Judicial Activism, and Uncommonly Silly Laws

The phrase 'judicial activism' is often invoked (typically, but not always, by those who support keeping society like it was back when men were men (unless they were black, or poor, or something), women were possessions, and everyone was equal as long he was white, rich, male and Christian) against judges who try to interpret law in the context of modern society. (Please note that I am not saying that these judges are always right, but quite frankly in the Western world they have a good track record).

It's an interesting one, though. It's most often a factor in multi-judge no-jury superior courts, and can have great impact upon society, for better or for worse.

What fascinates me is those judges who seem to believe that a law is unjust, but nevertheless argue that it is constitutional, so must be upheld. Isn't that a strange concept? Having to uphold something even though you think it is wrong, because of the way a centuries-old document is phrased?

The thing is, this crops up most frequently where the law is being stricken down anyway. Both in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965; ruled that laws prohibiting married couples from using contraceptives were unconstitutional) and Lawrence v. Texas (2003; ruled that Texas law, and by extension laws in twelve other states, prohibiting homosexual sex were unconstitutional), one judge said that while the law was an "uncommonly silly law" it was constitutional.

It is, of course, very easy to make a decision like that when you know that the "uncommonly silly" law is done for, anyway. I do wonder what these judges would have done if they had had the deciding vote. Would they have protected the constitution (or their reading of it), or gone with sanity? These were not silly little issues which didn't matter, remember; they effected tens or hundreds of millions of people. Difficult decision, and I'd imagine that many defenders of the constitution have jumped ship in the past to prevent horrendous injustice.

All is not lost

Well, it turns out that, even though we have of course, by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty, embarrassed ourselves in front of Europe, and screwed ourselves for the future, we have made one small gain.

Apparently, the Neo-Nazis love us! Le Pen, for instance, is overjoyed.

On the other side of the pond, I doubt America's horrible, horrible Neo-Cons are too devastated, either.

Proud to be Irish, much?

Fox-News-Tastic

Fox "News" is a propaganda channel for crazed racist troglodytes, popular in America; shocking, eh?

Anyway, the wonderful Gawker has compiled some of the more amusing things that Fox I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-News said about Barrak Obama, noted Muslim/Atheist terrorist (no, really, this is what a surprising proportion of the American population seems to believe).

Have a look. It's hilarious, or at least it would be except that you have to assume that if people think Fox is news, they will take it somewhat seriously. It runs the full gamut from racism to accusations of terrorism to incitement to murder. I'm pretty certain a lot of it would be classed as illegal hate-speech in Europe. As, possibly, it should be; it's the duty of the media not to actually lie to stupid people.

Poor, poor, Amercia

So, apparently, Obama smokes, or did smoke, or someone who looked a bit like him smoked in a dream, or something. Somehow, I suspect that this will tend to put people off.

Get ready for America under old man McCain (also mad, though not remotely as mad as noted traffic attractor Ron Paul), without even the minor comfort that he'll probably die during his term; according to the above article he's still hale and hearty. Unlike Obama, who will most assuredly die from the quarter packet a day he allegedly may or may not have smoked. I mean, imagine! That's as much as your average pensioner smokes! If not more less!

The Lisbon Treaty - how will you vote?

Ireland will be the only country to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which replaces the failed European Constitution and will, if signed, change the functioning of the EU.

Here's a quick summation of what Wikipedia has to say on the matter:

• Central Bank and euro given official recognition.
• Court of Justice slightly strengthened.
• Reorganisation and television display of Council.
• 18 month Presidency.
• Council of heads of states separated, voting procedure changed to reduce excessive power of small nations.
• President of Council elected.
• Power of Parliament increased.
• Minor changes to roles of national Parliaments.
• Council made smaller, re-arranged.
• Somewhat coordinated foreign policy.
• Consolidation of various bits and pieces.
• Enlargement barriers removed.
• Method for nations to leave.
• Solidarity on disasters, energy supply.
• Laying the grounds for a potential defence agreement, but with no obligations.
  

