Dude,

You think I have to spend time working on my scan? I don’t think you can make it onto the line on the DC-9 without a scan.


In a nutshell, I don’t think there is much you wrote that I disagree with. This is mainly because you don’t attach the blame of a Constitutional takeover to one political party over the other. For anyone who keeps a true score, they will know that both parties’ pick and choose their issues when it comes to favoring “states rights” or a “strong federal government.” I agree with your assessment that “[The United States] is as an ingenious of a system of government as any ever devised” and I marvel that the Framers could put such a thing together in such tumultuous times (Indian Tribes, national debt, slavery issue, etc.). I also agree with you that the debate whether nor not to “legalize” our “natural rights” by including them in the Constitution was a huge debate back then that culminated in the incorporation of the first ten Amendments- the Bill of Rights.

But, I’m sure you realize that many of your expressed thoughts about the nature and relationship of the past Courts and the Legislatures and Executives have a rub. On one hand, you seem to want the Courts to enforce, “the written law they get their power from in the first place,” and “violation[s] of our natural rights we were born with.” But, on the other hand, you cry foul when a future Justice says they will legislate from the bench. The rub is that any insistence of enforcement of our natural rights nowadays should be considered to be legislating from the bench. Why? Because of the Supremacy Clause, the U.S. Constitution is supposed to be the “supreme law of the land.” I mean a strict constructionist like Scalia would scoff at the idea of looking to the Declaration of Independence for natural rights to enforce. But, Breyer, at the other end of the spectrum would have no problem with it. Yet, I think you are attacking Breyer’s crowd for legislating from the bench.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that we all have natural rights that we are all born with and feel that it is in our nature to protect them (Or, at least it should be). But, I think you are missing a necessary function of the Court that even Scalia and Thomas would admit when pressed: to legislate from the bench. Because many of our natural rights aren’t enumerated in the Constitution, the Court has to “legislate” our rights to insure they aren’t trampled upon, don’t they?

In fact, even many of the rights that are stated in the Bill of Rights have to be “legislated” by the Court as well.

Here’s an example: Mc Donald v. Chicago, the 2nd Amendment gun rights case.

Decision in a Nutshell: Chicago cannot ban handgun ownership.

Was this decision legislating from the bench? Yes.

Why? The U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights (BOR), in large part only speaks to the federal government, not the states. The Supreme Court for the past 100 years or so have been incorporating many of the BOR’s to apply to the states, meaning even the states can’t restrict or limit these right’s.

In Mc Donald, what really happened on a practical level is that the Supreme Court incorporated the Second Amendment to apply to the States. In essence, they kind of made it up and made it work and they have been doing that since 1897 (Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago).

Basically, what I am saying is that because we have the shortest Constitution in the world and many of the rights we own are not stated, the Court has to legislate in a sense to keep the government in check.

In applying all of this to our predicament of the frisk, I believe I have a natural right to remain free from getting zapped with excessive radiation or getting molested every time I go to work. At this point, the TSA and some administrative agency say I have to. Unfortunately, the Constitution does not specifically say this is my constitutional right, but I will expect the Court to agree with me, “legislate,” and make the government back off.

Now, let me go back and work on my scan.

New K

 

Thanks for the link. I submitted feedback to them that they should shorten the link and simplify it so that we can easily remember it, and give it to other crewmembers or passengers that want it. We have GOT to work together on this!

 

Faced with the scanner or the grope, I do believe that I will choose the grope.
But then I will drop trou, squat and drop a deuce right there in the room.
Followed by a call to scheds that I am too sick to fly and the evidence is on the screening room floor.

 

Put that up on YouTube for all of us to enjoy.

 

Until we have a dual biometric identification system and software to positively identify crewmembers, how do you know who is legitimate and who isn't ? I have three (3) different airline flight crew identification cards that were used during ALPA's efforts to get TWIC (forerunner of CrewPass) implemented along with credentials from the Santa Fe (NM) Sheriff's department with a letter authorizing carriage. I'd be willing to bet a good size slab of beef at any restaurant that I could pull any of them out of my dresser drawer and use them tomorrow morning to get through a TSA checkpoint and NONE of them are legimate.

We need.....no, we have to have a positive means of identifying authorized crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and then implement a crew only access point or we're just peeing into the wind.

Been fighting this battle since 1993 for ALPA and not a damn bit of progress has been made.

G'Luck Mates

 

In that context about "legislating from the bench" I guess you are technically correct, in that any clarification or overturning of an established practice or precedent (i.e. legislating, or in many cases...de-legislating I guess you could say) would require the enforcement of one's prayer of relief to the courts (the bench). Such is the nature of that check and balance as it applies to making things right. However that does not grant a blank check to the courts to act in a matter inconsistent with either the Constitution or the natural rights the whole enchilada is based on in the first place.

The problem that I have is, of course, when people seek to get on the court (or seek to install people on the court, as the case may be) with the specific predetermination of violating the Constitution and/or replacing natural law in even the most obvious of cases.

