Considering how many xenophobic lunatic conservatives have wiped their asses with our Constitution, I'd go looking at a new one too.

At this point in American history, the soviets in 1970 enjoyed more freedom and privacy than current day Americans do.

Oh wow. Is TP really so dense as to not get a scalding point?

Hell, Fark Libs were falling over themselves the other day about how our Constitution is Windows 3.1 and other Constitutions are better.

Scalia just decided to highlight how ridiculous it is to assert as such by pointing out that there existed a Constitution that guaranteed all the things people want in a modern Constitution.

So yea, Scalia is bad for what he said in jest as those who said it in seriousness.

GAT_00: Well I'm sure the right will blow a gasket over that. This is something that if anyone on the left or really anyone who wasn't a Republican said, they would absolutely explode with collective outrage.

I expect not a peep since Scalia said it. Of course, they won't be told to go into outrage over it, so the readers of those Republican blogs won't even know it happened so they can get all outraged about it.


Haha, you didn't even read the TP article. So you missed their point and Scalia's point. The Duck Hunt dog should have popped up right about now chuckling over that double miss.

bigsteve3OOO: At this point in American history, the soviets in 1970 enjoyed more freedom and privacy than current day Americans do.

You know how I know you don't know anything about the Soviet justice system and it's treatment of dissidents?

Yea, without the rule of law, it really doesn't matter what it says. But agreed, if Obama had said something like this, the media twats would have come unglued in an orgy of warrgarbel.

video man: Because, it is. Problem is, the USSR didn't obey it.

This.

And what Ginsberg said is perfectly valid. FTFA: "Ginsburg suggested that Egypt should learn from the full experience of the world in drafting constitutions, and because we have the world's oldest enduring Constitution, its drafters did not benefit from all that humanity has learned about constitution drafting in the last 200 years."

We have more knowledge and experience of most things now than 200 years ago. (tautology)

Setting aside whether we agree or disagree with parts of it, the U.S. Constitution could have been written more clearly in places, such as the meanings of "general welfare", "interstate commerce", etc.

While they appear to have considered such terms to be perfectly clear, they turned out not to be.

Of course, even when clear parts have been completely ignored, like the gold as money clause, the 9th and 10th Amendments. (again, agree or disagree, I am just discussing clarity here)

The Soviet constitution protected all kinds of rights, and had grantees of fair trials for accused, (I have not read it in years, so IIRC), but as soon as it was written, it was worthless.

I mentioned this on my Facebook earlier in the week, and the universal response from my conservative friends was complete denial of his comments at first. Of course, I provided the complete transcript of the hearing and proved beyond all doubt that Scalia actually said what I posted. After that, it was a trainwreck of gear grinding over how I said his comments applied to the entire Constitution rather than just the Bill of Rights and how the Founding Fathers clearly encoded limited government principles and the only legitimate view of government in the Constitution. I ate lots of popcorn.

rumpelstiltskin: Scalia's just trolling, hoping he can trick a Democratic politician into agreeing with that.

He is good at pointing out ridiculous assertions using even more ridiculous assertions, sometimes coupled with a lengthy scolding. He does it all the time. Sometimes he hits the nail on the head (see the hearing on MA rated video games and the prosecution of those that sell them to "minors.") Then, sometimes it's just kind of Not Helpful You Ball-Faced Git.

Freedom of the press?

You mean freedom to get poisoned by polonium or thrown out of a 12th floor window.

Whens the last time that happend to a US reporter....amirite

MaudlinMutantMollusk: It would be fun to take that quote, attribute it to Obama, and launch it into the fwd:fwd:fwd alternate universe

/hilarity could surely ensue

For copy and fwd:

Oh my, Mr. Obama?

"The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press, big deal! The guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press of street demonstrations and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account."

Anyone who believes this is unfit to hold office. Act now and save America!



Short and simple works best.

GAT_00: Well I'm sure the right will blow a gasket over that. This is something that if anyone on the left or really anyone who wasn't a Republican said, they would absolutely explode with collective outrage.