To me, all of this looks reasonable, sane and good for Europe and for Ireland. I'd hope that it would to most people. It'll give more power to the Parliament, a generally reasonable democratic body, and the Court of Justice can also generally be relied upon to make sensible choices.

Of course the funny thing about this referendum is that nobody knows what it's actually about. People have this vague, nasty idea that it is about tax or war or something. The poster campaigns going on at the moment are rather interesting. There are basically two sides; on the Yes side are the major political parties, and various other groups. On the No side are Sinn Fein, bits of the Green Party, and various other other groups.

The 'Yes' posters are generally some politician (including Enda Kenny; I'd almost vote No just because of that) telling you to vote yes. The 'No' posters generally tell you that voting Yes will cause tax hikes, job losses, and lead to war. Really, the Yes people would be far better off just telling people what it was about; the No people should probably continue in their scare-mongering.

I'll be voting Yes, of course; I think that it's the right thing to do. However, I do worry that the Nos will prevail, simply because no-body knows what it is about, and thus people are quite cautious of it. Sinn Fein's faux-patriotic bullshit on the subject won't help, either; they have quite a bit of support these days.

What way will you be voting? And how have you come to this conclusion? First person to say they're voting No because of the (I think) Sinn Fein poster telling us that people died for our freedom gets a slap.

Britain, Britain, Uber Alles (with homeopathic quantities of Ron Paul!)

Was just looking at the Wikipedia article on the BNP, Britain's premier scary fascist/white supremacist party. The talk page is particularly shocking; evidently people who can more or less string a sentence together support them these days!

I'm enormously grateful that we don't (as yet) have a comparable political group in this country. They are evil.

There is, of course, humour in every situation; just imagine the Queen's Speech under a BNP government! "My Government and I have now relocated 80% of the nasty foreigners to camps in recently reclaimed County Poland. Any of my previous speeches, where I seem to cuddle up to the darkies, were made under mind-control by executed Communists such as Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, et al., and should be disregarded." [Fade out, to Rule Britannia with montages of smiling blonde children and tanks.]



And then, there's this. A white supremacist blog, supporting the BNP, on Wordpress.com, with one of that host's trademark Scientology ads. (Yes, I know they're Google's, really.) I am, I'll confess, a little worried that Google's algorithms think that Neo-Nazis will also like Scientology; it makes that scary cult even scarier. And the author seems to be a fan of noted crazy failed presidential candidate Ron Paul! Argh, all the mad people in one!

Clinton, Clinton Uber Alles

A charming interview with Hillary Clinton. "... among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans..."

Lovely. Just lovely. Incidentally, do non-black, non-white people exist in America for political purposes? Or did they never get around to giving them the vote?

BBC in Scary Cherie Photo Suppression Shocker!

A couple of days ago, I noticed this article about Tony Blair secretly controlling Gordon Brown, presumably in much the same way as Maggie secretly controlled John Major in later episodes of Spitting Image. I was immediately drawn to it by the wonderful photo of Cherie Blair, so bookmarked it. Cherie Blair is of course Tony's crazy wife; you can read about her wacky exploits here.

Have a look. The photo's pretty pedestrian, eh? And well it might be, because the BBC replaced the original with boring stock photography. The original was... brace yourself... a larger version of this:

I assume that all of this is part of the media conspiracy to imply that Tony and Cherie are actually humans, and not evil robots possibly designed by the Spitting Image version of Margaret Thatcher. Think about it. It makes sense.

Bonus: Here, we see the tragic results of XP Service Pack 3 being applied:

Duck sex and international politics

SMBC is a rather fun web-comic. Today's strip:



Oh, so true, so true.

TinyURL in Ron Paul shocker!

You know TinyURL? The URL-shortening service? Guess whose site it links to, on its front page.

Yes, that's right. Noted dangerously insane libertarian politician Ron Paul.

