Who is stupider? A stupid person or the people who elect a stupid person to high office?
That was my thought when I saw the thread concerning this exchange at Town Hall
However while that phrase came to mind I think this isn’t a case of stupidity, it’s a case of honesty.
Senator Hirono is a Marxist, and as a Marxist she is interested in ends, not means and because this is the case of course she wants every judge, every justice and every officer of the court to interpret any law to achieve her Marxist ends.
The only reason why she objects to Senator Cruz is that she said the quiet part out loud, that may have been careless but not stupid, because she knows that while it might make some complications for her fellow Democrats it won’t hurt her one bit with the voters of her state who elected and re-elected her.
But there is one more bit of irony here. Consider this paragraph:
But the law on the books offered a different model: “To enter a man’s house” without a proper warrant, Lord Chief Justice Pratt proclaimed in 1763, is to attack “the liberty of the subject” and “destroy the liberty of the kingdom.” Huckle v. Money, 2 Wils. K. B. 206, 207, 95 Eng. Rep. 768, 769 (K. B.1763). That was the idea behind the Fourth Amendment.
and a footnote that goes with it:
4 In a 1763 Parliamentary debate, about searches made to enforce a tax, William Pitt the Elder orated as follows: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!” Miller v. United States, 357 U. S. 301, 307, and n. 7 (1958) (citing The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 379 (2d ed. 1953); 15 T. Hansard, Parliamentary History of England, col. 1307 (1813)).
Those words citing the original intent of the 4th amendment were not written by Ted Cruz or by Kurt Schlichter or even by Justice Clarence Thomas. They were written by Justice Elana Kagan in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lange v. California released yesterday.
Take a note of the dates cited there. 1958,, 1953, 1813, 1763. 1763 a full twelve years before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord , thirteen years before the Declaration of Independence and over a quarter of a century before the 4th Amendment was ratified nearly a quarter century before the ratification of the US constitution and over a quarter of a century before the 4th Amendment which this what this case is about, was approved.
Imagine that, citing not just the original intent of the 4th amendment but the original ideas behind it! I wonder if Senator Hirano disapproves?
I suspect not. Apparently there is nothing wrong with originalism, even for a liberal justice or a liberal senator, as long as it can be used to support a result they agree with.
Unexpectedly of course.
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