[Truth]

Let us say a majority of Americans living in Mississippi abhor the idea of drinking from the same water fountain as black-skinned people. Can you address that from the textualist framework, "Truth"? Should a Constitutional Amendment have been required to strike down laws such as these? You said previously that your concern was abortion, not so much where black folks sat on a bus.

I'm an advocate of the Tenth Amendment. I abhor the bastardizing of some of the other amendments by amoral liberals. You can interpret that as you please.

[The Urban Sombrero]

"People who happen to have money" do not rise to the "kings of the earth" and "merchants of the earth" spoken of in Revelation 18. "Blessed are you poor...woe to you who are rich" speaks of the Great Reversal, but they aren't my words. In addition, and this is no bs, the Aryan Nation has literature that posits the blame for slavery upon the slaves.

[Truth]

Has it occurred to you that fifteen, yes, fifteen, Presidents were content to see their fellow human beings bought, sold, beaten, marginalized, captured, forced to labor as oxen and not so much as issue an edict? And you suggest Barack Obama is the most racially divisive President? I am not a huge fan of President Obama, never voted for him, think Cornel West and Tavis Smiley need to radically confront the level of dysfunction and disregard for law and order within black youth culture, but, "Truth" your claim of "obvious" is only such if your mind is closed, your vision clouded, your heart hardened.

Don't be so melodramatic. As I said, I believe in the Tenth Amendment. And, only a fool or a fellow racist would believe that Obama isn't the most race conscious and self-proclaimed racial victim to ever live in the White House. Obama is only half black although you'd never know it from his actions.

[The Urban Sombrero]

I'm an advocate of the Tenth Amendment. I abhor the bastardizing of some of the other amendments by amoral liberals. You can interpret that as you please.

As Frost said, "there's the rabbit out of hiding."

[Truth]

"People who happen to have money" do not rise to the "kings of the earth" and "merchants of the earth" spoken of in Revelation 18. "Blessed are you poor...woe to you who are rich" speaks of the Great Reversal, but they aren't my words. In addition, and this is no bs, the Aryan Nation has literature that posits the blame for slavery upon the slaves.

As I tell my law students, poor people don't create jobs nor pay payroll. The haves aid the have nots. We should be thanked for our compassion, which we see as our Christian duty, and not demonized for it. Where would these have nots be without the haves?

[The Urban Sombrero]

A "belief in the tenth Amendment" that supports policies and laws that say, "You people are free to use only that water fountain" is a blazing affront to human dignity and what Madison meant when he posited the majority as a bigger threat to freedom than government.

[Truth]

Gay marriage was legalized because a majority of the court held that same sex couples were entitled to equal protection under the law. A Constitutional democracy is not a local congregation of the Baptist Church. In granting rights and freedoms in a Constitutional democracy, liberty of conscience is granted in a whole host of behaviors and enterprises that the majority or the individual might find offensive, even loathesome. There is a price to living in a free society with codified rights and freedoms. It is to be surrounded in the marketplace of ideas and images with opinions contrary, practices offensive, words inflammatory. I might, at the same time, be repulsed by what I see as debauchery when seeing news clips of a gay rights parade where individuals are flaunting every standard of decency I hold to, and yet recognize the delicate splendor of a society which gives right to that which it generally abhors in recognition of the sovereign gift of freedom of conscience within broadly defined rights. It is part and parcel of living in a free society, a Constitutional democracy. The Framers had faith in democracy, but not blind faith.

We are not a democracy. We are a republic. Homo marriage was never discussed by the federal courts for over 200 years because no court ever entertained the abnormal thought that the framers ever intended it. You should be more concerned with the decay of the moral standards of this country than heralding the abnormal, disgusting, and destructive recent decisions of a rogue court. And, with the loss of Scalia, the court will drift more and more godless.

However, as an attorney, I will ignore the decisions. I know how to do so. I could tell the coming majority on the court to go to hell but, why bother? That is likely their destination without me pointing it out.

[The Urban Sombrero]

As I tell my law students, poor people don't create jobs nor pay payroll. The haves aid the have nots. We should be thanked for our compassion, which we see as our Christian duty, and not demonized for it. Where would these have nots be without the haves?

