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Today in History (1862) - The U.S. government forbids all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation. On the same day in 1865, the Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 black troops, granting them freedom with the consent of their owners. Lee surrendered a few weeks later. |
In response to conservatives' hopeful chatter that Justice Stevens is unwell and will retire from the Supreme Court while Bush is still in office:
Stayed the same
When other names will change
Everyday
Not giving my place away
Another Court
Run by this kid John Roberts
My back stays here
No matter how it hurtsChorus: I�m a Justice
On the high bench I ride
Not leavin� this Court alive
Leavin� this Court alive
Ginsburg can sleep [1]
But I�m always awake
The lawyers �fore me
Better hear the liberal take
Lived through Prohibition [2]
I�ll be eighty seven soon
And I�ll keep writing dissents
Long as I have to
None of my clerks
Are part of cert memo pools
I write first drafts
Not those twenty-something fools
Been here since Ford
And I�m standing tall
I�ve seen three thousand cases [3]
And I�ve rocked them allChorus: I�m a Justice
On the high bench I ride
Not leavin� this Court alive
I�m a Justice
I�ve got good genes on my side
Not leavin� this Court alive
Leavin� this Court alive
[2] Though generally favoring an expansive commerce clause, as in his majority opinion in the Gonzales v. Raich medical marijuana decision, Stevens made an exception in his Granholm v. Heald dissent, arguing that interstate wine shipping was different: �Today many Americans, particularly those members of the younger generations who make policy decisions, regard alcohol as an ordinary article of commerce, subject to substantially the same market and legal controls as other consumer products. That was definitely not the view of the generations that made policy in 1919 when the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified or in 1933 when it was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment. � The views of judges who lived through the debates that led to the ratification of those Amendments are entitled to special deference.�
[3] Three thousand is an overestimation, despite Stevens�s nearly 32 years as a Justice, because the Court takes fewer than 100 cases a year and justices sometimes miss oral argument or recuse themselves.
November 26, 2006 11:51 PM | TrackBack