Judicial Activism Quotes

Good intentions are not sufficient to creat a positive outcome; you must act. As you take part and become actively engaged, answers to your questions will appear. Lastly, like a great rock is not disturbed by the buffetings of the wind, the mind of a judicious man is steady. He exists as a stanchion, a stalwart support. Others can cling to him, for he will not falter.

Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in. It means that you have to be judicious with your energy and clear in your convictions. You push ahead in some instances and pull back in others, giving yourself opportunities to rest and restore. It helps to recognize that you are operating on a budget, as all of us are. When it comes to our attention, our time, our credibility, our goodwill toward and from others, we work with a limited but renewable set of resources.

Judicial activism, by definition, is a term applied to judges who render decisions with which you disagree.

Whether in Bolshevism, Fascism, or Nazism, we meet continually with the forcible and ruthless usurpation of the power of the State by a minority drawn from the masses, resting on their support, flattering them and threatening them at the same time; a minority led by a charismatic leader and brazenly identifying itself with the State. It is a tyranny that does away with all the guarantees of the constitutional State, constituting as the only party the minority that has created it, furnishing that party with far-reaching judicial and administrative functions, and permitting within the whole life of the nation no groups, no activities, no opinions, no associations or religions, no publications, no educational institutions, no business transactions, that are not dependent on the will of the Government.

Conservative critics of Obama seized on his aspiration for 'empathy,' declaring it an invitation to judicial activism - as if empathy could not coexist with impartiality - and later made it a subtext of their confirmation complaints.

Time is a precious commodity and it must be used carefully and judiciously. Your time is worth everything. Time is your greatest weapon, so choose the situations and circumstances that are worth fighting for. Don’t waste your time fighting meaningless battles. Meaningless combat won’t help your future. Invest your time where it matters. On the way to Destiny, know that there will be battles to fight. Know that what you’re fighting for is worth it. Your children, your marriage, your career are always worth fighting for, but even then, you may come to a point when you have to give up an active fight and just let God fight the battle for you.

he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution.

I was starting to remember the whole problem now: I hate these fucking people [people at Tea Party rallies, ed]. It's never been just political, it's personal. I'm not convinced anyone in this country except the kinds of weenies who thought student council was important really cares about large versus small government or strict constructionalism versus judicial activism. The ostensible issues are just code words in an ugly snarl of class resentment, anti-intellectualism, old-school snobbery, racism, and who knows what else - grudges left over from the Civil War, the sixties, gym class. The Tea Party likes to cite a poll showing that their members are wealthier and better educated than te general populace, but to me they mostly looked like the same people I'd had to listen to in countless dive bars railing against "edjumicated idiots" and explaining exactly how Nostradamus predicted 9/11, the very people I and everyone I know fled our hometowns to get away from. So far all my interactions at the rally were only reinforcing my private theory - I suppose you might call it a prejudice - that liberals are the ones who went to college, moved to the nearest city where no one would call them a fag, and now only go back for holidays; conservatives are the ones who married their high school girlfriends, bought houses in their hometowns, and kept going to church and giving a shit who won the homecoming game. It's the divide between the Got Out and the Stayed Put. This theory also account for the different reactions of these two camps when the opposition party takes power, raising the specter of either fascist or socialist tyranny: the Got Outs always fantasize about fleeing the country for someplace more civilized - Canada, France, New Zealand; the Stayed Put just di further in, hunkering down in compounds, buying up canned goods and ammo.

Three circumstances seem to me to contribute more than all others to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States. The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great republic with the security of a small one. The second consists in those township institutions which limit the despotism of the majority and at the same time impart to the people a taste for freedom and the art of being free. The third is to be found in the constitution of the judicial power. I have shown how the courts of justice serve to repress the excesses of democracy, and how they check and direct the impulses of the majority without stopping its activity.

Let us leave it at this,” said Atticus dryly. “You, Miss Scout Finch, are the common folk. You must obey the law.” He said that the Ewells were members of an exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was permitted to hunt and trap out of season.