A guy making "x" from the labor of people making "x ÷ 10,000" is hardly showing compassion. He is running a business and in so doing creating jobs, which is, of course, not the issue. Dishonest scales? That's a problem, as any compassionate Christian knows.

[The Urban Sombrero]

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."

[Truth]

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."

Of at least equal importance is the following from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truth to be self evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are LIFE, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. The absolute right to life, as denied by your liberal cohorts, is named first and foremost. It is also significant that we have a right to pursue happiness but not a right to happiness. Thus, this insulting reference of liberals to a "level playing field" for all was never intended nor possible. Some excel. More do not. The US Constitution doesn't guarantee that we will all be born into the Kennedy family.

[Granny Bear]

^
Thank God!

[Truth]

A guy making "x" from the labor of people making "x ÷ 10,000" is hardly showing compassion. He is running a business and in so doing creating jobs, which is, of course, not the issue. Dishonest scales? That's a problem, as any compassionate Christian knows.

It sounds to me like you would prefer living in a socialist country rather than in the United States.

As I see it, the guy making x provides jobs for those making x/10,000. If the latter feels "under appreciated", let him/her develop skills or opportunities for himself/herself so that he/she can move up the economic ladder. As I said, there is a right to pursue happiness not a right to happiness. And, by the way, in many of our founding documents the word "property" replaces the term "pursue happiness".

[Truth]

A "belief in the tenth Amendment" that supports policies and laws that say, "You people are free to use only that water fountain" is a blazing affront to human dignity and what Madison meant when he posited the majority as a bigger threat to freedom than government.

Could be. But keep in mind that Madison was one of the participants in the drafting of the Bill of Rights including the Tenth Amendment.

And, in using the term, "human dignity", how do you reconcile it with murdering the innocents and supporting an abomination of the sacrament of marriage?

[TheRealThing]

Of at least equal importance is the following from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truth to be self evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are LIFE, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. The absolute right to life, as denied by your liberal cohorts, is named first and foremost. It is also significant that we have a right to pursue happiness but not a right to happiness. Thus, this insulting reference of liberals to a "level playing field" for all was never intended nor possible. Some excel. More do not. The US Constitution doesn't guarantee that we will all be born into the Kennedy family.

^
Thank God!

Just a general observation here. Using reason to debate with those who are [SIZE="3"]un-reasonable,[/SIZE] is a waste of time.

Urban has already been bested on every front on which he has tried to make a stand. But, like a hocker on a door knob, you're just not going to pin him down. He should have retreated back behind his sombrero by now. nicker:

[The Urban Sombrero]

Coke is the real thing. Read Brennan's speech, call it "unreason," Crow about your use of reason, insult, besmear. Rinse and Repeat. Tiresome. The viewpoint of the Framers, from the window of 1789, did not hold it unjust to hold human beings as chattel, which I state only as a signpost that a more expansive view of Justice and equality must needs evolve if the United States Constitution is to continue to make good on the high ideals that exist there as plants needing room to grow and the sunlight of equality, the rain of Justice for all continuing to mean one more until no more are excluded, left behind, forgotten.

[The Urban Sombrero]

"The poor you will always have among you" is high authority suggesting playing field is not level. Blessed are the poor...but woe unto you rich" is high authority the playing field will flip. Early in the Book of Acts, when the believers held all in common, a long distant relative of posters here represented wrote a papyrus note to Peter, suggesting they weren't being good capitalists.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Fallible human beings, prone to error and egregious wrongs, vulnerable to groupthink and hateful intolerance, best observe human dignity by honoring freedom of conscience insomuch as is possible. If a man choose a lifestyle or practice that is an affront to God and so mar the image of the Creator within him, that is a tragic use of freedom of conscience, but of all the creatures, God gave humankind alone the capacity to say "yes" or "no" to him. This is a penultimate statement of human dignity. Freedom of conscience unto the individual is trampled upon by much religion and many forms of government. The highest ideal of human dignity finds expression in the highest ideals that existed as seeds in the United States Constitution.

