Reason Departs

And Other Hopelessness

by Curly Morris - October 6th, 2006 - Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald

The court began their new session this week without Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court who resigned in January after 25 years on the bench.


Although a Republican appointee, O'Connor maintained the role of swing voter for most of her tenure, frustrating many conservatives with her unwillingness to endorse judicial decisions that suggested permanency and infinite discretion.

O'Connor believed that the role of the Supreme Court was to give marching orders to the lower courts and allow the law to evolve alongside future jurisprudents.

Do you know what "suggested permanency and infinite discretion" means in the above paragraph? Can you define what the process "to evolve alongside future jurisprudents" means? I have a problem with Curly's writing when he uses these flowery and grandiose phrases that have no specific relevance to his thesis. Curly has another problem as well. He has a pattern of making quite specific statements that are totally wrong. A few examples in this editorial.

There were just enough conservatives on the Supreme Court in the 2000 elections to intervene and affect in the results of the presidency.

There were two Supreme Court rulings in that election.

One ruling voted on by 7 to 2 said that the Florida Supreme Court could not overturn a lower court ruling in favor of the Florida Secretary of State that had declared George Bush the winner based on vote counts turned in by predominantly democratic party officials. The Florida Supreme Court wanted to nullify the vote counts, write new rules, and have a third recount of votes based on these new rules which were not in effect at the time the election was held. Even two liberals concurred in this decision to stop the Florida Supreme Court.

The second ruling voted on by 5 to 4 said that the U.S. Supreme Court could not also nullify the Florida Secretary of State victory in the lower court ruling, and set up its own new set of rules to determine the outcome of a recount. This left the vote counts as they were determined by the elected officials in Florida, and supported by the Florida Trial Court.

Since at least two of the people who voted with the majority in this 5 to 4 vote are considered moderates, O'Connor and Kennedy, it is false of Curly to claim this was a "conservative" decision.

In April 2003, Bush declared that the United States had achieved victory in Iraq and that the war was over.

Curly, this is a lie. What George Bush said was that the crew of one aircraft carrier had done a good job during the war and had accomplished its mission. In that speech, Bush repeatedly said the war was NOT over, and much was left to do. Since that day, democrats have lied and claimed that Bush declared America's "Mission Accomplished" though this was never said and not even implied. Not only not implied, repeatedly denied. You are either lying now, or really really stupid, one or the other.

As far as Osama Bin Laden is concerned, I am much annoyed that we do not have him. However the reason is because of the difficulty of managing our relationship with Musharraf of Pakistan. The intelligence community of that country backs Bin Laden, and if we push Musharraf too hard it will not mean that we capture Bin Laden, but could quickly mean that Musharraf is toppled. If all you want to do is attack the Bush administration, it is easy to simplify the problem the way you have. That doesn't mean you are right.

Curly, your opinions here are wrong . . . but the most important thing to point out is how rarely your opinions are backed up by the facts. As noted, some are simply lies.