I expect not a peep since Scalia said it. Of course, they won't be told to go into outrage over it, so the readers of those Republican blogs won't even know it happened so they can get all outraged about it.

Read the article... It's about how the right has blown a gasket over something similar said by Justice Ginsberg - specifically, that if a country were writing a new constitution, they should look at Canada's as a well-drafted model of rights protection.

So, therefore, she's committed treason during wartime or something.

bigsteve3OOO: At this point in American history, the soviets in 1970 enjoyed more freedom and privacy than current day Americans do.

You know how I know you don't know anything about the Soviet justice system and it's treatment of dissidents?

They extraordinarily renditioned them to gulags. We call ours Gitmo. We have better tech to monitor our citizens so we dont have to round the dissidents up wholesale like the Ruskies did. we do it more efficiently and better. Our Checka is better than their Checka.

tomWright: We have more knowledge and experience of most things now than 200 years ago. (tautology)

Setting aside whether we agree or disagree with parts of it, the U.S. Constitution could have been written more clearly in places, such as the meanings of "general welfare", "interstate commerce", etc.

While they appear to have considered such terms to be perfectly clear, they turned out not to be.

I disagree. We have different experiences. In some respects, we have more experiences. In terms of crafting legislation, sure. But there were things the founders experienced that we as Americans don't have more experience dealing with.

As to the clarity of language, there's a few jurists on the current USSC who often try to go into the detailed meaning of what was meant when the document was ratified. They're often mocked mercilessly for doing so by many armchair scholars.

Many of those words weren't vague when written. Over time our language has shifted so we don't understand with the same clarity as they did but those words still meant something. Sure some terms like "general welfare" meant different things to different people (Hamilton most notably) but that doesn't mean his understanding was the popular one.

bigsteve3OOO: bigsteve3OOO: At this point in American history, the soviets in 1970 enjoyed more freedom and privacy than current day Americans do.

You know how I know you don't know anything about the Soviet justice system and it's treatment of dissidents?

They extraordinarily renditioned them to gulags. We call ours Gitmo. We have better tech to monitor our citizens so we dont have to round the dissidents up wholesale like the Ruskies did. we do it more efficiently and better. Our Checka is better than their Checka.

What just happened here?

Fundamental dishonesty? From Think Progress? I'm shocked, simply shocked, I say.

The reason there was no outrage over what Scalia said was because there was nothing outrageous about it. You have to take it out of context to make it seem outrageous, and yes, it was still taken out of context with the 'extension' in the video. His point was that it doesn't matter what a Constitution says about rights if the government simply ignores it. It had nothing what so ever to do with respecting our own Constitution and what it stood for. Comparing what he said to what Ginsburg said is not even apples and oranges, it's comparing apples to paper clips.

This is as compared to what Ginsburg said in full context, which was that our Constitution was basically old and outdated and no good as a model anymore. Surprising precisely no one at all, the Constitution she thinks is 'better' is a liberal wet dream of government controlled 'rights' to everything under the sun as opposed to our own Constitution, which was largely established to limit the scope and scale of government and keep it out of our lives as much as possible.

The short version would be: Scalia likes and respects our Constitution, and Ginsburg neither likes nor respects it because she's a far left liberal.

Someone failed to cut the video clip before Scalia moved into "It was great on paper, but it was just paper". Otherwise this would have been great quote mining.

If you want a lesson in quote mining look into the creationist / evolution debacle on YouTube.

Scalia would know, of the sitting Justices he's the master of twisting the actual words of a foundational legal document through statute and jurisprudence to minimize rights and civil liberties for citizens. Dude makes Felix Frankfurter look like a pre-law.

SixPaperJoint: bigsteve3OOO: bigsteve3OOO: At this point in American history, the soviets in 1970 enjoyed more freedom and privacy than current day Americans do.

You know how I know you don't know anything about the Soviet justice system and it's treatment of dissidents?

