Possibly. So? Is it a “leftist” appeal to the courts in challenge to legislation? I assume not, so if I accept for the sake of argument that the voter ID case is indeed leftist (based only on your unsupported assertions), then from our sample of two, I see a 50/50 left/right split. Of course, a sample of two is not enough to extrapolate anything, let alone forty to fifty years of judicial appeals.
Challenging legislation in the courts is from the leftist playbook? Was everything from Marbury to just before Griswold (fifty years ago, and I assume a reasonable example of what you perceive as a pro-liberal benchmark, i.e. When Everything Started to go Wrong in America ) from that playbook, or does only Griswold and beyond count?
What is a “leftist” to you, anyway, in this context? Someone who challenges legislation? Someone who challenges legislation that you like?
Hmm, maybe we could devise a test for Bricker’s Leftiness Quotient, or BLQ:
A judicial challenge is leftist if it invokes concepts not explicitly in the Constitution.
A judicial challenge is not leftist if it invokes concepts explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Only Griswold and later decisions are subject to this test, unless Bricker decides they shouldn’t be for whatever reason, including when the plaintiffs were right-wing but had to act like left-wingers because the judiciary only take left-wingers seriously, or something.
Hilarious indeed, since on this issue it’s the Democrats who have abandoned decency, a point that is underscored by their many court losses (as well as losses in the legislature when the laws are passed, governors’ desks where they’re signed, and populations at large which support them).
In other words, when the array of opinions is so strongly against you, your claim that they’re all wrong, and you are right is “most amusing.” You’re not Copernicus.
Look, if I pointed out that at one time the Democrats supported slavery and that Lincoln, a Republican, opposed it, I assume you would not slink away in shame, muttering, “Yeah, OK, got me.” You would instead seek to draw some line between the Democrats of 1860 and their modern-day progeny.
Now, however, since it benefits you, you pretend to be shocked, shocked, that my attempts at classification include a somewhat arbitrary time frame.
So since you’re happy to sneer at my timeline as contrived, stop supporting the party of slave holders, Bryan. I’m sure YOU don’t draw any arbitrary lines.
I’m more amused than shocked, but fine, let’s say Griswold was a watershed event in a pro-leftist (I await your definition of what that means) appeal to SCOTUS for a “penumbra” ruling on matters not explicit in the text of the Constitution. Now support your assertion that since then leftists have mounted the majority of challenges on similar bases, or why it matters.
I’m actually happy to sneer at almost anything you baselessly assert in service to your cruel and superstitious ideology. And I’ve never actually voted for any Democrats (they’ve “abandoned decency”? really?) or contributed time or money to their campaigns.
It is of course difficult to fail to note that your preferred terminology (e.g., leftists) has abandoned you in this instance. I wonder why?
Okay, I don’t wonder why. I think it exemplifies your lack of intellectual integrity. It’s the kind of disingenuous bullshit I would expect from the lowest, most ignorant rightwinger on these boards.
Why? You quite literally don’t care. I could spend half an hour assembling a list of cases, and you’d then sneer at them, handwave them away, and move on to something else. In Vacco v. Quill, leftists demanded that the Supreme Court recognize a constitutional “right to die” and overturn New York’s ban against assisted suicide. They lost, but that doesn’t erase the fact that they challenged.
Roe v. Wade
Casey v Planned Parenthood
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services
Washington v. Harper
Lawrence v. Texas
United States v. Technical Sergeant Marcum
Eisenstadt v. Baird
Williams v. Pryor
Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas
Some of these cases were won by the leftists; some were lost – all of them were leftists challenging legislative enactments by claiming that some unwritten constitutional guarantee was at stake.
But you want me to prove that the majority of cases that made substantive due process challenges were leftists?
Sorry, that’s too long a homework assignment. If you’re too dumb to know whose side the substantive due process bread is buttered on, then you’ll have to remain blissfully, if dully, unconvinced.
I said “supported.” You changed it to “voted.” Because you’re one of those “honest” leftists, correct?
And while I agree that “abandoned decency” is a bit mawkish, but when septimus used the phrase (“On an issue where it is the GOP which abandons all decency…”) you were content to let it pass without comment. I used the precise same phrase in response to him. That stirs your literary critic to action.
I was inviting you to support your assertion that this was the case (well, to be precise, support for the assertion you originally made, which I don’t recall included the specific phrase “substantive due process”, if it matters). What you’ve done is cherry–picked and even if I granted that all these cases had some penumbra-seeking commonality, "leftist"remains undefined other than as something you obviously dislike.
The U.S. Constitution isn’t thousands of pages long with every conceivable issue defined and resolved- isn’t ANY challenge going to rely on interpretation of the broad strokes? The 14th Amendment alone required numerous rulings to suss how and where it should apply - are challenges on 14th Amendment grounds inherently leftist as a result?
