Interesting, I applaud the move.. How these lists have been administered has been a singular blight on our society. This is just one of many errors that need to be reversed and corrected from our failed era of fear and fear-mongering that is the 9/11 epoch. If we actually start unwinding the strangling tentacles of this pernicious and fraught time from our body politic we may yet save ourselves. But it also reveals an underlying weakness in our society. And it will be interesting to see the next move. Which is just as likely will be another judge ruling that these lists are indeed constitutional. Such confusion has already happened on other matters such as torture, incarceration, and recently new edicts pertaining to the basic NSA enterprise. Isnt it strange that such question as these are subject to the whims of who happens to get the case rather than some clear appeal to rational thought and congruent jurisprudence? And at the end of the road there is the Supreme Court..presumably the keepers of the Constitutional flame, just as riven by politics instead of first principles. (First principles, btw, do not mean, Original Construction as if the conditions of the founders must be the controlling conditions of our current time. The key point that gets lost in the fray is the notion of Principle...) We live in an era no longer, or perhaps less, fundamentally governed by principles and the rule of law such that people/citizens can depend upon what the meaning and purpose of the law actually is any given situation. If the law is so inscrutable that it can quite literally be applied/contorted to effect any given outcome...then we must agree that we are no longer a society governed by the rule of law, but the caprice of judges and the cleverness of lawyers. And on the street, the tender mercies of the police... (Recently I watched, and helped in minor protest, while the police harassed a fellow collecting signatures for a ballot measure...It was legal, and after quite a bit of time and lots of veiled threats and intimidation, the fellow resumed his efforts. But only because he stood firm on his rights. It was interesting to see.... A minor case presaging major ones when the authorities feel threatened or are crossed...) Even so obvious an otherwise banal event as murder, when subjected to the whimsy of a court and the blinding logic of legalistic contortions of principle as in the Travon Martin case --- And sadly the Blind Justice that was the principle cornerstone of fairness and equality of all before the law, has become the blindness of Justice to the obvious and the clear-eyed awareness of who, indeed, is before the bench, and what is expected... It creates immense harm. (And of course I realize it has never been perfect, that we have always been killing our mockingbirds..) In an era of politicized justice nothing makes sense and anything angers some sector of the citizenry. So it is power, and political proclivities that seems to be reorganizing our foundations... This is a problem. We are fraught with legal fiat as our foundational structures of what is/is not legal is negotiated on a case by case basis. That is a ship without a rudder, and a nation without moral authority.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 21:08:52 +0000