Sarah Palin: An Object of Scorn?

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If you've ever seen a diversity of "professors" you would know that being able to teach a class and being a "scholar" in something is a wide gulf.

Obama is routinely pushing for programs and agendas that blatantly disregard the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. How do you rectify that with his being a "constitutional law scholar?"

A "scholar" is someone who has written extensive treatises and is often brought in as a big hitter in important legal cases on a specific topic. That Obama can even claim to come close to this is simple fraudulent misrepresentation. He has nothing close to these credentials. He was a seasonal instructor, not a permanent professor. He wrote nothing that qualifies him with "scholarly" credentials.

If Obama spent any time actually learning the minutia of constitutional law, it is so he can find ways to circumvent it.

And still, Palin knows even less.

Right, dunno where I ever called him a "constitutional law scholar." You must be hallucinating again. But he has some credentials: educated at Columbia and Harvard Law, and taught constitutional law for 12 years. A place like University of Chicago would not have let him continue teaching that long if he was incompetent.

Evidence that his programs and agendas "blatantly disregard the provisions of the US Constitution" please? Somehow I think if he were actually doing anything that was clearly illegal, the very determined opposition party would have done something about it by now. It is easier for them to give stump speeches claiming that he's violating the Constitution without actually having to provide evidence in court.

zer0netgain, I think it is probably obvious to you that most legal scholars are not textualists nor do they hold to original intent as strongly as you do. So, how can you condemn somebody as not being a scholar when your holding them to the standard of the scholarly minority when assessing their ability? That doesn't make sense, and your notion of law is rejected by a number of people, including some people on this forum.

It's fairly safe to say that to understand the Constitution, you need to understand The Federalist Papers which is about the only written record we have of the process and debate behind the formation of the Constitution. Lots of "scholars" pretty much must disregard the documented intentions of the men who created the Constitution (as documented) to defend positions of interpretation that go in the opposite direction.

Labels are issued so lightly in society. If a man has a gun and a piece of tin on his chest, but he uses his power to steal your money, is he a good guy or a bad guy? Does his having a state-issued title change what he's doing to you?

I would guess that Obama has likely read the Federalist Papers, and that Palin probably hasn't read anything much longer than a grocery list scribbled on her hand.

But you are missing AG's point. The doctrine of original intent as a guide for how our laws are supposed to work is not accepted by a large portion of the legal profession. The "original intent" included slavery, the disenfranchisement of women and the poor, and many other things we would find unacceptable today.


Have you ever been mugged by a cop?

Also, what is your intended point with this odd digression?

Ok? Your point? Most of them AREN'T ORIGINALISTS OR TEXTUALISTS, which is something I already said. So talking about the original intent is great and all, but it misses my point completely, almost as if you had a reading problem.


Ok, but whether he is a good guy or bad guy, that does not change whether he is sanctioned by an authority that is widely considered to be a legitimate authority.

It's probably just a waste of time to try to argue against or refute partisan talking points, but let's go ahead:

I can't speak for everyone, but I doubt this is the case for an appreciable segment of the population. In my case, the scorn comes from her performance during the 2008 vice-presidential debate (she winked, and it seemed more like she was trying to flirt and use annoying aw-shucks, down-home colloquialisms). Her vapidity about knowing anything on foreign policy and the like certainly didn't help either (remember when she was asked what political/news magazines she read?). Her lies and manipulative rhetoric just raked on the disdain ("death panels" was probably her most odious lie). Her rhetoric about the "Ground Zero mosque" is just the latest example of her hypocrisy (i.e., talking about freedom while wishing to deny it to Muslims).

She abandoned her governorship because it was more lucrative and politically gainful for her to go on a speaking tour. This does not really associate executive ability with her in my mind.

Her folksy manner of speaking is obviously appealing to a segment of voters, but it doesn't mean she's not lying, manipulating, etc.

