Hectic times

Sorry about the delay in blogging, but since the last post I've had to bail a good friend out of jail and deal with the fact that rae was in a car accident that totaled the car. She's okay, but the car's a goner. We're now going through the private hell of trying to find a new or used car of some quality worth sinking a monthly payment into.
There are quite a few things I want to blog about, but focusing with everything else going on has been difficult.
One thing I do want to comment on comes from a debate I was in regarding the myth of "activist judges." So-called activist judges are those judges who conservatives deem have created brand new laws, unintended by the people or constitution, during high-level court rulings.
However, when you look at these cases you find a few commonalities. First, and foremost, the "activist judge" label only ever gets applied to rulings, all rulings, that go against conservative goals. That should be your first warning sign.
Second, I read a lot of these cases on a level many people haven't. I've done deep analysis of Supreme Court and Appelate Court rulings such as the SWANCC, Lake Tahoe, and W. Va. mountaintop mining cases, among others. In general, the reality is that the decisions are made exactly in line with every other legal decision, based off of existing case law and constitutional interpretation. How strictly the word of the constitution is followed has nothing to do with whether a judge is an "activist" or not, but more to do with the judge's own political leanings.
If a conservative judge desires a conservative ruling that pushes the boundaries of the letter of existing law, be it Scalia or Thomas, they'll push the language to the extent of rationality. Same goes for liberal judges. They desire a ruling and seek to fit it within a legal framework.
Many argue that no legal change should be made unless its by people's vote, which sounds great, but actually undermines the entire construction of the three-branch system of government. Rule of majority is the first order of business for a democracy, however, our Founding Fathers put in a check against TYRANNY of the majority: the judicial system.
The judicial system is there because rule of the majority allowed segregated schools, Jim Crow laws and drinking fountains marked "colored only". The judicial system is there because rule of the majority would allow certain states to prevent blacks and whites from marrying. The judicial system is there because rule of the majority allowed impromptu eugenics and castration against alleged sufferers of mental retardation, which in some cases were simply poor children who couldn't afford to go to school.
Sometimes, justice and fair treatment of human beings cannot wait until 60 million white southerners decide its okay to start treating the rest of humanity like human beings. That's the wisdom of the judicial system. That's why our current system works better than any other in the world.
Hamstringing judicial jurisprudence may be one the most assinine concepts to hit the political scene in some time, and the lemmings that usually go for it tend to have fairly good notions in mind, but they haven't thought things through.
Even the conservatives who pump the concept do not actually want to see it through. it would leave them in too much of a lurch when their chosen judges would have to follow caselaw that goes against their desires.
The Strict Constructionists would have you believe they support sticking to the specific letter of written law, and that the laws should never be re-interpreted by judges. Of course, this stipulates that judges should keep thinking to a minimum, which is the opposite of the reason that they're judges.
Laws, and language change over time. So does the social situation of the country. Plessy v. Ferguson gives way to Brown v. Board of Education, and rightfully so. However, there is no honor, dignity, rightness, promotion of public good or strengthening of the union in allowing 50 years of human degradation because you want to wait for a constitutional amendment. All of our greatest Supreme Court Chief justices knew this, and often commented on it.
Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."
Those who rail against so-called activist judges disagree, and would have our judicial sytem simply parroting arcane and outdated legal language and concepts to the detriment of justice and our country. Hannurabi's Code was written in stone, since then we've devised legal systems that are just a bit more flexible.