I love it when some arrogant know it all shows his lack of a thought process. OOOOOOH, you're an attorney and therefore part of the problem. What does that even mean? Also, you claim to not need to read SC decisions, because you have read the Constitution. As the interpreter of last resort of the Constitution, the SC and its opinions are the final word on what's Constitutional, whether you like it or not. Are there opinions that I find nonsensical? Of course, but given time the bad ones are usually reversed. Even though appointed for life, and supposedly not subject to political pressure, we all know that justices are affected by societal trends and not dispassionate interpretors of the law.
I guess when I make present a case you cannot refute, I become arrogant. However, it is you, typical of an attorney, who is arrogant and unable to form a reasoned argument. I would imagine your "practice" isn't doing too well. If you don't know what that means then you are more clueless than I thought. Here's what Thomas Jefferson had to say about your so-called facts:
To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
It is this and many, many more facts the founders wrote and said about the Constitution prove you are completely wrong. I could bury you in them, but what's the point? Looks like you threw away good money obtaining that law degree. Where you get the wild idea that the bad ones are usually reversed is beyond me. I am sure some of them have been, but most are not. Plus, they keep making more and more bad ones!
What's ludicrous is your belief that not voting, or voting for a third party candidate, will somehow stop the government from stealing my money at the point of a gun. The Constitution allows the government to levy taxes, and our elected officials have legislated just that thing. Do I like this? No, but it is not robbery. If enough people would vote out all those a**holes that keep raising taxes, we could solve that problem. As to my remark about "assault weapons", I can assure that I do know a little about the subject. However, in your zealous attempt to show off your intellect, you missed the fact that I placed that term in quotes. Of course I could have said "semi-automatic weapons arbitrarily identified as assault weapons based solely upon their appearance", but I assumed that you would understand my clear meaning. I guess not. In any event, by voting for Bush, I did and do receive a little more of my money back at tax time (which I can assure you would not be the case if Kerry were president), and I can purchase a semi-automatic weapon arbitrarily identified as an assault weapon based solely on appearance.
The Constitution does not give Congress the right to levy an income tax, sorry. If that were true, why did they feel the need for the 16th Amendment? At least in those days they at least pretended to follow the Constitution. Again sorry, but taxing me to pay for your pet cause is ARMED ROBBERY, whether you want to admit it or not. Then you reverse yourself in the next sentence and appear to agree with me! Do you really believe that things would be very much different if Kerry had won? Now that's funny! In the 2000 election, Bush II ran on a platform of a smaller and less intrusive government, then grew government more than any President in history! As to the intrusive part, I think the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales all speak for themselves on this issue.
So, let me get this right. The politicians are willing to take the vote of a minority of the voting age public as a mandate, but if that minority is even smaller, then they will get the message and come around to your way of thinking. As to third party candidates, the reason they do so poorly is because there are so few people who think as you do. Again, I am certainly not happy with everything Bush has done. But I also don't consider him the lesser of two evils. I would say that half of loaf is better than none.
The reason most people think like you do is because they have been conditioned to think that way their whole life. From the start of grade school all the way through to college graduation, people are hammered with socialist doctrine and to obey authority. Once out in the world and making their own way, they are relentlessly bombarded by the mass media who continue this conditioning. I am always hearing from my liberal friends that the news has a conservative bias and from my conservative friends that it has a liberal bias. It is neither of course, it is unconditionally pro government biased.
So, sit back, keep voting repugnant, keep thinking you are above everybody else and let our posterity pay for your mistakes. What a wonderful attitude.
