling Palin what she can and can't say, and at Palin thinking she can sit at the grown-up table.