Justice Stevens’ forthcoming retirement from the Supreme Court has triggered instant buzz and opposition research in Washington, beginning with the short list passed over for Sonia Sotomayor. But the focus on politics has crowded out almost all discussion of our founders’ intent for America and the implications for interpreting the Constitution that Justices pledge to defend.
I blogged a year ago about the “Secret intellectual property treaty [that] could profoundly change life on the Internet.” At the time, the text was still secret but it was believed that the treaty: “seeks to set forth standards for enforcing cases of alleged copyright and patent infringement.” Now, as Cory Doctorow notes in
[Preface to Essays on Freedom and Power (1948) by Lord Acton]
[Excerpted from book 7, Money and Man.]
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission had penetrated, to an uncomfortable degree, the shallow defenses Greenspan has dreamt up to justify his indefensible behavior.
[Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock’s Jefferson]
The Constitution looked fairly good on paper, but it was not a popular document; people were suspicious of it, and suspicious of the enabling legislation that was being erected upon it. There was some ground for this. The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its history had been that of a coup d’état.