[Truth]

Fallible human beings, prone to error and egregious wrongs, vulnerable to groupthink and hateful intolerance, best observe human dignity by honoring freedom of conscience insomuch as is possible. If a man choose a lifestyle or practice that is an affront to God and so mar the image of the Creator within him, that is a tragic use of freedom of conscience, but of all the creatures, God gave humankind alone the capacity to say "yes" or "no" to him. This is a penultimate statement of human dignity. Freedom of conscience unto the individual is trampled upon by much religion and many forms of government. The highest ideal of human dignity finds expression in the highest ideals that existed as seeds in the United States Constitution.

Assuming you believe the content of your post, I must conclude that either you are as concerned about the murdering of the innocents as am I or that you are a hypocrite. Which is it?

[Truth]

Just a general observation here. Using reason to debate with those who are [SIZE="3"]un-reasonable,[/SIZE] is a waste of time.

Urban has already been bested on every front on which he has tried to make a stand. But, like a hocker on a door knob, you're just not going to pin him down. He should have retreated back behind his sombrero by now. nicker:

You are, of course, correct. I will now rest my case and close my part of this discussion by wishing everyone the blessings of God and the wisdom to put His plan above the often amoral partisan political philosophies of some.

[The Urban Sombrero]

For me, a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy within the overlay of Roe v. Wade, given the context of freedom of conscience, has been the single most agonizing dilemma in my own personal view of the Constitution. Ultimately, I oppose Roe v. Wade. Thus, I am, to a degree, frowned upon by pro-choice friends and colleagues. The difference is I understand where the majority was coming from in the issue, but I disagree with the conclusion.

[The Urban Sombrero]

The reach of the State into the womb does have exceptions in my view. If a woman is impregnated against her will, before the age of 16, or if her life is endangered, or if the fetus is medically established as not viable at birth while still in the womb.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Jesus was considered immoral by the hyper-religious. Encountering the hyper-religious in the Bible belt is a daily thing. The hyper-religious are willing to sacrifice human dignity for some hard, rigid, often unmerciful, moral and ethical "code.". It ain't pretty, and it ain't true righteousness.

[TheRealThing]

"The poor you will always have among you" is high authority suggesting playing field is not level. Blessed are the poor...but woe unto you rich" is high authority the playing field will flip. Early in the Book of Acts, when the believers held all in common, a long distant relative of posters here represented wrote a papyrus note to Peter, suggesting they weren't being good capitalists.

Absolutely ridiculous. We will always have the poor. Mostly because the poor lack the drive and or the integrity to succeed. Here in this land, and unlike you I can opine from that perspective because I really have been overseas to see how the nations live, one can become a home owner in working at Wal-Mart or McDonalds. Not in downtown Manhattan, but certainly with the boys I run with. The playing field certainly is not about to flip, as you think.

The world system which is presently in place was originally set up by none other than King Nebuchadnezzar himself. Finance, commerce, government, lines of communication, law, retribution, the whole thing. And though that system will collapse soon enough, it will not be replaced until the Lion of the Tribe of Judah comes to rule the nations with a rod of iron for the duration of the millennium.

I will say this however, your vocabulary has definitely improved though, the thrust of your ramblings have taken on a professor Irwin Corey flair.

[TheRealThing]

Jesus was considered immoral by the hyper-religious. Encountering the hyper-religious in the Bible belt is a daily thing. The hyper-religious are willing to sacrifice human dignity for some hard, rigid, often unmerciful, moral and ethical "code.". It ain't pretty, and it ain't true righteousness.

Jesus came to us after a 400 year long silence in which God did not speak to man. Not via the prophet and not at the personal level we see happening so often in the Old Testament.

Thus the orthodoxy had 400 years of treating God's Holy Word as if it were a "living document." As the result, something over 6,000 codicils, generated by men amended God's law by that point. In short, it was a mess and so was the state of affairs within the Church of that day.

Christ was rejected by the Church because He did not conform to the expectations of the religious leaders of the day. Partly because they misinterpreted Scripture, and party because they were more than comfortable in being the authority of God in the framework of the theocracy which was the nation Israel. Thus they said, "We will not have this man to rule over us."