Oh, dear. It's always nice to find out that major, important Internet services are run by crazy people, or at least by people who support crazy people in national elections...

I'd call for a boycott, but Ron is doomed, anyway.

George Bush's wife being eccentric in public

George Bush's wife, Laura (whose accomplishments, apparently, include being a very heavy smoker and killing a friend when she was a kid through dubious driving; who'da thunk it?) was in the news twice today!

She's brought out a book for kids (on reading; hopefully her command of the English American language is rather better than Georgie's), and won a sandwich-making contest. Really. I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up, could you?

The position of First Lady has always puzzled me a bit. The US press tend to treat her a little like you'd expect the Queen to be treated, but she does seem to do the strangest things!

If Clinton wins the election, will Bill be first gentleman, I wonder? And, if so, will he be expected to go around winning sandwich contests?

Conservapedia

Take a look at this. Conservapedia. In this context, 'conservative' doesn't mean John Major, or even Maggie; it means 'psychotic religious mentally sub-normal American'. Here's their piece on 'Homosexuals and Murder'.

Vernon J. Geberth, M.S., M.P.S. who is a former commander of Bronx homicide for the New York City Police Department stated in 1995 regarding homosexual murders that homosexual murders are relatively common and these murders may involve male victims murdered by other males or may involve female victims who are in some type of lesbian relationship and they are murdered by another female.

What eloquence! I mean, that sort of prose would get you given out to by a primary school teacher.

From the article on Jews (particularly interesting, because the target audience seems to be half those people who support Israel no matter what bizarre, perverse things it does, and half Neo-Nazi):

Note the punctuation.

Can I tempt you to some atheism and mass murder?

Vandalism of Conservapedia is punishable by ten years in prison. And not signing your messages is punishable by death!

Americans, stop messing about invading random Middle Eastern countries. Drop bombs on these people, instead. The world will thank you for it, and Fred Phelps could use a little napalm.

Ding dong, the witch is dead

So, in early May, Bertie Ahern, our glorious leader, will be resigning, and the Mahon Tribunal will suddenly drop out of the public eye.

Anyway, I think that this is great news. So great, in fact, that I hope to have a little party to celebrate. The ceremonial burning of the brown envelope will have to wait, I'm afraid, until Fianna Fáil loses power; I mean, Brian Cowen, really! Of course, then we'll have Fianna Gael in power. Won't that be nice. The correct celebration for Fianna Gael falling from power is, as is well known, the burning of Enda Kenny.

Oh, dear. I should really think about moving to a proper democracy; this place gets me down sometimes. Of course, there are so few left, and more or less no English-speaking ones...

Americans for Terrorism

I was thinking more about our lovely pro-terrorist friends. Look at this great MySpace group I found. American supporters of the IRA. Wonderful.

Americans, admit it, if these people were brown they'd be in Guantanamo.

Even worse are those Americans who take it upon themselves to fund the IRA. See that above? 29 dead. All civilians, 9 of them children. 300 injured, some horribly. This isn't in some age of oppression decades ago, mind you, this was in 1998. If you gave money to aid the 'Republican cause', you may have been paying for this, you stupid fucking bastards.

Please, Americans, don't give money to terrorists. Even if they are white and don't wear funny clothes.

Bertie, boycott Bush

The Taoiseach of Ireland often presents the President of the US with some shamrock on St. Patrick's Day. It's traditional.

In view of recent events... Is it really appropriate?

Bertie, you're a dreadful creature, but you're significantly less dreadful than Bush. The Mahon tribunal, after all, has not even mentioned torture. Don't meet with the man. It demeans you, and it demeans our country. 

(Note: This entry was called 'Bertie, boycott Blair', for a few minutes. Freudian slip, I assure you. Blair is somewhat less evil, though he does have a slightly mad wife.)

On Loony Nationalists

Nationalism, in a strictly Irish context, tends to refer to the belief that Northern Ireland should be part of the Republic of Ireland. This would be fine, except that the majority of Northern Irish people don't want to be part of the Republic of Ireland.

