Oh No, The New Awesome Primary Thread

Apparently the President can ignore the Supreme Court, because Constitution, so there. He's no rocket scientist ...

Ben Carson is a tin-foil hat level paranoid. It's only a matter of time before someone scoops up a collection of the goofy stuff this guy says and puts him out of our political misery.

quote:

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In his keynote speech at the National Organization for Marriage’s March for Marriage gala last week, Dr. Ben Carson explained how Marxists are using LGBT rights to destroy American unity and impose the "New World Order."

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Carson said he knows about this plot from reading right-wing conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Communist.

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One has to admire the ''objectivity" of a black man who cites the politics of Cleon Skousen as inspiration.

Of course you're very conveniently ignoring the point he was making about the distinction between the roles of the legislature versus the court, the legitimate roles being lawmaking versus interpretation, so that if the court instead makes laws, which is what they've been doing for decades under the guise of interpretation, NOBODY has to obey them.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I got skeptical of the usual complaints about Cleon Skousen and actually read his book. There is such a thing as conspiracy and he made the case.

Have you ever read the Constitution? Regardless of whether or not you think any particular Supreme Court ruling is right or wrong, the issue you are pressing here has been settled ever since Marbury vs. Madison. Surely this basic stuff is covered even in wingnut high schools.Ben Carson is nowhere close to being right, but of course you are welcome to point to the provision in the Constitution which makes the president or the legislature exempt from Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of laws.

Ignoring it? I quoted it. It's bullshit. The U.S, like the rest of the English-speaking world, has a common-law system in which case law is ... well, law. And of course it's binding on the executive, that's part of the principle of the rule of law. But if you and Ben Carson don't think it should be, then is it OK if (for example) Obama ignores National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius as it applies to Medicaid expansion? 'Cos I bet he'd like to, and it's your opinion that "NOBODY has to obey them". Who needs the judicial branch anyway? Checks and balances, pfft.

I had to go back and add that you missed the POINT of his distinction, I know you didn't miss the distinction. The problem is that the judiciary is VIOLATING the principle of checks and balances when it makes laws.ABE: You mention case law and I'm sorry I'm not more up on this but I have some memory of case law's being a recent imposition on the practice of Law, rendering it dependent on the whims of the last judge to rule on a case rather than on abiding absolute principles of justice. Not my idea of the ideal way to arrive at justice.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Good. Feel free to cite any of that reading in making your case that Carson is correct.

Recent? Yeah, it's only been how the common-law system has worked since the reign of King Henry II, so it's one of those new-fangled twelfth-century innovations that'll be here today and gone tomorrow.

I had something more like early twentieth century in mind, but as I said I'm not up on it so I'll see what I can find out to remind me.

Let me help you with that.

Very interesting, thank you. Makes me wonder if perhaps somewhere between Henry II and Blackstone something changed in the concept of Law, and then perhaps changed back in the early 20th century. Just wondering.

No.Here's Blackstone on case law and stare decis: "For it is an established rule to abide by former precedents, where the same points come again in litigation; as well to keep the scale of justice even and steady, and not liable to waver with every new judge's opinion; as also because the law in that case being solemnly declared and determined, what before was uncertain, and perhaps indifferent, is now become a permanent rule. [...] The doctrine of the law then is this: that precedents and rules must be followed."This is how things have worked for the last eight centuries or so. It's probably too late to change it now, and why would you want to? In favor of what? That the President can ignore judicial review and do as he pleases, as Carson suggests?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Very informative, thanks.

So, Huckabee started off with "I hear our current president say he wants Christians to get off their high horse so we can make nice with radical jihadists". Now, so far this is the sort of halfwitted lie that any Republican might tell after he's undergone the standard process for removing every last scrap of human decency from his body.And yet as we know, malevolent falsehood is never quite so sweet as when it's tinged with gratuitous racism, so Huckabee continued as follows: "I wonder if he can watch a western from the ‘50s and be able to figure out who the good guys and the bad guys really are."Now Native Americans are pissed at him.