Ya Get Some Right and Ya Get Some Wrong

It takes a lot of work and time and patience to get it right.  And even WITH all that investment in discipline, the most accomplished master is going to have a moment or two when he looks at his creation and….

Tosses it back.  Does it over.  Learns from his blemish.

Political movements are no different.

The Tea Party movement has been an explosion of thought, of ideas and of expression.  There’s been anger and there’s been excitement and there’s been conflict.

Mostly the movement has stayed local and grass roots.  Mostly the movement has stayed on message:

Small Government.

Small Taxes.

No Social Issues.

And with that message the folks have been largely successful in the implementation.  Poor established members haven’t even made it out of the primary.  Good strong energetic candidates are, in some cases, already in office.

But like Master Craftsmen, what began as a work of art ends up as a mistake.  But that’s okay.

And the most recent and glaring mistake?

Christine O’Donnell

She’s seen here in a debate and the question is surrounding evolution, intelligent design and creationism and the inclusion of that is schools.  Specific is the establishment of religion by the state.

This is painful to watch in the same way that someone walking around with their zipper down is painful to watch:

Ya win some and ya lose some!

2 responses to “Ya Get Some Right and Ya Get Some Wrong

  1. I posted this on your facebook, but I’m reposting here because I think it’s an important point that got lost in this debate. Apologies for the cross post….

    A couple of things, first O’Donnell wasn’t wrong about the first amendment.

    There is no clear definition of separation of church and state in the first amendment. Coons was arguing that the constitution should be applied “as it is today.” Ok, ………fine… well that’s not the constitution. It was the 1947 SCOTUS case, Everson vs. the Board of Education that interpreted the 1st amendment to define this separation of church and state. That decision was written by Justice Hugo Black. Who, BTW was also a member of the KKK and was convinced that the catholic church had too much power.

    If we are to apply Coon’s logic to the Constitution then we might as also say that Plessy vs. Ferguson (separate but equal is equal) or Dred Scott was also just as valid an interpretation of the Constitution. It took a civil war to overturn Dred Scott.

    The point is this- The Constitution doesn’t say a lot of things people think it means today. It’s been interpreted by activist judges to mean a lot of things over the years, including a lot of things we would be abhorred by today.

    Incidentally, it was the 1942 SCOTUS decision Wickard v. Filburn that dramatically increased the power of the federal government under their interpretation of the commerce clause. In that case, the supreme court decided that a farmer growing wheat for his own personal use effectively was in fact “interstate commerce” because he was possibly tangentially affecting interstate commerce by not selling his wheat or buying it from other sources possibly across state lines. This ruling was was essentially using the “Butterfly effect” to justify it’s decision. It’s a extremely weak set of logic, yet that one ruling is what most of our bloated Federal government stands on today.

    We like to think that SCOTUS is above politics, but there always has been and always will be activism there. In the Wickard v. Filburn case, the assumed motivation was to enable the Federal government to move forward with Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda which required a looser interpretation of the commerce clause to empower the Feds.

    It’s this same weak interpretation of the commerce clause in Wickard v. Filburn that Obama is using to legally justify Obamacare.

    Getting back to O’Donnell- while I don’t think she’s as bad as people make her out to be, certainly not any worse than some of the crazies currently sitting in office, we have to remember that most of the motivation in electing her as the GOP candidate wasn’t in the expectation that she was going to win in Delaware. The motivation was to give the RNC a swift kick in the ass message that if you are going to give us RINOs (Mike Castle) we won’t tolerate that anymore. I think that message was well heard. And so, we may lose Delaware but we are in fact winning the war.

    • A couple of things, first O’Donnell wasn’t wrong about the first amendment.

      I mostly agree. However, the larger point is that she comes across as a Constitutional expert and she clearly isn’t.

      There is no clear definition of separation of church and state in the first amendment.

      I more strongly agree with you on this point. Further, I feel that the concept is to prevent officials of the government to be, at the same time, officials of the church.

      For example, when the nation was established, the rulers of England were also the heads of the Church of England.

      I think the language was included to mean the government can not establish a sanctioned religion. I do NOT think the language prevents a cross on a national cemetery. Or to prevent prayer in school for example.

      the 1942 SCOTUS decision Wickard v. Filburn that dramatically increased the power of the federal government

      Yes. This was done to allow much of FDR’s legislation to go through. Initially the court was set to rule against these powers, and they had the numbers to stop FDR. However, when he realized that he was going to lose these decisions, he threatened to add enough Justices that agreed with him until he obtained a majority. The court relented and we’ve been fooked ever since.

      The motivation was to give the RNC a swift kick in the ass message that if you are going to give us RINOs (Mike Castle) we won’t tolerate that anymore. I think that message was well heard. And so, we may lose Delaware but we are in fact winning the war.

      And this is THE most important point I was trying to make. Defeating Castle is more important than winning Delaware.

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