A friend recently wrote a post which was rather disparaging of an, in fairness, pretty crap (in my opinion, naturally) Nationalist blog.

Today, he got a comment from a person claiming to be the author:

Sharon here , from the blog you described as " This one..." , in comparison to the full title and link you gave to the "excellent"Unionist blog 'A Pint of Unionist Lite' . I notice wee things like that !
Still - it's good to know from which direction the belittling is coming from , and you have left no doubt about that : "It's probably the case that unionism - at least at this moment in time - will always appear more rational, as it reflects the will of the people. As it is, republicanism cannot but be "in poor taste" as it does the very opposite..."
Do you not know that 'Unionism' is in the minority on this isle ? The "will of the people" , indeed lol!
You mention the "tumultuous history we've had in the last 30 years..." , as if this issue has only been with us for that short a time . Another unionist trait ! 
And would you not agree that having over 200,000 'hits' and been nominated three times by our readers as 'Best (Irish) Political Blog' is good going for someone who "doesn't seem to have a clue " ?
Anyway - glad you like the photo's we publish : perhaps in future you could confine yourself to simply looking at the images on our blog , as the text is obviously wayyyy too heavy for you .
Thanks!

The blog of the offended party is really a bit of a laugh; mad use of bold and punctuation, and blatant terrorist-worship.

Right, a few points. First, on Unionism being in a minority on this isle, well, that's rather irrelevant, really, isn't it? What's relevant is the opinions of the citizens of the foreign nation which you wish to assimilate into the Republic; that world be Northern Ireland. I certainly have my doubts that extremist Nationalism is in the majority in the Republic, incidentally; just how many seats does Sinn Fein have, again?

Then there's the silly drawing of conclusions, and the assertion that taking interest only in the last 30 years of Irish history is a Unionist trait? I'm not even going to go into it, it's so silly.

On the 200,000 hits, well, I've had over 80,000 in the last year, and my blog is about... well, nothing, really. Similarly, I've been nominated for various Irish Blog Awards categories twice. I just have rather less up my own arse about it than the blogger.

As for the "text is obviously wayyyy too heavy for you", well, that's rich from someone who talks about "photo's", quite frankly.

Now, justifying the assimilation of a foreign nation on the basis that the majority of your own nation approves the fact is nothing short of imperialism. You might as well say that the German invasion of Poland was justified because a lot of Germans felt that they had some obscure historical right to it. If a Unionist is someone who resists the imperialist takeover of Northern Ireland, then call me a Unionist! Of course 'Unionism' is more rational in Northern Ireland; it is the will of the people.

This is not to say that the oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland in the past was right, or even that the current situation is ideal. To be honest, I think both Gerry and Ian are rather dreadful, and the world would be a far better place without them and their rabid followers. However, the past does not give us a right to take revenge in the present. Northern Ireland is not part of the Republic of Ireland, and its citizens do not wish it to be. Let it go. Focus on something more bloody important, if you must obsess about something.

Americans, don't vote for Hillary Clinton

Clinton has said that her administration will not go ahead with Yucca Mountain, the US's planned long-term nuclear waste storage facility. If Yucca Mountain isn't built, the future of nuclear power generation in the US will be in jeopardy, and you'll be seeing coal power plants popping up all over the place.

She's also, of course, unwilling to rule out torture. I'd like you, at this point, to try to drive the image of Hillary and Bill engaged in sadomasochistic activities from your mind. Did that work? Thought not.

One laptop per consumer?

The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) thing is launching about now, at about $150, for orders by governments and such. There's talk of selling them for a profit to Western consumers and using the profit to fund more laptops in the developing world. I'd be tempted to buy one if this happens; in many ways they beat conventional laptops. They're lighter, smaller, more durable, they have an e-book reading mode, and have far greater battery life. You could use one on a train. And it's all in a good cause! (I hate that phrase; it reminds me of horrible Katy Grin from Absolutely Fabulous.)