I mean, if Bricker would just start his own Pit thread about the horrors of liberal hypocrisy, it would serve as a kind of clearing house for all things lib-hyp. Obviously, not all of us take the matter as seriously as he does, but it would relieve him of the burden of dragging it into discussions where it has no actual bearing, save as a form of self-righteous ad hominem.
I know Bricker depores ad hominem attacks, like a statue in the park hates pigeons. But clearly the question of pervasive lib-hyp is so compelling, he feels he has no choice. But if there were a Pit thread devoted to the subject, and bearing a title that announces that theme, well, problem solved! Rather than intrude lib-hyp into the discussion, he simply notes that the poster named has a scolding due and awaiting delivery.
And for those of us equally absorbed with that issue, it would be the perfect spot for them both! One stop shopping for all your liberal hypocrisy needs!
Would it be strictly legal, Board-wise, for someone to do it for him, kind of a gift? Not a Pit thread aboutBricker, but on his behalf?
I’ve seen it written, only half in jest, that Aristotle’s Law of the Excluded Middle was a major set-back to Western thinking. I thought this was an exaggeration — most adults are comfortable at an intuitive level with “fuzzy logic” even if they’ve read no papers on the topic. Most of us know that the great care spent on mathematical proofs does not apply in most real-world discourse.
I’m happy to give Bricker a little credit. Perhaps if he’d pursued a normal career — janitor or plumber — he’d be capable of ordinary human reasoning, that it’s legal training that has made him so obtuse.
Now if Bricker’s sole contribution to this subthread is “Nanner nanner nanner … I can detect a conflict if I push septimus’ statement through an Aristotelian logic engine” I suggest he start a new thread on that topic. I’m sure we can suggest some good thread titles for him.
But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt one more time and pretend that Bricker wants to talk about policy.
First of all, there is supposed to be a close relationship between the letter and spirit of the law — I’m sure there’s a Latin quote to that effect; maybe our Legal Lookup Bot could make an actual contribution by regurgitating that Latin.
The Spirit of the Law in Alabama in the 1960’s was very clearly that Negroes should not be allowed to vote. If Bricker’s babbles were taken literally, he thinks I found it contemptible that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to evade that spirit. But quite to the contrary, I find MLK’s “illegal” efforts to evade that spirit to be admirable.
This, finally, is the major difference between Bricker and myself. I find King’s “illegal” efforts to secure human rights to blacks to be admirable, but Brownback’s “legal” efforts to deny them human rights to be contemptible.
Bricker, unless he’s just reliving his salad days in Miss McKenna’s 4th-grade debating class, seems to treat each of King and Brownback oppositely from me.
“With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the country committed itself to ensuring voting rights for all Americans, regardless of race, party, or region. Now this consensus has been shattered, with ruthless partisanship undermining the most basic of democratic rights.”
/snip
“ Then-State Senator Glenn Grothman cut him off: “What I’m concerned about is winning. We better get this done while we have the opportunity.” (When asked during the state’s April 5 primary why Republicans would carry Wisconsin in 2016, Grothman, who had since been elected to the US Congress, replied: “Now we have photo ID.”) In a federal voting-rights case, Allbaugh named two other GOP senators who were “giddy” and “politically frothing at the mouth” over the bill.”
/snip
“ Schultz asked Allbaugh to find three documented cases of voter fraud in the state. But Allbaugh could only find two instances of double voting—both, ironically, committed by Republicans. Neither case would have been stopped by a voter-ID law or was related to early voting.”
Any reply from the resident voter ID crowd?
Sheeez, all you guys keep picking on our Constitutional expert. Don’t you know that, now that Scalia’s flatulence is healed and he is no longer able to send farts of wisdom to the man on his right, it’s a full-time job for our Bricker to advise Clarence Thomas, Scotus’ great beacon for minority rights?
Crowd? Oh, you’re paraphrasing from Thoreau’s “any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a crowd of one already.” But, although we may not see eye to eye on everything, I think I can synopsize Bricker’s views here.
First, he has always bent over backwards to concede the hypothetical possibility of one Republican, in some drunk tank, pigsty, federal prison or somewhere, who might use voter ID laws for a malicious or corrupt purpose. He’s always been very clear about that hypothetical possibility; do you need a cite?