No. My point is that the Constitution must be taken in the text it's written. Many scholars are open to a revisionist interpretation, which basically means, "We'll ignore what's written, what clearly was the intention behind what was written, and we'll impose our own interpretation irregardless of the facts." The Constitution makes provision for changes to be made by a lawful process. Absent that process being followed, no departure from the Constitution can be allowed to stand as it is an usurping of the rule of law by those who want to promote their own agenda. The vast majority of society can change the rule of law. It is not to be the purview of a handful of people in power.



Well, that's the debate of "rule of law" versus "barrel of a gun" mentality. There are many things you will find the government does on no lawful authority, with no checks or balances, all because, in simplest terms, they can send an agent (employee) with a gun to force you to comply. You do not have to do anything not backed by lawful authority of the state, and the state routinely acts outside of its lawful authority, but the average person (certainly even sizable groups of people) don't have the political influence or monetary resources to grind through the court system to find a "legal" way to oppose the abuse of power that happens every day.

Add into that a corrupted judicial system which is part of the problem, and it is boiling down to whoever has the guns makes the rules. That's not a system where "rule of law" controls. The rule of law would constrain the state as much as it should allegedly constrain the people, but you don't see it applied very equally in today's society.

Right.... so really your not actually attacking Obama's credentials, but rather you disagree with him. That's great, but you are clearly bringing up credentials. The problem is that credentials and agreeing with you are very different things. The fact of the matter is that I disagree with you on this matter, and I don't think it is because I am dramatically less competent than you are. Maybe it is true that I am to some extent, but I don't think so.


Ok? I am not sure that your rhetoric really proves anything, as rhetorical points can be made on both sides. As it stands, your argument seems hardly conclusive on the matter and I don't buy it. I can't think of more I really should say, as we're not really at the point where it is easy for me to engage your position.


I don't think this is a debate between "rule of law" versus "barrel of a gun". You've merely broken the issue down into a binary that I actually reject. I said "legitimate authority". The issue is that "legitimate" doesn't necessarily mean lawful, as governments with laws can still be regarded as illegitimate, but it certainly means more than "having enough firepower to destroy you". You don't seem to address this third possibility.


No, it really doesn't just boil down. Societies aren't that black and white. Now, we can both say that the state needs to be constrained on many matters more than it has been, but at the same time, I wouldn't regard "rule of law" as a binary representation. As it stands, in most commercial affairs, the rule of law is sufficient, and if anything one of the real problems is just that our legal system is inefficient for the legal needs of modern businesses.

Constitutional "fundamentalists" are similar to Christian Fundamentalists in this respect: They believe interpretation of the document is simple, absolutely unambiguous, and strictly literal. Do the Federalist Papers provide an absolute, authoritative source on the Constitution? No; the Constitution is the legal document. Does it provide some rationale? Yes (but we must remember it was written by three authors). The Constitution itself was written by a convention, and it was itself a compromise in many cases (one of the most odious being on slavery). Are the legal terms subject to review? Obviously. For example, freedom of religion may have been seen as absurd beyond various denominations of Christianity, some Jews, and maybe a small handful of Muslims and other religions. Now most U.S. judges take freedom of religion much more seriously and broadly than perhaps even many of "the Founders" (who did not speak with one voice anyway) might have.

Legally within their rights, but that still sucks. Can you not see how? Even though they may have every legal right to do this, that it still is not helpful even for them? Putting a mosque right at the location of one of the worst Jihadist attacks is about as sensitive as building as building an Air Force recruitment center in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Um... no, I really can't. For one, they are not building the mosque on Ground Zero. It's a couple blocks away. Besides that, these Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11. You may as well say it's "insensitive" to build churches in North America because Christians annihilated the indigenous population here. I mean, this is just completely ridiculous. I can't understand how it's even a controversy.

I'm sorry, I thought the Ground-Zero Mosque name had something to do with its location.

It's just a hyped-up media distraction with little relevance.

That's as annoying as carnival merchants.