← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 5650 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-03-19
2003-03-19 23:49 | User Profile
From The Associated Press, available online at: [url=http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-scalia-rights.story]http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/na...ia-rights.story[/url]
War Means Rights May Be Scaled Back
By Associated Press
March 18, 2003, 10:46 PM EST
UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Tuesday.
"The Constitution just sets minimums," Scalia said after a speech at John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland. "Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."
Scalia, one of the court's most conservative judges, was responding to a question about the Justice Department's pursuit of terrorism suspects and whether their rights are being violated.
Scalia did not discuss what rights he believed are constitutionally protected, but said that in wartime, one can expect "the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum. I won't let it go beyond the constitutional minimum."
Scalia was interrupted once briefly by a protester who shouted an anti-war statement. The protester was taken from the room by security officers but was not arrested.
Scalia stopped speaking during the scuffle, then joked that the protest probably was more interesting than his topic, which was the constitutional protection of religions.
2003-03-20 01:57 | User Profile
Antonin Scalia Neocon!!!!!!!!!!!!
2003-03-20 02:34 | User Profile
one can expect "the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum. I** won't let it go beyond the constitutional minimum." **
Whew. I'm feeling better.
The only 'rights' I can think of that exceed the Constitution, and in fact violate them, are abortion and civil rights. It would be wonderful if that is what he was refering to.
2003-03-20 14:09 | User Profile
Bah. What do you expect from one of the Nine? Scalia and his fellow black-robed Nazgulim will never understand. The point of setting bare minimums for liberties is not to encourage the revokation of all other liberties, much the same way that building a frame for a house is not to encourage stripping the roof and tearing down the walls. If you remove everything but the frame, you no longer have a house--and if you remove everything but constitutionally-demanded liberties, you no longer have a free country.
2003-03-21 17:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by wintermute@Mar 19 2003, 18:02 ** "Most of the rights that the Federal Government enjoys go way beyond what the Constitution allows." **
Yes indeedy. Scalia knows this. It was not until my Jewish Constitutional Law professor clued me in that I came to understand what "limited government" really meant. Throughout college, I thought that the conservative push for "limited" federal government just meant, "smaller than the one we have now, on the principle that smaller is better." Which it did. Few conservative politicians actually mean, "federal government that is actually restricted to the enumerated powers of Article I of the U.S. Constitution." Maybe Ron Paul. Maybe. What's interesting (depressing? shocking?) is that I managed to make it through grade school, high school AND college without any understanding of this fundamental principle of American law and government. That, I believe, is by design. The federal government now no longer operates under a loosely-interpreted version of what was originally intended, but under a wholly inverted version of what was originally intended. The commerce "power," the civil rights "power" and the mother of them all, the "tax and spend" power have subsumed original intent. All of this might be objectionable in a racially homogenous confederation of states, but add the destructive forces of multiracialism and you're on your way to dissolution, destruction or irrelevance.