Many of us who have observed our own behavior don't need science to prove that technology is altering us, but let's bring some in anyway. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter that records certain experiences in our brain (typically described as pleasurable) and prompts us to repeat them, plays a part not only in sex and drugs, but also the swiping and tapping we do on our smartphones. Scott Barry Kaufman--- scientific director of the Imagination Institute...gave me the straight dope on dopamine. "It's a misconception that dopamine has to do with our feelings of happiness and pleasure," he said. "It's a molecule that helps influence our expectations." Higher levels of dopamine are linked to being more open to new things and novelty seeking. Something novel could be an amazing idea for dinner or a new book. . . or just getting likes on a Facebook post or the ping of a text coming in. Our digital devices activate and hijack this dopamine system extremely well, when we let them. ...Kaufman calls dopamine "the mother of invention" and explains that because we have a limited amount of it, we must be judicious about choosing to spend it on "increasing our wonder and excitement for creating meaning and new things like art--- or on Twitter.

How are we going to bring about these transformations? Politics as usual—debate and argument, even voting—are no longer sufficient. Our system of representative democracy, created by a great revolution, must now itself become the target of revolutionary change. For too many years counting, vast numbers of people stopped going to the polls, either because they did not care what happened to the country or the world or because they did not believe that voting would make a difference on the profound and interconnected issues that really matter. Now, with a surge of new political interest having give rise to the Obama presidency, we need to inject new meaning into the concept of the “will of the people.” The will of too many Americans has been to pursue private happiness and take as little responsibility as possible for governing our country. As a result, we have left the job of governing to our elected representatives, even though we know that they serve corporate interests and therefore make decisions that threaten our biosphere and widen the gulf between the rich and poor both in our country and throughout the world. In other words, even though it is readily apparent that our lifestyle choices and the decisions of our representatives are increasing social injustice and endangering our planet, too many of us have wanted to continue going our merry and not-so-merry ways, periodically voting politicians in and out of office but leaving the responsibility for policy decisions to them. Our will has been to act like consumers, not like responsible citizens. Historians may one day look back at the 2000 election, marked by the Supreme Court’s decision to award the presidency to George W. Bush, as a decisive turning point in the death of representative democracy in the United States. National Public Radio analyst Daniel Schorr called it “a junta.” Jack Lessenberry, columnist for the MetroTimes in Detroit, called it “a right-wing judicial coup.” Although more restrained, the language of dissenting justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Souter, and Stevens was equally clear. They said that there was no legal or moral justification for deciding the presidency in this way.3 That’s why Al Gore didn’t speak for me in his concession speech. You don’t just “strongly disagree” with a right-wing coup or a junta. You expose it as illegal, immoral, and illegitimate, and you start building a movement to challenge and change the system that created it. The crisis brought on by the fraud of 2000 and aggravated by the Bush administration’s constant and callous disregard for the Constitution exposed so many defects that we now have an unprecedented opportunity not only to improve voting procedures but to turn U.S. democracy into “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” instead of government of, by, and for corporate power.

They were people [Ewells], but they lived like animals. 'They can go to school any time they want to, when they show the faintest of wanting an education,' said Atticus. 'There are ways of keeping them in school buy force, but it's silly to force people like the Ewells into a new environment -' 'If I did not go to school tomorrow, you'd force me to.' 'Let us leave it at this,' said Atticus dryly. 'You, Miss Scout Finch, are of the common folk. You must obey the law'. He said that the Ewells were members of an exclusive society made up of Ewells. In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells' activities. They didn't have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr Bob Ewell, Burris's father, was permitted to hunt, and trap out of season.

Dissimilar from acquiring riches and fame, which are largely products of providence, we self-manufacture our own lot of goodness. If we ground everything we do upon a moral principle and especially love, affection, and compassion, we might not accomplish all the goals that we hoped to achieve, but we will not be hampered with unyielding regret or remorse for the effort expended. If we approach each stage in life with true passion, then each step along a broken or straight path is at least honest. If we honor the commitments that we make to ourselves and act to honor all our personal obligations with other people by devoting our entire intelligence, drive, and vital life force, and do not waste our effort on greedy, wanton, or wasteful activities, we shall grow stronger. Judicious deployment of personal resources ensures that we shall experience a sense of renewal at each important milepost along the way. If we maintain our vow of faith and love people freely, an internal lightness will guide us in our time of uncertainly.

