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Opening Arguments

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Thank goodness this is the minority view on the court:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued Tuesday that judges need to apply the Constitution's values with an eye toward the changing times as he talked about the past successes and missteps of the nation's highest court.

Breyer told hundreds of people during an event in downtown Little Rock that a judge's job is to figure out how the Founding Fathers' values apply to modern issues.

"George Washington didn't really have a view about the Internet," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 650 people at the Statehouse Convention Center.

[. . .]

The 72-year-old Breyer, considered one of the court's more liberal justices, believes that the court should apply the Constitution's values with a pragmatic view toward present circumstances, rather than focusing only on the document's historical meaning.

"George Washington didn't have a view about the Internet." Har-har. He didn't have one about TV, either, or radio, or movies. What he probably did have was a good grasp of the First Amendment, an enduring principle that can provide us with robust free expression no matter how technology evolves. And if we don't want to follow "the document's historical meaning," why in the world should we care about the Founding Fathers' values? If you're just making it up as you go along, why bother with any justification at all?

Comments

Tim Zank
Wed, 04/06/2011 - 9:18am

Breyer espouses the liberal "interpretive" thought doctrine that has basically allows the government to do any damn thing it wants.

From eminent domain debacles to banning happy meals to wholesale abortion, his train of thought, like the rest of his over bearing intrusive liberal acolytes (read democrats) is driving us over a cliff we'll never recover from.

Andrew J
Wed, 04/06/2011 - 8:21pm

Where did the founding fathers address abortions? U know when the constitution was written, the rights of people , the whole concept of personage, applied only to people who were born.

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