The Morning Rant

Dems: "Do you promise to implement our preferred policies?"

ACB: "No, I'm going to interpret laws according to the constitution."

Dems: "So you hate our policies?"

ACB: "I didn't say that."

Dems: "So you must support our policies."

ACB: "As I've already said, I'm going to interpret laws according to the constitution. That's what a judge does."

Dems: "You hate people and want them to die, don't you?"

ACB:

Actually, this is not quite accurate. ACB was uncommonly kind and gracious to every single one of those vacuous pudknockers, whereas if it were me, I would've been saying things like eabod, lolgf, diaf, stfu you rat bastard commie, foad, etc. So, much respect to her.

But let's talk about 'originalism' for a bit. I don't understand what the big controversy is. All it is is trying to understand written communication in the way in which the original author intended it to mean. We all do this every day. So when I give Mrs. Muse a recipe to try that I found on the internet, and it says it calls for a tablespoon of butter, that means she should add a tablespoon of butter. She may be able to get by with a tablespoon of margarine, but maybe not, depending on what qualities of butter the recipe is trying to make use of. But she probably will not be able to substitute two tablespoons of diet Coke. That probably doesn't come close to what the writer of the recipe intended.

Or e-mail. When your boss sends you an e-mail and asks you for the status of the Farkle project, you probably do not consider whether this request is racist, or is in service to the patriarchy, and then invent a bunch of woke stuff that isn't there, and than claim that's what the e-mail says. You might get reprimanded, or maybe even fired.

Tax documents, too. If the heard from the IRS about a problem on your tax return and you claimed that the 1040 you sent them was a "living document", they probably wouldn't accept that as an reason for for your failure to disclose some item of taxable income. You'd still owe interest plus penalties.

Some texts can be tricky. Like poetry or song lyrics, where the meaning is cleverly concealed for artistic reasons, or maybe the text is deliberately ambiguous, so there's are more than one meaning possible. Fortunately, the constitution is not in this category. Although to listen to some progressives, you might think that it is.

The constitution is in the other "tricky" category, that is, older texts. Word meanings can change over time, and some words may be unfamiliar to our ears. So it may take a bit of work to figure out what the authors intended by, say, "inalienable" or "well-regulated." So perhaps you need to consult dictionaries from that time (if they exist) or other documents where the same word or concept is used, only the meaning is perhaps more clear.

Whenever the progressive saint Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a memo to her clerks and other office staff, I guarantee you she expected them to use the 'originalist' approach to understanding it and carrying out any of her instructions.

'Originalism' just means treating the constitution just like any other document written by humans. In other words, originalism is just common sense.

What A Surprise:

Who Dis:

For the 'Ettes:

Wednesday Who Dis: Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston were together in the 1958 Orson Welles film Touch of Evil.

Today's Edition Of The Morning Rant Is Brought To You By Irish Coffee:

Irish coffee recipe here.

posted by OregonMuse at 11:13 AM

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