Now some of the libtards here argue that the portion of Republiopaths who use such laws for malicious purpose is closer to 99% than to 0.0001% but this is just the immoral thinking of libtards. In principle, incidences of 0.0001% and 99% malice have the same legal character, and our Bricker is surely a man of principle and law.
And please don’t forget that our Constitutional expert knows more about democracy than the Founding Fathers ever did. He knows that once the 51% seize control of a legislature or committee it is their fiduciary duty to take all measures — legal measures, mind you; our Esquire certainly does love the law — to negate the powers of the 49%. Only in this way can we give full power to the best 26% — the 51% of the 51% on the next round. It matters not if the libtards call the disenfranchisements and other chicanery “immoral.” It is the 51% who have a fiduciary duty to pursue the interests — or rather what the leaders presume those interests to be — of the 51% who elected them democratically. You’d know this if you read the right lawbooks: Pedicabo in asino illegitimi.
And anyway libtards don’t know what “immoral” means. Because Hillary. And Karl Rove.
If you were to inveigh at the contemptible actions of the first person, you would be dishonest if you did so by piously noting your deep regard for the legal process of issuing licenses. It’s not the legal process and its violation that pains you.
No, I’m pointing out that any critique you offered that valorized adherence to the law would be a lie. Your care is vested in what you think the spirit is; you try to buttress your argument with the actual law when it might help your argument and freely ignore it in favor of your view of the spirit when that suits you.
And Lord knows your discourse here would greatly benefit from some understanding of debate.
Even if he were as much a liberal hypocrite as you claim, that character flaw alone would not invalidate his argument. As someone with as clear an understanding of debate as you claim would already know. And if you’ve no further use for that beam in your eye, might I have it? Thinking of building a deck.
And by the by, did you ever complete your statistical analysis of that previously offered evidence about the effect of voter ID laws as a partisan advantage? You remember, you offered the tantalizing prospect that you might change your mind if you found the evidence statistically valid?
This whole “waiting with bated breath” thing can tire one out.
His argument, inter alia, is that we should disapprove of Voter ID laws because they were the product of people using the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law.
It’s very relevant to rebut that by pointing out instances in which we approve of subverting the spirit of the law by adherence to the letter, showing that the actual objection is not to spirit over letter, or to letter over spirit.
If the spirit of the law is Justice, then laws which tilt the playing field deliberately offend the spirit of the law. Of course, if the spirit of the law is that Republicans should have every possible advantage a legislature can afford them, well, all’s good.
Us guys over here, we don’t think so. A whole lot. That part escaped you? Well, now you know!
'Course, kinda gotta hunch you did know that, but saw a clever argument and just couldn’t resist.
Can I admit to stupidity?
I’m not getting this letter spirit argument.
At all.
I follow the spirit of the law.
If I can use the letter of the law to provide a “just” outcome I will.
But if the letter is used to provide an unjust outcome I will complain.
Am I mistaken, or is Bicker saying it is okay, or even admirable to follow the letter if the outcome is unjust? Like for example stopping otherwise legally entitled people from voting?
But it’s only because *you *want to win, right? Nothing to do with this ethereal democracy stuff that only confuses and irritates him. Your preferred outcome is no better than his, within the limits of his comprehension.
It’s very much a hijack of this thread. Septimus made a more-or-less offhand remark that some Republican lawmaker was following the letter of the law but violating the spirit, which made their actions even worse, Bricker responded in a way that implied (I thought) that Septimus was a liberal hypocrite, I disputed his inferrence, and off we went. But no real connection to the larger issue at all.
My objection is to the complaint, “It’s despicable to use the letter of the law to achieve partisan ends in violation of the spirit of the law.” But the real complaint is that the people are (supposedly) stopping legally entitled people from voting, not that the letter of the law supports it but the spirit does not.
In example: suppose that some enterprising court clerk had (before same-sex marriage was generally legal) used a law that said, “Marriage licenses shall be issued to both partners upon the payment of fees,” to marry same-sex couples. This would be following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit, but few people here would have objected to the tactic.
Bricker: You’re wrong. Something like that was tried in San Francisco, and, while many celebrated the spirit of the effort, even many gay rights activists conceded that it exceeded the mayor’s authority and could not be supported.
Your effort to tar the opposition with the brush of hypocrisy is a mega fail here. We have our ideals, but “due process of law” is one we don’t set aside trivially.