Violent anti-communist fears by the military and munition makers justified the transformation of a once democratic nation into the fascist state we have today. Members of the Nazi Party now hold key positions in our universities, factories, aircraft and aerospace programs.14 When the Nazi empire collapsed in 1945, General Reinhard Gehlen joined forces with our OSS. Gehlen was placed in charge of wartime intelligence for Foreign Armies East. “It was not long before Gehlen was back in business, this time for the United States. Gehlen named his price and terms.”15 A series of meetings was arranged at the Pentagon with Nazi Gehlen, Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover and others.16 The Gehlen organization combined forces and agents with the OSS, which was soon to become known as the CIA. Experts in clandestine and illegal control of Germany through political assassinations and reversal of judicial processes became the teachers of Allen Dulles and Richard Helms. They helped form the new CIA in 1947, based upon clandestine activities in Nazi Germany.17

John Adams was keenly aware of the relationship between secrecy and corruption in government and the preservation of liberty. Many of the Founding Fathers understood the importance of transparency in a nation’s rulers. James Madison wrote that “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.” Thomas Jefferson said that “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” Judicial Watch has always believed that knowing the “characters and conduct” of the individuals who serve in the government and ensuring that the public is “informed” about what its government is doing is crucial to preserving our great republic. That is why for over twenty-two years we have been the most active user of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics, and the law. We are the nation’s largest and most effective government watchdog group that works to advance the public interest. Transparency is all about self-governance. If we don’t know what the government is doing, how is that self-governance? How is that even a republic? When we were founded in 1994, we used the FOIA open records law to root out corruption in the Clinton administration. During the Bush administration, we used it to combat that administration’s penchant for improper secrecy. But the Bush administration pales in comparison to the Obama administration. Today, our government is bigger than ever, and also the most secretive in recent memory.

The most comprehensive studies of racial bias in the exercise of prosecutorial and judicial discretion involve the treatment of juveniles. These studies have shown that youth of color are more likely to be arrested, detained, formally charged, transferred to adult court, and confined to secure residential facilities than their white counterparts.65 A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.66 A study sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department and several of the nation’s leading foundations, published in 2007, found that the impact of the biased treatment is magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system. African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison.67 A major reason for these disparities is unconscious and conscious racial biases infecting decision making. In the state of Washington, for example, a review of juvenile sentencing reports found that prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently.68 Blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as disrespect. Whites did so because of external conditions such as family conflict. The risk that prosecutorial discretion will be racially biased is especially acute in the drug enforcement context, where virtually identical behavior is susceptible to a wide variety of interpretations and responses and the media imagery and political discourse has been so thoroughly racialized. Whether a kid is perceived as a dangerous drug-dealing thug or instead is viewed as a good kid who was merely experimenting with drugs and selling to a few of his friends has to do with the ways in which information about illegal drug activity is processed and interpreted, in a social climate in which drug dealing is racially defined. As a former U.S. Attorney explained: I had an [assistant U.S. attorney who] wanted to drop the gun charge against the defendant [in a case in which] there were no extenuating circumstances. I asked, “Why do you want to drop the gun offense?” And he said, “‘He’s a rural guy and grew up on a farm. The gun he had with him was a rifle. He’s a good ol’ boy, and all good ol’ boys have rifles, and it’s not like he was a gun-toting drug dealer.” But he was a gun-toting drug dealer, exactly.

I analysed the causes of delay in delivering justice, which are: 1) an inadequate number of courts; 2) an inadequate number of judicial officers; 3) the judicial officers are not fully equipped to tackle cases involving specialized knowledge; 4) the dilatory tactics followed by the litigants and their lawyers who seek frequent adjournments and delays in filing documents; and 5) the role of the administrative staff of the court. Based on my analysis, I suggested encouraging dispute resolution through the human touch; reinforcing the Lok Adalats; creating a National Litigation Pendency Clearance Mission; ensuring alternative dispute redressal mechanisms such as arbitration; and providing fast-track courts. I also suggested several actions with particular reference to pendency in the high courts. These included the classification of cases on the basis of an age analysis, that is, identifying cases that are redundant because the subsequent generations are not interested in pursuing them. Primary among my recommendations was the e-judiciary initiative. As part of this, I recommended computerization of the active case files, taking into account the age analysis, which will surely reduce the number of cases that are still pending.