McDonald V. Chicago was a great example of that. Sotomayor flat out lied to the Senate to get the job and wrote an opinion (thankfully in the misguided 4 vote minority) that violated natural law and the Constitution. She not only lied to get the job, but before she got it, she gloated and joked about how she intended to violate her oath and the Constitution that put her in that position in the first place, simply because she disagreed with a right that we very clearly have but that she personally disagrees with.

The 2nd could not be more clear (that is, until one muddies the water with Olbermanesque revisionist history pseudo definitions of words and phrases like "militia" and "well regulated" in an attempt to eradicate a Constitutional and basic individual and human right...arms for self defense of the individual and the state) simply because they personally believe in an absolute police state where armed government protectors lord over an unarmed population. The truth behind the language and the intent behind the amendment itself is clear and well documented. But to a progressive, whatever rights you have, as they apply to any issue, either way, are at the whim of whoever is running the government today and that's the problem and its far bigger than any single issue.

To be fair, there are progressives on both sides of the isle. Big time. Some are pro gun, others anti-gun. Some pro-choice, some pro-life. Some that believe you should be secure in your persons and property, and others that think that all good obedient citizens should submit to anything and everything because, after all, they should have "nothing to hide" and if they don't submit willingly, they are suspect, aren't they?

But our rights are absolute and do not ebb and flow with the shifting winds of politics. It is an inalienable right to have a free press and freedom of speech and expression. There were no cell phones or internet back in the 1700's. But that should not matter. We shouldn't need the courts to "interpret" the extremely obvious to us like some think they are supposed to do. If we embrace such sophistry, where does it end? We have the freedom of religion, but the founders didn't specifically say if that was EVERY day of the week, so let's get the courts to weigh in on that, shall we? LOL! Joe Blow versus Blackberry said we have freedom of the mobile phone, but we have to anxiously await Jane Doe versus iPhone to see if it applies to that format as well. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not much. At all. We don't get our rights from the courts, or the government, or even the Constitution. Our rights are ours and that is supposed to be the foundation this whole republic is based on in the first place.

So the only legislating from the bench that can really be justified is that which undoes the violation of our rights, freedoms and liberties. The courts are supposed to be the champions of that. Even and especially if they happen to personally disagree with the freedom, liberty or right in question in the first place.

Again, if 5 SCOTUS justices ruled that they interpreted the 1st to mean that Congress can, in fact, establish unicorn wirship as the state religion and your only "choice" was either that or death, would that be a valid law/precedent/interpretation? Nope. Binding? Nope. What if they passed an actual Constitutional amendment, would it be valid then? Nope. Not even close. Why? Because it is clearly in violation of a pre-existing right we already have (namely, religious freedom, among many, many, many others) that we were born with and never "got" from the Constitution in the first place, and anything from the judicial branch to the contrary is "legislating from the bench" and that's what I'm referring to.

Now, what if some individual, city, state or federal entity violated one's right and that person went to the courts to seek justice and the courts correctly intervened to restore the right that was deprived of them. Would that be considered "legislating from the bench"? Maybe by pure textual definition I suppose, but that's not the same thing as the previous example. The two are simply just different, and quite so.

This reminds me of the famous case where justices were trying to precisely define the definition of porn and exactly where that line was in any and every case. Finally Justice Potter Steward said look, ""I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced…but I know it when I see it…"

The same is true of judicial activism especially as it applies to Constitutional revisionism and the political power monger methodology of attempting to transfer ownership of our rights from the individual to the state in any form. It sometimes gets tricky because although its always the case when our rights are violated by the courts, it can sometimes even be the case when the courts are upholding our rights, but for the wrong reasons (i.e. rulings to the effect that you have a right to XYZ, but only because the government says you do, etc). The precise criteria to define such examples may in many cases be cumbersome, but in all cases, I know it when I see it and I'm pretty darn sure our Founders would have seen it too. And what Sotomayor did in McDonald v Chicago was a glaring example of exactly that. Fortunately she was out voiced, by a mere one vote.

In any case, that whole scan thing is probably easier than I'm making it out to be. I mean, pick an instrument and I'll be all over it, you got the other 5 though.

 

I think this a whole lot of talking about what we actually agree on. There is no need for pilots to go through screening at the airport. It should happen before we are allowed to fly for an airline.

 

I'm sure gloopy and I are saying the same thing. He is speaking pure Libertarian though and I don't know what I am speaking.

 

Gloopy,

We are saying the same thing in a different way, I think.

What's funny is I was just talking to my wife about the "you know it when you see it case" a few days ago. Geeze, we need to go to the movies or something.

I also thought you were talking about the security "scan" when I first read your ending. Needless to say, I was a little confused.

Airplane scan-wise though, the DC-9 is a piece of cake. After about three months you can hear when you are going to fast or too slow. After 3 years your back is thrown out because the seats are so bad and you let the other guy fly all the legs. Just kidding. (About letting the other guy fly all the legs.)

 

New article today.

World’s Pilots Reject Naked Body Scanners Over Radiation Danger, Privacy Breach

The article states El Paso requires everyone to go through (i.e. no "Opt Out"). Which first goes to show that TSA procedures are not consistent throughout the system (no big surprise here), and El Paso is continuing to be the most aggressive airport regarding TSA requirements.