The guy is incredibly ignorant, and thankfully there's no chance he can actually win anything. His kind of ignorance is the last thing we need in our public discourse.
The funny thing is that he is already a huuuuge longshot. As such he has no business alienating ANY group of voters.
No he's not. According to PPP he is tied for second in Iowa: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_IA_0601513.pdf
I think the field is fantastic and from a wide variety of backgrounds (private sector and public sector).
He's just Obama with a republican name. His view of government owning banks as good. This belief would work more with the socialists and liberals than the the right. He won't get more than 15% of votes in the GOP Primary, if he is a NObama RINO that believes in nationalization. I was really interested in him, until I saw this link on freerepublic and posted it earlier in the thread. The heading of his essay was "Far from Nationalization, Purchase of Bank Stocks Is a Win-Win for Taxpayers" http://004eeb5.netsolhost.com/hc133.htm He has such scary Nobama quotes like: 1) Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It’s trying to solve a problem. 2) Wake up people! Owning a part of the major banks in America is not a bad thing. 3) The free market purists’ objection to this is that it smacks at government control of the banking industry, which is called nationalization. They are correct. It smacks, but it is not nationalization because that would require the government to own at least 51 percent of the entity for an indefinite period of time. 4) The actions by the Treasury are a win-win for the taxpayer.
Michael Steele is the politico you are thinking of. As for Clarence Thomas, he is probably the Supreme Court Justice who most closely basis his decisions consistently upon the constitution (you know, his job description). If one of the current justices were given the power to decide all of the cases, he is certainly the one I would choose.
Only if you believe Scalia is the constitution. Clarence Thomas is the justice that most closely bases his decisions on whatever Antonin Scalia does.
Not true. Were that the case, their voting record would be identical. There records are similar, because Justice Scalia is the second most in line with the constitution, but Scalia will occasionally go off the reservation for ideological reasons. Justice Thomas is the most consistent in adhering to the letter of the constitution.
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I was under the impression that their job description was to interpret the Constitution in cases where there is no clear answer one way or another. I don't seem to recall seeing anywhere in the Constitution anything about rules on strict or loose interpretations or anything of the sort.
Actually, Thomas is probably the one that goes the most off the reservation when it comes to the Constitution--- In fact, he adheres most closely to whatever Constitution you have imagined up yourself. When it comes to the Constitution of the United States, Justice Clarence Thomas has shown (even noted by a severely ideologically motivated justice himself, Scalia) a consistent ability to get off the rails completely when it comes to the Constitution and established case laws that sometimes go back centuries.
Where did you get that job description? Whether the answer is clear or not has nothing to do with it. He is an originalist.
So he would rather interpret the Constitution correctly than adhere to settled case law? How is that "going off the reservation" with regard to the Constitution? "Hey I know you took an oath to uphold the Constitution, but we just want you to affirm what other people have said."
Seriously? Justice Thomas's originalist understanding has no more basis in the what is correct than anyone else's. Depending on what fits his political agenda he will look to original intent of the framers, the original understanding of those delegates who adopted it, or the objective meaning of the text at the time it was adopted. This varied approach is not crazy - there is no correct method of constitutional decision making. You are right, I don't think he is going off the reservation with regard to his constitutional analysis. He can use whatever method he wants. Where he departs the reservation is when he takes a tact that invalidates the administrative state. While this might appeal to the libertarian conscious it results in horrifically bad policy. There is nothing disciplined or correct about a bad policy result coming from a null value interpretation method. The holier than thou attitude adopted by conservative jurists as well as those that sing their accolades if completely off point. Those with this view sorely underestimate the manner in which political views inform judicial decision making.
All of those quotes are about his refusal to adhere mindlessly to stare decisis. Stare decisis is the notion that the law is settled once the Supreme Court rules on it (as though the people on the Supreme Court are infallible). There is nothing in the constitution about stare decisis, and disregarding it and relying on the document itself to guide his opinions does not show a lack of respect for the constitution, only for the rather broad interpretations that have been made of it in the last 200+ years.