To this end, the Kochs waged a long and remarkable battle of ideas. They subsidized networks of seemingly unconnected think tanks and academic programs and spawned advocacy groups to make their arguments in the national political debate. They hired lobbyists to push their interests in Congress and operatives to create synthetic grassroots groups to give their movement political momentum on the ground. In addition, they financed legal groups and judicial junkets to press their cases in the courts. Eventually, they added to this a private political machine that rivaled, and threatened to subsume, the Republican Party. Much of this activism was cloaked in secrecy and presented as philanthropy, leaving almost no money trail that the public could trace. But cumulatively it formed, as one of their operatives boasted in 2015, a “fully integrated network.

The most dangerous state in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the power of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them.77 The clash over judicial activism reflects a much more general clash over the best way to contribute to the social good.

While adapting perfectly to the preservation of these distinctions at an ideological level, neo-liberal rationality effects an unprecedented deactivation of their normative character. Dilution of public law in favour of private law; configuration of public activity to the criteria of profitability and productivity; symbolic devaluation of law as the specific act of the legislature; strengthening of the executive; prioritization of procedure; a tendency for police powers to break free of any judicial control; promotion of the 'citizen-consumer' responsible for arbitrating between competing 'political offers' - these are so many proven trends attesting to the depletion of liberal democracy as a political norm.

Oh, it was an experience, and I am glad Papa says we do not have an active acquaintance with the Regent. He was most judicious in keeping me well away from his roving hands.

In general, though, new leaders are perceived as more credible when they display these characteristics: Demanding but able to be satisfied. Effective leaders get people to make realistic commitments and then hold them responsible for achieving results. But if you’re never satisfied, you’ll sap people’s motivation. Know when to celebrate success and when to push for more. Accessible but not too familiar. Being accessible does not mean making yourself available indiscriminately. It means being approachable, but in a way that preserves your authority. Decisive but judicious. New leaders communicate their capacity to take charge, perhaps by rapidly making some low-consequence decisions, without jumping too quickly into decisions that they aren’t ready to make. Early in your transition, you want to project decisiveness but defer some decisions until you know enough to make the right calls. Focused but flexible. Avoid setting up a vicious cycle and alienating others by coming across as rigid and unwilling to consider multiple solutions. Effective new leaders establish authority by zeroing in on issues but consulting others and encouraging input. They also know when to give people the flexibility to achieve results in their own ways. Active without causing commotion. There’s a fine line between building momentum and overwhelming your group or unit. Make things happen, but avoid pushing people to the point of burnout. Learn to pay attention to stress levels and pace yourself and others. Willing to make tough calls but humane. You may have to make tough calls right away, including letting go of marginal performers. Effective new leaders do what needs to be done, but they do it in ways that preserve people’s dignity and that others perceive as fair.

The final feature of emancipation’s long history was the ubiquity of violence. The reference here is not to the great explosions that echo through American history—bleeding Kansas, John Brown’s raid, or the Civil War itself—but to the ceaseless carnage that manifested itself in every confrontation between master and slave. In the clash of powerful material interests and deeply held beliefs, slaveholders and their numerous allies did not give way easily. Beginning with abolition in the North—although this was generally described as a peaceful process imbued with the ethos of Quaker quietism and legislative and judicial activism—the movement for universal freedom was one of violent, bloody conflict that left a trail of destroyed property, broken bones, traumatized men and women, and innumerable lifeless bodies. It was manifested in direct confrontations, kidnappings, pogroms, riots, insurrections, and finally open warfare. Usually, the masters and their allies—with their monopoly on violence—perpetrated much of the carnage. To challenge that monopoly required force, often deadly force; when the opponents of slavery struck back with violence of their own, the attacks and counterattacks escalated. The pattern held in the North, where there were few slaves, and in the South, where there were many. When the Civil War arrived and the war for union became a war for freedom, violence was raised to another level, but the precedent had been long established.