They extraordinarily renditioned them to gulags. We call ours Gitmo. We have better tech to monitor our citizens so we dont have to round the dissidents up wholesale like the Ruskies did. we do it more efficiently and better. Our Checka is better than their Checka.

What just happened here?

I tried to reply to Mr. Bogey. He had replied to two people. I was attempting to clean up the post but erased too much info. To catch you up I said that the soviets were more free than modern Americans. Mr. Bogey said I dont know what I am talking about. I used some key works and phrases from both the Soviets and American Secret Police to demonstrate that they are the same with different names, additionally that the American police use modern technology to make them better than the old Soviet Secret Police. I am now awaiting his answer so I can post more similarities. He will counter by trying to show that I am a nit-wit troll or that my facts are wrong or both.

bigsteve3OOO: I tried to reply to Mr. Bogey. He had replied to two people. I was attempting to clean up the post but erased too much info. To catch you up I said that the soviets were more free than modern Americans. Mr. Bogey said I dont know what I am talking about. I used some key works and phrases from both the Soviets and American Secret Police to demonstrate that they are the same with different names, additionally that the American police use modern technology to make them better than the old Soviet Secret Police. I am now awaiting his answer so I can post more similarities. He will counter by trying to show that I am a nit-wit troll or that my facts are wrong or both.

I wasn't going to reply because when you go to 11 with the crazy, where else am I to go? I can't top that so I let it simmer and speak for itself.

Thinks Scalia is a commie agitprop.

randomjsa: Fundamental dishonesty? From Think Progress? I'm shocked, simply shocked, I say.

The reason there was no outrage over what Scalia said was because there was nothing outrageous about it. You have to take it out of context to make it seem outrageous, and yes, it was still taken out of context with the 'extension' in the video. His point was that it doesn't matter what a Constitution says about rights if the government simply ignores it. It had nothing what so ever to do with respecting our own Constitution and what it stood for. Comparing what he said to what Ginsburg said is not even apples and oranges, it's comparing apples to paper clips.

This is as compared to what Ginsburg said in full context, which was that our Constitution was basically old and outdated and no good as a model anymore. Surprising precisely no one at all, the Constitution she thinks is 'better' is a liberal wet dream of government controlled 'rights' to everything under the sun as opposed to our own Constitution, which was largely established to limit the scope and scale of government and keep it out of our lives as much as possible.

The short version would be: Scalia likes and respects our Constitution, and Ginsburg neither likes nor respects it because she's a far left liberal.

Yeah, that Ginsburg is a farking Communist for calling the Constitution "genius" and praising things like the First Amendment and the independent judiciary. She should be lynched.

SkinnyHead: But according to Justice Ginsburg philosophy, it doesn't matter how they draft their constitution because whatever they write, it's going to be a "living constitution" that activists judges, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, can rewrite to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Holmes, Brandeis, and Wilson laugh at the afterbirth your mother used to insulate your face.

Mrbogey: bigsteve3OOO: I tried to reply to Mr. Bogey. He had replied to two people. I was attempting to clean up the post but erased too much info. To catch you up I said that the soviets were more free than modern Americans. Mr. Bogey said I dont know what I am talking about. I used some key works and phrases from both the Soviets and American Secret Police to demonstrate that they are the same with different names, additionally that the American police use modern technology to make them better than the old Soviet Secret Police. I am now awaiting his answer so I can post more similarities. He will counter by trying to show that I am a nit-wit troll or that my facts are wrong or both.

I wasn't going to reply because when you go to 11 with the crazy, where else am I to go? I can't top that so I let it simmer and speak for itself.

Not crazy. Lets look at freedom to travel un-restricted.
Soviets had posted agents at all public transportation hubs were citizens had to show papers. This allowed the government to track peoples movements. They had check points on roads for the same purpose.
Americans use the TSA to track public transportation and cameras to track automobiles.
A critical part to freedom is un-restricted travel. We do not have it.

video man: Because, it is. Problem is, the USSR didn't obey it.

Done in one. Constitutions are only meaningful in constitutional democracies.

