Reflections From a Murky Pond

The US Supreme Court finally rendered its ruling upon Burwell v. Hobby Lobby yesterday, June 30, 2014. It was a 5-4 decision in favor of Hobby Lobby’s owners’ religious freedom.

Justice Ruth Ginsburg, one of the extreme Leftist judges in the SCOTUS penned the dissenting opinion which her three fellow leftist judges concurred with.

As this case dealt with the intersection of for-profit corporations, religious freedom, and management-labor power dynamics, it is neither surprising nor of material interest that the Liberal minority within the SCOTUS dissented from the majority opinion. That is to be expected as those four judges are antipathetic to corporations and religious freedom, at least when the religion in question is Christianity.

What is of interest is the nature and content of Ginsburg’s dissension. Ginsburg’s 35-page scathing screed contained little or no basis in law except in the singular part where she agreed with the Court, was more emotive, irrational fear-mongering than a logical exercise, and utterly ignored almost every salient point of the Court’s decision.

This is, and long has been, Ginsburg’s modus operandi and is why I loath her more than any other SCOTUS judge since Justice Warren. Whenever she pens the majority opinion she makes sure to cover it in the law and by legal precedence, but her dissenting opinions rarely stem from interpretative differences in America’s law. Instead they are emotive pleas and and angry hand-wringing over what the effects of the law might be.

Tags: America | Corporations | Emotions | Freedom | Ginsburg | Law | Leftists | Logic | Personhood | Politics | Religion | RFRA | US Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 at 9:22 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

In the wake of Loughner’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 other people — six of whom were killed, including a 9 year-old girl — in Tucson, AZ on Saturday, January 8, 2010 I’m left in an odd quandary. Truth be told, I’m searching for outrage within myself but finding only a mild sadness, a lingering frustration, and more than a little ennui.

Obviously, normative American society says that I should be outraged, especially since a child was murdered. That point was made quite clear, though no such clarification was needed.

I am going to unfriend you on FB, don’t take it personally – I am sure you will not. If you cannot muster up feelings for a 9 year old child as collateral damage, then my unfriending wont ruffle a hair on your head.

The somewhat worrisome thing is that I can’t seem to summon up any significant feelings for the murdered Christina Taylor Green or any of Loughner’s other victims. I can’t even seem to call up more than a certain level of disgust with “opportunistic feeding” that been done by politicians, demagogues, and pundits in the wake of the massacre.

So I’m left searching for outrage but not finding any.

Tags: Arizona | Emotions | Ethics & Morality | Giffords | Loughner | Musings | Outrage | Politics | Society

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Musings. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.