As has been the case far too often in the Obama administration, which may go down as the least transparent administration in history, the IRS refused to respond to our FOIA requests. Judicial Watch was forced to sue the IRS in federal court in October 2013, shortly after Lois Lerner had “retired” to avoid the consequences of her actions. Judicial Watch’s efforts through these FOIA requests and subsequent litigation led to the discovery that in addition to targeting conservatives at the IRS, Lois Lerner sent confidential taxpayer information to attorneys at the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal campaign finance rules, in violation of federal law. Email communications revealed that Lerner, who formerly worked at the Federal Election Commission (FEC), sent extensive materials on conservative organizations—the American Issues Project and Citizens for the Republic—to the FEC, including detailed confidential information, after inquiries from the FEC attorneys. She disclosed this information in spite of Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which bars the IRS from sending such information to anyone, including other federal agencies. It also turned out that the FEC attorneys were acting without authority to make such an inquiry, because the commissioners who run the agency had never approved an investigation. The emails discovered by Judicial Watch provided a disturbing window into the activities of two out-of-control federal agencies, whose employees, because of their political bias, were trying to target conservative organizations.

The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine clearly stated that it understood the “enormity” of the harm done to children where sexual abuse is “inflicted in the context of religious activities,” and then provided a rote recitation of the principle that judicial examination of a religious organization's conduct is “wholly forbidden by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

For Smith, prudence covers everything in your personal bearing, the “wise and judicious care” of your health, your money, and your reputation. So the modern prudent man doesn’t smoke. He’s physically active and keeps his weight under control. He works hard and avoids debt. He stays away from get-rich-quick schemes. I would suggest that he prefers indexed mutual funds to managed funds and stock picking. In short, he foregoes the potential of a large upside to avoid the downside. But

We still don’t have the full story on Benghazi, but thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch we know a lot more and are in a position to continue to crack open the Benghazi cover-up. Take the email that showed the military was prepared, indeed was in the process of launching timely assistance that could have made a difference, at least at the CIA annex where two Americans died. The Washington Examiner correctly noted that the email “casts doubt on previous testimony from high level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.” All this goes to underscore the value of Judicial Watch’s independent watchdog activities and our leadership in forcing truth and accountability over the Benghazi scandal. The lies and inaction by President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice (who is now Obama’s national security adviser) were monstrous. Rather than tell the truth, and risk political blowback for the Libya mess and the lack of security, the Obama administration abandoned those under fire and pretended that the attack had nothing to do with terrorism. Judicial Watch saw through the lies and began what has become the most nationally significant investigation ever by a non-governmental entity. Our Benghazi FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits changed history. Our disclosure of White House records confirming that top political operatives at the White House concocted the talking points used by Susan Rice to mislead the American people in order save Obama’s reelection prospects rocked Washington. These smoking-gun documents embarrassed all of Congress and forced Speaker John Boehner to appoint the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And, as you’ll see, the pressure from our Benghazi litigation led to the disclosure of the Clinton email scandal, the historical ramifications of which we are now witnessing. If the American people had known the truth—that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go—and yet lied and covered this fact up—Mitt Romney might very well be president. Our Benghazi disclosures also show connections between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war—and confirm that the US knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists.

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

Intellectual Patience is the delicate kind of patience which is guided by fine-tuned observations that lead the way to the anticipated scientific results without ever reverting to any regulatory measures. Its absence as a necessary social nourishment of a good-natured tolerance in the society marks a demonic urgency that feeds into a diseased arrangement. Autism -for example- is a symptom of Socialism; the ideology that lacks any intellectual patience and hastily throttles its subjects into interactional homogeneity. This is why planning, plotting and scheming are not considered as criteria of patience, but rather, of action - because they are generated thoughts. The only single mandate that overwrites this is that of God; and even The Lord Himself makes the parents as delegates of His authority over their own children until the child starts making her/his own choices. [Judicial activism] after all takes away the right to make choices from the people - to whom it were granted in the first place by The Lord.