SkinnyHead: Last week, Justice Ginsburg told an Egyptian audience that she would not recommend using the United States Constitution as a model for the new Egyptian Constitution. Ginsburg suggested that Egypt should learn from the full experience of the world in drafting constitutions

But according to Justice Ginsburg philosophy, it doesn't matter how they draft their constitution because whatever they write, it's going to be a "living constitution" that activists judges, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, can rewrite to mean whatever they want it to mean.

How would this be any different than five or more justices overturning seventy years of legal precedent by declaring the aggregate effects test laid out in Wickard v. Filburn to be the wrong way to interpret the Commerce Clause?

video man: Because, it is. Problem is, the USSR didn't obey it.

More like the problem was that there were loopholes. Our constitution is shorter and less thorough in its explanation of what exactly our civil rights are, but it's tight, it took almost a century for our government found a loophole it could cram its random bullshiat through (the commerce clause) and even that hasn't given it completely free reign.

It took Stalin what, a couple decades to walk through the loop-caverns in the soviet document and institute de-facto dictatorship?

枪杆子里面出政权 down one arm, 人民有權保留和攜帶武器 down the other.

bigsteve3OOO: Not crazy. Lets look at freedom to travel un-restricted.
Soviets had posted agents at all public transportation hubs were citizens had to show papers. This allowed the government to track peoples movements. They had check points on roads for the same purpose.
Americans use the TSA to track public transportation and cameras to track automobiles.
A critical part to freedom is un-restricted travel. We do not have it.

If you can--with a straight face-- compare the TSA to the way the Soviets handled even the Eastern Bloc...Well, sh*t, man there's not much anybody can do for you.

Just because it's a divergent thought based on a dubious generic outlook on history, doesn't make it an idea that is guaranteed the weight you insist on putting on it.

bigsteve3OOO: Not crazy. Lets look at freedom to travel un-restricted.
Soviets had posted agents at all public transportation hubs were citizens had to show papers. This allowed the government to track peoples movements. They had check points on roads for the same purpose.
Americans use the TSA to track public transportation and cameras to track automobiles.
A critical part to freedom is un-restricted travel. We do not have it.


Like I said, I'll just let it shine. To even take a polishing rag to it would mar its finish so slightly.

cameroncrazy1984: People are responding to SkinnyHead? That's hilarious. The guy is a birther/troll.

cameroncrazy1984: People are responding to SkinnyHead? That's hilarious. The guy is a birther/troll.

Careful. Some of the Master Control around here could consider that hate speech. Or in their terms, "hate speach."

cameroncrazy1984: People are responding to SkinnyHead? That's hilarious. The guy is a birther/troll.

The only troll I've stopped responding to entirety is Mr. Excessive Punctuation and Incoherent Grammar. Everyone else is fair game because, sadly, there are real people who sincerely believe such claptrap and deserve to get beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

Mrbogey: Oh wow. Is TP really so dense as to not get a scalding point?

Hell, Fark Libs were falling over themselves the other day about how our Constitution is Windows 3.1 and other Constitutions are better.

Scalia just decided to highlight how ridiculous it is to assert as such by pointing out that there existed a Constitution that guaranteed all the things people want in a modern Constitution.

So yea, Scalia is bad for what he said in jest as those who said it in seriousness.

That Scalia, always with the jokes. Just a barrel of laughs, cracking one-liners like there's no tomorrow.

Mrbogey: bigsteve3OOO: Not crazy. Lets look at freedom to travel un-restricted.
Soviets had posted agents at all public transportation hubs were citizens had to show papers. This allowed the government to track peoples movements. They had check points on roads for the same purpose.
Americans use the TSA to track public transportation and cameras to track automobiles.
A critical part to freedom is un-restricted travel. We do not have it.


Like I said, I'll just let it shine. To even take a polishing rag to it would mar its finish so slightly.

Lets look at private correspondence.

Soviet Russia used agents to open and read all mail. They listened in to all phone conversations.
America has computers that read all text, e-mail, and voice communications. We do it better.
Freedom to correspond with other citizens. We do not have it.