
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
April 2, 2012/ 10 Nissan, 5772
The cynicism of it
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
To read this week's press coverage, you'd think not just a landmark Supreme Court case was upon us, but a jurisprudential Armageddon. The moment of truth has arrived, the die is about to be cast, the Rubicon crossed ... pick your own favorite cliche. There are so many out there.
Charles Krauthammer, one of my favorites in the columnizing/calumniating trade, sees the fate of the Republic swaying in the balance in the current hearings on Obamacare. As he writes in the Washington Post:
"If the law is upheld, it fundamentally changes the social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers -- finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out spheres of autonomy."
If the court sides with the administration, all is lost.
On the opposite but equally fervid end of the political spectrum, Linda Greenhouse waves off such fears. And any disagreement, too. Her undiluted contempt for any who might have a different opinion is palpable. Those challenging the new health-care law, she explains, haven't got a precedent to stand on. Their learned disquisitions amount to, well, nothing. She writes, you won't be surprised to hear, for the New York Times.
It may be a journalistic convention to present both sides of a legal controversy in neutral fashion, she concedes, "without the writer's thumb on the scale." But, "free of convention, and fresh from reading the main briefs in the case," Ms. Greenhouse is here to tell us that the constitutional argument against the health-care law is "so weak that it dissolves on close inspection. There's just no there there."
If the court strikes down this Signature Achievement of the Obama administration, all reason is lost.
Now that Justices Krauthammer and Greenhouse have weighed in on the law, it's a wonder the country needs a Supreme Court at all. Just choose your ideological side, his or hers, and save yourself the trouble of thought. Then declare your opinion settled law. And close the book.
Only it doesn't work that way. Time, not the justices, and certainly not the pundits, will be the ultimate judge. History, contrary as ever, will deliver its own verdict. And there is no escaping its jurisdiction.
The great precedents of the past may prove not so great after all. Dred Scott was going to solve the slavery question once and for all in 1857. At last the Supreme Court of the United States would render a final, decisive, comprehensive decision. No longer would this little matter trouble the peace and growth of the Union. Any misgivings about the Peculiar Institution could now be brushed aside. Scott v. Sandford was now settled law.
Except that it wasn't. The next year, a gawky ex-congressman, ex-Whig and -- who would've predicted it? -- future president of the United States chose to take on the most powerful senator and celebrated orator of his day, The Little Giant himself, Stephen A. Douglas, in a series of whistle-stop debates out on the prairies of Illinois. And what had been settled no longer was.
History had intervened. Soon enough the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword would be loosed. And another decision was reached.
A new accommodation would have to be reached with destiny. Once again, the Supreme Court of the United States stepped forward to lay down the law, and settle this vexing question forever. Vanity of vanities: The court's solution, handed down in Plessy v. Ferguson at the turn of the last century, came to be known as Separate but Equal.
Only one justice, a Kentuckian by the name of John Marshall Harlan, who always did see too far ahead, dissented. Only he had the candor to state what everyone had to know: that there was nothing equal about separate-but-equal, that it was but a "badge of servitude," and that it would not stand. However long it took for the country to see through it. For "there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind...." And so it proved. Even if took another half-century to unsettle that "settled" law.
The moral of the story: Nothing is as certain as the too-certain say it is. Whatever this court rules, its decision, too, will be appealed. Before the bar of history. And in that court, nothing is ever settled till it's settled right.
Paul Greenberg Archives
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/home/jwreview/public_html/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|