Judge Posner, of the Seventh Circuit, also lambasted A.J. Scalia's opinion in Heller in his piece, "In Defense of Looseness", written in The New Republic one year after Heller was handed down; Judge Posner sums up Scalia's decision with the following observation: "The idea behind the decision -- it is not articulated, of course, and perhaps not even consciously held -- may simply be that turnabout is fair play. Liberal judges have used loose construction to expand constitutional prohibitions beyond any reasonable construal of original meaning; and now it is the conservatives' turn."

That may have been FUN for Scalia and fellow conservatives, but it most certainly does not constitute proper Article III consideration of an...

(It was for this reason, I believe, that the US Supreme Court expressly and bluntly overturned Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), despite the fact that many constitutional scholars considered Bowers to have been all but overturned by Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); the Court wished to make absolutely CERTAIN that Bowers would never be invoked as precedent again, given its manifest analytical deficiencies ("The central holding of Bowers has been brought in question by this case, and it should be addressed. Its continuance as precedent demeans the lives of homosexual persons... The foundations of Bowers have sustained serious erosion from our recent decisions in Casey and Romer. When...

The Plumber writes: "No, they were pussies for choosing the tranquility of servitude over the animating contest of freedom in the first place. Reagan said it best: government bureaucracies are "the closet thing to immortality on earth." THAT is why we must DEFEAT socialism. Once enacted, the only ways to release the shackles of socialism is through total economic collapse (ala, USSR), or with a lot of dead tyrants and tories."

I suppose this means that the US must now declare war on the UK for operating its healthcare system along socialist lines. Or perhaps you believe that the US should try to bring the UK to its knees by imposing economic and other sanctions on the UK, so as to bring about the "total economic collapse" of the...

So I am a mooch merely because I avail myself of a healthcare system for which I paid in the US (directly, through premiums) and in the UK (indirectly, through National Insurance Premiums)? So is any person who utilizes a healthcare system a "mooch"? Kindly clarify, because I would really like an answer to this question...

"The Tenth Amendment gives me the right to choose the size of govt I want, so long as the majority of taxation and legislation occur at the state level."

No, the Tenth Amendment asserts that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

I see nothing about the size of the...

The Plumber writes: "Philip
Please stay in the UK."

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Response:
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Wow! What an incredibly mature and considered comment...

PHILIP CHANDLER

I believe that the provisions of the Bill of Rights should indeed be incorporated against the states through operation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (as almost all of them have been, with the exceptions of the Grand Jury Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Petit Jury Clause of the Seventh Amendment, and the provisions of the Second Amendment (the right of the people to keep and bear arms was held to apply to INDIVIDUALS in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008), but this decision addressed only the right of individuals to keep and bear arms without infringement by the US government, and did not reach the issue of whether this right is also binding on the states -- both the Second and Seventh Circuit...

I am a US citizen, currently living in the UK. When I lived and worked in New York City, I had generous medical insurance (I worked for a major investment banking firm) and a good doctor who cared about me and who was also a close personal friend. Yet I can state, with utter certitude, that the quality of the healthcare I received in the US (where I lived for more than 20 years) was INFERIOR to the quality of the healthcare that I now receive in the UK, at the hands of the NHS.

I should know -- I suffer from a congenital connective tissue disorder that gives rise to numerous secondary illnesses and health concerns impacting almost every organ system in my body. I see a range of doctors (a general practitioner, a cardiologist,...

Medved writes: "But a gay male already has exactly the same rights as a straight male: they can both marry a woman, but neither can marry another man. That distinction isn’t based on sexual orientation, or race—it’s based on gender. And different treatment based on sex is constitutional..."

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Response:
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This statement reveals, chillingly, the moral bankruptcy of those who continue to oppose marriage equality for gay Americans. Medved -- do you not understand that the right of a gay man to marry a woman is no right at all? Do you not understand that this is precisely the constitutional and analytical deficiency identified by those state high courts that have recognized the right of gay couples to...

The Plumber writes: "Have you ever read a Federalist or Anti-Federalist Paper?"

Yes, indeed I have. On countless occasions, I have had conservatives throw the Antifederalists 78 through 82 in my face (bearing on the power of the judiciary) (I find it amusing that some conservatives throw papers from both sources at me in their efforts to repudiate the positions I take with respect to an array of issues). I am an avid believer in the independence of the federal judiciary -- of the independence of federal judges at all three tiers of the US judiciary.

I note that the country of my birth -- South Africa -- adopted a new judiciary based in large measure on the principles that undergird the US judiciary (I am a naturalized US...

I defend US Supreme Court decisions in which the Court has turned to interpretations of the word "liberty" as the wellspring for the derivation and recognition of fundamental rights, as this word is used in the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Whilst recognizing the fact that the doctrine of "substantive due process" was contorted beyond the bounds of reason and restraint in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), I understand and accept the general premises of the doctrine of substantive due process -- a doctrine that is anathema to such men as A.J Antonin Scalia and A.J. Clarence Thomas (both of whom I consider to be intellectually and temperamentally unfit to sit on the US Supreme Court). I nevertheless...