I remain unconvinced because your word is.not sufficient authority. When you make a broad claim and choose not to support that claim, that’s the result.
For a less onerous task, how about explaining why the specific issue of challenges to voter ID laws are “leftist”, along with a definition of the term? That’s what I wanted originally before you went off on your last-half-century treatise of leftist abuses of the judiciary.
Then define “supported” along with “leftist” and I’ll give my.honest assessment if either applies. Incidentally, I said more than just “voted”, I mentioned voting and contributing money and time to their campaigns. Did you have an even broader meaning of “suppporting” in mind? Am I “supporting” Democrats by simply not scorning them enough for you? I can’t answer (or take seriously) accusations with undefined terms.
Hmm, in my skimming, I failed to note that you were not the original user of the phrase, merely a respondent in the time-honored schoolyard riposting tradition of “oh, yeah?! Well…same to YOU!” You tried the same when I called you a bad citizen. Anyway, my oversight is cheerfully acknowledged.
Now why are challenges to voter ID laws leftist in nature and how are you defining leftist? I’ll need at least that second part addressed before I feel any compulsion to respond to you calling ME a leftist. It might turn.out to be a label I can be proud of.
The term “The Left,” in politics, and its companion characterization of “The Right,” are admittedly not definitions with laser-like boundaries of precision.
As a general exemplar, “The Left,” includes political philosophies similar to those of New Deal social liberals and government policies that favor the working class. The Left generally supports governmental regulation of business and industry and intervention in support of favored racial and ethnic minorities.
“The Right,” in contrast, generally is thought to favor free markets in commerce, and unfettered competition as opposed to government intervention to achieve desired social outcomes.
So when I say, “leftist,” I am referring to the broad descriptor that is covered by “The Left,” as mentioned above.
And yet this cheerful acknowledgement is not, for some undoubtedly excellently reasoned distinction, followed by your keen literary critiquing skills being redirected at septimus. Now that you’ve discovered a fellow leftist used the phrase, the unwritten rules require you say nothing more negative about it.
By these definitions (which oddly seem limited to industrial and economic concerns), either I’m not a leftist or if I am, it’s because I recognize the need for laws and regulations though I personally prefer they be narrowly tailored, as opposed The Right’s implied preference for NO regulation, which strikes me as unworkable. I don’t favour minorities, unless you’re defining equal treatment as favouritism.
Barring clarification and establishment that I’m a leftist, septimus cannot be considered a “fellow” leftist.
You mean the guys who are dumping toxic shit in my water and air? Yeah, some “regulation” there seems a good idea. And these “favored” minorities? Which minorities are not favored? B/millionaires? The poor dears!
How, perzackly, does brisk business competition advance equality? And that “desired” part? Are the Dems the only ones who “desire” such social progress? You don’t?
I was a little surprised by that “desired social outcomes”, too, since everything else in the Left/Right definitions looks based on commerce specifically, not social issues (nor the election issues I was asking about in the first place). Certainly the American Right have NOT been silent on social issues, nor about their desires for government regulations on them.
Bryan, I doubt your disavowal of regulation, and I doubt your failure to mention your stance on “government policies that favor the working class” was accidental.
Well, if that’s your definition, then I’m not a leftist, or at least not a leftist in any statistically significant sense.
You’d be right to doubt my disavowal, if I had offered one. I did not. I recognize the need for regulation, at the very least (and on economic matters, since that’s where your focus is at the moment) on issues like:
-fraud
-pollution
-product liability and civil litigation
-accounting and banking
…and some other relevant fields. I stand by my stated preference for narrow tailoring (how you read that as “disavowal” eludes me), and if I had to choose between some regulation (with the attendant risk of some economic stifling) and no regulation (with the attendant risk of periodic and massive economic crises), rationality compels me to choose the former.
I would need specific examples before weighing in on something as vague as “government policies that favor the working class”.
Sure. Voter ID laws, according to you, need to be banned because the poor need extra help from the government to vote. While you acknowledge that to the general run of mankind, asking for a photo ID is not onerous, you panic at the claim that there’s some noble laborer out there working three full time jobs who is consequently unable to get to the DMV to get his free ID.
That fantasy alone is very leftist.
Additionally, the whining plea to the courts to upend the majority-passed and -approved legislation is quite leftist in nature, for reasons that are slightly subtler than the one above.
I gather, and based on that false premise, you’ve drawn any number of suspect conclusions about me.
Since I’m typing on a phone and not a computer, I’m not in a good position to offer up detailed responses to your list (I’ll want to review each item and I’m not familiar with the phrase “step-up in basis taxation”), so that’ll have to wait until later today or tomorrow.
Are “liberal” and “leftist” interchangeable phrases to you, by the way?
I’m curious if you can quote something from me suggesting so since this is not my take on the issue. I recognize the possibility you are confusing my position with someone else’s. I’ll reserve my response until this is clarified.