Pastor Madison looked steadily at the jurors, cleared his throat and started to read.          “Marriage is what brings us together today. Where did the idea of marriage come from? What is marriage? Does marriage have any purpose in this modern age? Is it really a blessed arrangement? Why shouldn’t anyone, or any group of someones, be allowed to marry? Is marriage in danger of extinction? These are all questions, along with others, that we will examine today and in the next three week’s sermons.             “First, where did the idea of marriage come from? Who thought it up? I’m going to read to you a few sentences from a sermon given by a Swedish Pastor named Ake Green. Pay attention to what he said, because he was arrested and convicted by the Swedish judicial system for what he said. As you listen to the beginning of Pastor Green’s sermon, ask yourself if you think his words are hate words. The Swedish government charged and convicted Pastor Green with a hate crime for these words. Here are Pastor Green’s opening few paragraphs:             “From the beginning God created humans as man and woman. We begin in Genesis 1:27-28: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."             “Here, God's Word clearly states that you were created to be Father and Mother - as man and woman - designed for parenthood. The Lord states that very clearly here….The marriage institution is also clearly defined in Genesis 2:24, where it says: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."             “Only man and wife are referred to here. It is not stated any other way; you can never imply or interpret it to mean that you can have whatever sexual partner you wish to have. ….”             “What was it that led to these cities (Sodom, mentioned 30 times in the Bible, and Gomorrah) perishing, losing their dignity, disappearing from the face of the Earth? It was because they lived in homosexuality. It will be the same on that day when the Son of Man is revealed; consequently, this is a sign of the times we are facing. As people lived in the time of Lot, so shall they live before Jesus returns. This is something we cannot deny in any way. Jesus says that the lifestyle of Sodom shall be active in the whole Earth before the coming of Jesus. The one who represents this lifestyle today goes against God's order of creation.

But in our zeal for activism, we have forgotten that when a student government takes a side in a conflict, when it decides that there are not two sides after all, it thereby abandons its role in the scholarly mission of the institution for the activism. And as the Judicial Board noted, where a student government's objective should be to protect and promote the interests of minorities, including minority opinions, against the tyranny of the majority, when the government chooses one side, it becomes the tyrannical majority instead. That is the moment when the activism begotten by scholarship overthrows the scholarship - the moment when the university launches its own destruction.

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. He moved out from home at an early age and did not finish high school. After a few tough years … read morehe joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics. Sowell received his bachelor’s degree in economics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1958. He went on to receive his master’s in economics from Columbia University in 1959, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In the early ’60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, Sowell began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments have included Rutgers, Amherst, Brandeis and the UCLA. In addition, Sowell was project director at the Urban Institute, 1972-1974; a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, 1976–77; and was an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, 1975-76. Dr. Sowell has published a large volume of writing, much of which is considered ground-breaking. His has written over 30 books and hundreds of articles and essays. His work covers a wide range of topics, Including: classic economic theory, judicial activism, social policy, ethnicity, civil rights, education, and the history of ideas to name only a few. Sowell has earned international acclaim for his unmatched reputation for academic integrity. His scholarship places him as one of the greatest thinkers of the second half of the twenty century. Thomas Sowell began contributing to newspapers in the late ’70s, and he became a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist 1984. Sowell has brought common sense economic thinking to the masses by his ability to write for the general public with a voice that get to the heart of issues in plain English. Today his columns appear in more than 150 newspapers. In 2003, Thomas Sowell received the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute. Currently, Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. —Dean Kalahar

In addition to his teachers, Obama’s position on certain issues betrayed Cultural Marxist proclivities. His homosexual agenda was a clear example. He was the most radical pro-homosexual politician that I had ever seen or experienced in the mainstream. His position on abortion and infanticide was radical. His position on judicial activism and hate crimes legislation was highly problematic. I said openly on many occasions that I believe this man’s presidency would make race relations in America worse not better.

