We just love to re-litigate law
Published November 30, 2013
by Gene Smith, Fayetteville Observer, November 30, 2013.
If there's one thing at which we North Carolinians excel, it's beating ourselves up at our own expense. Either we're trotting off to court with ill-reasoned pleadings, or we're asking some judge to settle our political and ideological differences for us. Or both at once.
I hope 30 University of North Carolina law professors won't go that far in their support of Gene Nichol, who heads the school's poverty center.
The professors signed a letter questioning the motives of the Civitas Institute, which used the state's Public Records Law to demand emails, calendar entries, telephone logs, text messages and a list of university-provided electronic devices soon after Nichol wrote a column that appeared in The News & Observer. The column criticized Gov. Pat McCrory for having skipped the funeral of civil rights pioneer Julius Chambers and for having thereafter signed "the country's most oppressive voting bill."
I agree that "Surveilling a professor's communications is a really troubling approach to protecting liberty," as the 30 wrote, although I'm unsure who injected "protecting liberty" into this debate. But I'm not at all convinced that it would make for a good lawsuit.
If the records are public under the state statute, the purity of Civitas' motive is irrelevant. If you can have them and I can have them, so can Civitas. Left and right and Republican and Democrat don't even enter into it.
I mention lawsuits only because we just love to pay some lucky lawyer to re-litigate settled law.
We're a state that has seen one community after another go to court to fight for its supposed "First Amendment right" to promote state-assisted, tax-funded religious rites in public schools; a state with local governing bodies that see nothing wrong with promoting a particular religious dogma in the prayers with which they don't have to begin their meetings; a state whose leaders have, from time to time, tried to substitute their broad moral judgments for the specific medical judgments of women and their doctors.
In fact, we have similar efforts going on today.
The clamor for putting God "back" in classrooms from which God was never "kicked out" (nor prayer banned) is scattered but incessant.
The highest court has agreed to hear a case involving one of our public bodies whose invocations have long been almost exclusively Christian. To start a debate, suggest that those bodies forgo prayer or do their praying before entering a public building to transact public business. To start an uprising, suggest that they demonstrate their respect for other faiths by confining themselves to non-Christian prayers for a decade or two.
Also under challenge is a package of state impediments to abortion and birth control. Assertions that these are intended only to protect health deserve no better word than "lies," as the House speaker pro tempore included them in a little post-session crowing to the media as being among the leadership's " pro-life measures." (boldface his) As for making certain that North Carolina employers are protected against having to buy employee coverage of abortions and birth control, contrary to their consciences, where's their protection against buying coverage of vasectomies?
Regardless of which side each of us comes down on, we should collectively be easier on ourselves than this. Wrong forum or bad case, it all takes us down a well-worn path to needless frustration. And there's always a toll to pay.
November 30, 2013 at 10:28 am
Norm Kelly says:
What a simple question to answer. Must be a confused liberal asking the question. (first, let me apologize for being redundant in that prior sentence. 'confused' and 'liberal' are synonyms and therefore it is not necessary to put both in the same sentence. my apologies. i will try to avoid that in the future.)
There is nothing about reproduction when the male is involved. Males are not required for reproduction, as far as liberals are concerned, therefore buying insurance for your employees that forcibly includes vasectomies has nothing to do with the life or death of a baby. Abortion, abortion pills, and the like have everything to do with the life or death of a baby. When I am forced by my government, with the intent that it protects me, to pay for an abortion, it really is the death of a baby that I am forced to pay for. If I object to abortions, then I am being forced to (once again) support something that is against my religious beliefs. Since the constitution (obviously) supports the separation of church and state, the constitution prevents you from forcing your religious beliefs (abortion) on me. Since your religion, the state-sponsored religion, forces support of abortion, the result is that your religious beliefs are being forced on me. Since I'm prevented from forcing my religious beliefs on you, according to your wild reading of the Constitution, then why isn't it also true that your religious beliefs are prevented from being forced on me. (liberalism IS a religion)
Let me give you an example of how confused the liberal mind really is. When a woman walks into an unregulated, potentially unsafe, clinic to get an abortion, it is perfectly legal. If the father of the baby being aborted objects, the liberal tells the father he is an uninvolved outsider with no legal standing. (hence my conclusion that a vasectomy is unrelated to pregnancy in the liberal mind.) The liberal tells the woman and public in general that it's not killing a human being, a defenseless baby; it's simply a mass of tissue with no legal standing and therefore not considered murder. Let's take that same pregnant woman and change her location. Let's put her behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. Some person, also driving a moving vehicle, has consumed too many adult beverages. (that's alcohol for you liberals!) Let's continue moving the drunk person's vehicle, and say it hits the pregnant woman's car. Whether the woman survives or not is irrelevant, but just for the fun of it let's say the woman dies. By the time officials arrive on the scene, the 'mass of tissue' inside the woman has also expired. How will the liberals respond? Simple. Logical of course. The drunk will be convicted of DOUBLE HOMICIDE. See how confused the liberal mind is. When the woman chooses to kill the baby it's just a mass of tissue. If the baby is killed by accident then it's a baby. Same kid, same woman, same result. In one case nothing wrong. In the other case, the drunk is convicted of double murder. Even if you are a liberal, how does this make sense to you? You think I went off on a tangent? Except the author of the editorial tries to make a connection where none exists. The author of the editorial is obviously a liberal or Demoncrat. Yet the author draws a link between a baby's conception (or lack of) with a vasectomy. Come on libs! Can't you TRY to make sense? If the sperm donor has nothing to do with the existence of the mass of tissue, has no legal standing with the mass of tissue, then the operation to prevent another mass of tissue has nothing to do with life, existence, or religious beliefs.
This is one case where conservatives are smart enough not to try to argue on the liberal front. If it makes no sense to anyone, then conservatives know not to cross that line. Why talk about vasectomy being anti-religious if the opposition already has convinced their base and many others that there is no connection between vasectomy and birth. No connection. No objection to the coverage requirement.
Simple thinking. See?