The spotless reputation and the body of Christ was therefore pilloried by the Jews. And in just the same way men are doing it in our day, and in the ultimate twist of irony, man judged God and His motives in the person of Jesus, Who was and is The Savior and Judge of man. Now, if you want to equate God's elect (the saved) with what you're calling the hyper religious of Christ's days on this earth, I suppose you can get away with it. However, you would be wrong. And from your little speech, I take it your struggle is a lonely one being the only guy in the room who knows what he's talking about and all. But somehow I get the impression that you will soldier on against the odds anyway.

No, Justice Scalia had it right. Originalism is the only way to fly, as was evidenced by the Lord Himself when He came to earth and referred to the leaders of the Church as snakes and sons of their father, the devil. Those were the first men to dare to change the Word of God, with the word of man. I prefer the method which chooses to change not so much as one jot or one tittle.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Are you equating, then, America as some kind of second Israel?

[The Urban Sombrero]

Jesus came to us after a 400 year long silence in which God did not speak to man. Not via the prophet and not at the personal level we see happening so often in the Old Testament.

Thus the orthodoxy had 400 years of treating God's Holy Word as if it were a "living document." As the result, something over 6,000 codicils, generated by men amended God's law by that point. In short, it was a mess and so was the state of affairs within the Church of that day.

Christ was rejected by the Church because He did not conform to the expectations of the religious leaders of the day. Partly because they misinterpreted Scripture, and party because they were more than comfortable in being the authority of God in the framework of the theocracy which was the nation Israel. Thus they said, "We will not have this man to rule over us."

The spotless reputation and the body of Christ was therefore pilloried by the Jews. And in just the same way men are doing it in our day, and in the ultimate twist of irony, man judged God and His motives in the person of Jesus, Who was and is The Savior and Judge of man. Now, if you want to equate God's elect (the saved) with what you're calling the hyper religious of Christ's days on this earth, I suppose you can get away with it. However, you would be wrong. And from your little speech, I take it your struggle is a lonely one being the only guy in the room who knows what he's talking about and all. But somehow I get the impression that you will soldier on against the odds anyway.

No, Justice Scalia had it right. Originalism is the only way to fly, as was evidenced by the Lord Himself when He came to earth and referred to the leaders of the Church as snakes and sons of their father, the devil. Those were the first men to dare to change the Word of God, with the word of man. I prefer the method which chooses to change not so much as one jot or one tittle.

I enjoyed your analysis until you conveyed the idea that the United States was conceived as a second sort of Israel.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Again, are you equating the words of the Framers with Scripture? Because it sure reads that way.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Absolutely ridiculous. We will always have the poor. Mostly because the poor lack the drive and or the integrity to succeed. Here in this land, and unlike you I can opine from that perspective because I really have been overseas to see how the nations live, one can become a home owner in working at Wal-Mart or McDonalds. Not in downtown Manhattan, but certainly with the boys I run with. The playing field certainly is not about to flip, as you think.

The world system which is presently in place was originally set up by none other than King Nebuchadnezzar himself. Finance, commerce, government, lines of communication, law, retribution, the whole thing. And though that system will collapse soon enough, it will not be replaced until the Lion of the Tribe of Judah comes to rule the nations with a rod of iron for the duration of the millennium.

I will say this however, your vocabulary has definitely improved though, the thrust of your ramblings have taken on a professor Irwin Corey flair.

"Now, there you go again.". Congratulations on your passport and in your travels by which you gained expertise in the cultures and peoples of foreign lands.

[TheRealThing]

Are you equating, then, America as some kind of second Israel?

I enjoyed your analysis until you conveyed the idea that the United States was conceived as a second sort of Israel.

LOL, let me help you a bit here. You did that when you drew the link between the hyper religious leaders who persecuted Jesus and the good folks of the Bible Belt.

[The Urban Sombrero]

Of course it does. The framers include the authors of the Constitution and all amendments thereto. If the authors of the Constitution did not address the marriage of homosexuals, then it is rightfully a matter for the states to address according the the Tenth Amendment. As for women, they have the vote because the Constitution, as amended, granted them that privilege. Thank you for answering my question. I can see where you camp.

If the best the "Framers" can do to address outrageous injustice is the, at best, gradualism of 140 years, your hiding in the Tenth Amendment falls flat, in essence and sense of justice.