The bonds joining man to the universe of course extended to the family, both to ancestors and to children not yet born. The belief in an inextinguishable vital principle ensured that nothing perished in an irreversible fashion, which explains Norse ethics: death was but one stage of a cycle, the return to the immanent or transcendent world and the return to the sacred. "Retirement to the kingdom of the dead," Regis Boyer notes judiciously, "is not actually timeless as much as it is irrelevant to the present time. It is capable of opening at any moment to create a path for returns."ts In this mental universe, which could be difficult to grasp by minds permeated by Roman and Christian culture, "the dead individual is not really dead. He has returned to one of the states of the cycle, but remains active in the form of landvaettr"—that is, tutelary spirit (genius loci). Revenants were no cause for surprise to the Germanic peoples; they fit perfectly within their mind-sets, their place has not been usurped, and we cannot dismiss these stories as "old wives' tales." The roots of the belief are too deep.

Of course, in wartime, journalists, like other citizens, often have a legal responsibility to protect—and at times support—the efforts of their government. For journalists, regardless of their nationality, this usually takes the negative form of restrictions on reporting and dissemination of information, primarily on activities that would be construed or judicially interpreted as aiding or abetting an enemy.63 These restrictions include adhering to rules of engagement, not reporting troop movements, and following other strictures as determined by law and custom.

He can either act as a judge or a leader….I have always believed in and endeavored to follow the active leadership role as opposed to the passive judicial role.

Judge Winmill stepped in from a door to the right of the bench and climbed to his high-back leather chair. Perhaps an inch over six feet with a slender, athletic build and youthful, boyish features, Winmill was an Idaho native. He grew up in Pingree, a small town in southeast Idaho near the Snake River, and attended college at Idaho State University in Pocatello, where he was student body president. He left the state to attend Harvard Law School but returned to Pocatello to live and practice law. A Mormon, Winmill was the father of four and active in the Democratic Party. He practiced for ten years in Pocatello, until 1987, when Governor Cecil Andrus appointed him to the bench in the Sixth Judicial District of the State of Idaho. Eight years later, in August 1995, he was a Clinton appointee to the federal bench. Breitsameter and Miller told Uhlmann that Idaho prosecutors and the defense bar universally considered Winmill extremely bright and even-handed. He was a judge who labored over his decisions, frequently taking matters under advisement rather than ruling from the bench, and he often conducted his own legal research to ensure the accuracy of his decisions.1

The second part of the DOI report concluded that Never Lose Louie had violated the Judicial Code of Conduct by advising the DA on his campaign, offering legal advice, and discussing matters that the district attorney’s office was pursuing. It detailed a number of instances from a host of e-mail exchanges of Judge Velie’s improper behavior of engaging in political activity and using his office to support Neary’s reelection.

One of the controversial Bush nominees the Gang of Fourteen deal failed to stop was a partisan operative with no judicial experience. His qualifications were primarily political, having been an assistant to Special Investigator Kenneth Starr before becoming staff secretary to President George W. Bush. An active member of the Federalist Society, he had been nominated in 2003, before the Gang’s deal was struck, but the Senate declined to confirm him due to his extreme partisanship and lack of qualifications. Daring Democrats to block him again and give Republicans a reason to go nuclear, Bush renominated him in 2005. His hearings were contentious, but he made it through the committee.68 Intimidated by Republicans’ continued threats to go nuclear, Democrats declined to filibuster him when his nomination came to the floor. On May 26, 2006, by a vote of 57 to 36, he was confirmed to the U.S.

For most of her career on the bench, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known as a judge’s judge, a judicial minimalist who believed that social change comes slowly and from the ground up, fired by political activism, ratified by Congress and state legislatures, and, only after that, carried forward by courts.

Nobody has proved that the NSA or GCHQ committed grave and deliberate breaches of the law. In the big scandals of the 1960s, the FBI illegally bugged American citizens and tried to blackmail the government's political opponents. For example, it wanted to make Martin Luther King commit suicide, by threatening him with the exposure of his adultery. No comparable examples have been produced now, and I do not believe any will be. Nobody has produced individual victims of illegal NSA activity. There is no evidence of wilful, systematic breaches of the law by the NSA, or of contempt within its ranks, at any level, for judicial and legislative oversight. There is no modern counterpart of J Edgar Hoover, the brooding madman who brought the FBI to its darkest hour.