If you are a regular visitor of this blog, I know what you're thinking: "I wonder what triggered this rant?" Well, I was on the treadmill tuning in to a news/talk program where the controversy du jour was whether or not state-issued personalized vehicle license-plates that express religious preferences violate separation of church and state. As usual, the so-called experts, who are generally just vociferous advocates for one side or the other, were talking past each other, as the hapless "moderator" tried to put a lid on the escalating inanities. To no avail.
In the course of this particular installment of what passes for intellectual discourse on the appropriately nicknamed boob tube, one of the morons said that, "Thomas Jefferson did not mean that when he wrote the First Amendment", and, subsequently, that, "the Supreme Court Justices were wrong when they ruled" something or other. That did it!
First of all, though I am not a Catholic, you don't have to be Catholic to know that the Pope is technically infallible when it comes to issues of Church dogma. The Pope is vested, by the Church he leads, with the power to be the supreme judge on such issues. Similarly, the U. S. Supreme Court Justices are vested, by Article Three of the Constitution itself, with the power to review, judge, and rule on, by a simple majority of the nine Justices, any legal matter whose Constitutionality is challenged. The Court can not be wrong on these matters; by definition.
This does not mean that any of the Court's rulings can't be deemed unpopular. In all cases a remedy exists, namely, a Constitutional Amendment. But unless and until a ruling is either overturned by a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, or by an Amendment to the Constitution, the Court's ruling is the law of the land. Unpopular? Perhaps. But never wrong.
Oh, and as any American school kid who has taken social studies classes knows, Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. And though it is one of the three documents comprising the American Testament (the other two being the United States Constitution and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), it is not actually part of the Bill of Rights. The latter comprise the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, and were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789. You could look it up, as I did, if you can't remember what you learned in high school. Google? Wikipedia? Hello?
In the course of this particular installment of what passes for intellectual discourse on the appropriately nicknamed boob tube, one of the morons said that, "Thomas Jefferson did not mean that when he wrote the First Amendment", and, subsequently, that, "the Supreme Court Justices were wrong when they ruled" something or other. That did it!
First of all, though I am not a Catholic, you don't have to be Catholic to know that the Pope is technically infallible when it comes to issues of Church dogma. The Pope is vested, by the Church he leads, with the power to be the supreme judge on such issues. Similarly, the U. S. Supreme Court Justices are vested, by Article Three of the Constitution itself, with the power to review, judge, and rule on, by a simple majority of the nine Justices, any legal matter whose Constitutionality is challenged. The Court can not be wrong on these matters; by definition.
This does not mean that any of the Court's rulings can't be deemed unpopular. In all cases a remedy exists, namely, a Constitutional Amendment. But unless and until a ruling is either overturned by a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, or by an Amendment to the Constitution, the Court's ruling is the law of the land. Unpopular? Perhaps. But never wrong.
Oh, and as any American school kid who has taken social studies classes knows, Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. And though it is one of the three documents comprising the American Testament (the other two being the United States Constitution and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), it is not actually part of the Bill of Rights. The latter comprise the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, and were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789. You could look it up, as I did, if you can't remember what you learned in high school. Google? Wikipedia? Hello?
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