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Subject:
From:
Walter Waddell <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:38:07 -0400
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It is interesting to read the expressions of others and note what thoughts leap to your own mind and to question 
why they are there and are what they are?

Upon reading: “By every measure of judicial activism, and this has been done by
political scientists who are in effect only looking at outcomes -- not
substance -- the most "activist" justices on the Court in the last 50s
years have been Scalia and Thomas, followed by Rehnquist. They have voted
to overturn more federal and state legislation than any other justices.

When people complain about "activist" judges, is this what they have in
mind?”

Without knowing the specific cases that formed the ideas for the above and the reasoning that went into the 
“overturn” “- ing” decisions; and, taking into the account “my” inferences from the meaning of “outcomes” and 
“substance”, two “mullings” clouded my inferior brain.

One was the recent shocking disclosure by Ginsburg that before the abortion decision, she harbored thoughts that 
there would be a “beneficiary” reduction in the number of births to a particular economic station of peoples - 
“outcome and substance”? Being related by blood to Jews, and upon learning of such thoughts from one, I was 
shockingly amazed. I was again surprised that there was little, if any public reaction to such a disclosure by a 
person empowered so mightily in the enforcing the affairs many on the individual.

My second thought was is it so “unsubstantial” to overturn federal and state legislation based on the premise that 
our founding fathers made a valiant attempt to design our government to remain in a position “inferior” to the 
individual. (Ninth and Tenth Amendments are exponentially to their attempt.) (Were incorrectly applied and 
unlawfully exercised in 1861).

Case in point: the current debate about requiring everyone to participate in health reform in some way or another.

What about those who, for religious purposes, do not believe in “modern medicine”? What are their rights? Do the 
rights or “wants” of the federal and states -- the majority supersede (It is incorrect to spell this word using the 
“c” no matter what Microsoft Word tells you) the individual regardless of his convictions, albeit they remain 
within the common law not the law of the “state”. (common law generally and very loosely held as flowing from the 
Christian acceptance of the Ten Commandments as applied through the development of Western Civilization under the 
influence of the Holy Catholic Church and further modernized in the Magna Carter).

May I suggest that the struggle will always be one where the will of the majority must be vigorously opposed if it 
even hints of crushing the freedom of the individual to live (but obeying the law) as he pleases, either in success 
or failure.

The crowd is never but a word away from mayhem, violence, and murder.  

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