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Scalia's dissent is worth a read.

    [...][I]t is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact— and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.

    [...]

    Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue.

    But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law. Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its “reasoned judgment,” thinks the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect. That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions . . . . ” One would think that sentence would continue: “. . . and therefore they provided for a means by which the People could amend the Constitution,” or perhaps “. . . and therefore they left the creation of additional liberties, such as the freedom to marry someone of the same sex, to the People, through the never-ending process of legislation.” But no. What logically follows, in the majority’s judge-empowering estimation, is: “and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” The “we,” needless to say, is the nine of us. “History and tradition guide and discipline [our] inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.” Thus, rather than focusing on the People’s understanding of “liberty”—at the time of ratification or even today—the majority focuses on four “principles and traditions” that, in the majority’s view, prohibit States from defining marriage as an institution consisting of one man and one woman.

    This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

    Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

relevant_thing  ·  3901 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: My First Vote at the Largest Democratic System

If you're talking about that study, there are some serious methodological problems with it. First an foremost, it simply assumes that because government actions are more likely to align with the interests of the wealthy than those of the larger population, the wealthy must wield the power, while, as they say in the study, it is largely accounted for by the massive status quo bias of a bicameral legislature and the other checks and balances of the federal government.

relevant_thing  ·  4066 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: There May Be A Green Light For Pot, But Not For Driving High : NPR

When an arrest makes headlines, those headlines had better better read: "One toke over the line?"

relevant_thing  ·  4074 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Classical music Owl thinks you should check out - FRENCH EDITION!

Is this meant to be listened to in order?

relevant_thing  ·  4090 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Am I supposed to be able to do this?

Yeah, I'd be too afraid to click random on reddit (it's not capitalized, btw). There are far too many NSFW subreddits for my taste.

relevant_thing  ·  4228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What is the smartest thing to do with twenty dollars?

Especially with uncreaseable cotton paper from the Treasury. And RoseArt. (Are jokes frowned upon here? Not thoughtful enough?)

relevant_thing  ·  4228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What is the smartest thing to do with twenty dollars?

But you are tracked, in a way which is hardly consequential given that you most likely have your phone on your person and definitely have a credit card that you are bound to use at your destination, but is nonetheless a concern.

relevant_thing  ·  4228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Have you ever said something and then immediately regretted it?

Your link is broken, here's a fixed one

relevant_thing  ·  4381 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Interesting Graph from the Wonkblog: Causes of Violent Death by Age

I believe that guns are a perfectly worthwhile thing to regulate, however, I also think that given the second amendment's rather strong words it would represent a dangerous change from previous policy regarding the interpretation of the bill of rights. If we applied the same leniency to other parts of the constitution, I could see dangerous implications for free speech, habeas corpus, etc.

relevant_thing  ·  4381 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Interesting Graph from the Wonkblog: Causes of Violent Death by Age

One is for suicide, the other for homicide.