The educational system is broken.

Infrastructure has become a joke.

The National Security / Homeland Security apparatus is bleeding the country dry, to little benefit.

Most of all, the electoral system is broken.

Anyone see any of this getting better incrementally? Or should we just blow up the whole sumbitch and start over?

Or… could fixing the electoral system make it possible to fix the other ills without slash & burn / nuke & pave tactics?

But what do I know? I’m just a dog.

In the case of Barron v. Baltimore (1833), before the 14th Amendment was ratified and before the Incorporation Doctrine was developed, the U.S. Supreme Court first clearly affirmed that the Bill of Rights is applicable only to the federal government and not to the state governments. Then, in the case Gitlow v. New York (1925), which occurred in the heyday of the Progressive Era, the Supreme Court broke the settled precedent in the Barron case and unconstitutionally ruled that the 14th Amendment forbids states from prohibiting free speech.

You could take that quote verbatim and put it into a test for an introductory constitutional law class under the question “Which obvious mistake did the author of the following paragraph?”. And everyone would think “That’s an easy one.”

slc1 @ #1:

Ann Coulter also attended the Un. of Michigan law school. Must be something in the water in Ann Arbor.

Somebody should check the filter at the water treatment plant, perhaps Hitler’s corpse is stuck in there.

But in an image that has only the most distant relationship with any religious belief at all, they suddenly see a required endorsement of a religious message. Funny, that.

I wonder if it was a case of ideology trumps all, or if they actually hoped they would lose the case in a way that sets some helpful precedent for cases in which they defend the display of Christian symbols – which the judge seems to have forestalled by the careful wording of his opinion.

In the end, any loss is a win for the ADF, anyway – if they win a case, they win, and if they lose, they have something new to stoke the fires of their supporters’ persecution complex, which in turn is the source of their funding.

But we shouldn’t allow people like Barton to move the goalposts on that issue so far out that it is already some kind of accomplishment for an evangelical Christian historian to approach at least the period of the American Revolution with intellectual honesty, which is safely enough outside of the envelope of obvious contradiction with the Bible.

I like the idea of a formal statement condemning Barton’s lies, and it should include as many Christian historians as possible among the signatories – but a statement authored specifically and exclusively by Christian historians would appear lopsided to me, reading somewhat like “Of course you don’t have to listen to what atheist historians say, but if we good Christian historians also call out Barton, it actually means something.”

Discalimer: spell checker is not working and my spelling sucks. Sorry.

The business of Jesus violating the law is important in Christian theology, because if he sinned he could not save himself let alone anyone else. Therefore one can not dismiss his violations by “he is god so he can do whatever he wants.” If Jesus violated a law, then certainly anyone can violate the same law, at least under the same circumstances.

And while there is no record of Jesus encountering a homosexual, there is certainly accounts of his encountering adulters and blasphemers, both of which (like practicing homosexuality) were capital offenses under the Mosaic law. In no case did he call for any civil punishment, let alone death.

Jesus then goes through various commandments, and in every case what he says is most naturally interpreted as saying “Yes, you must obey the commandment, but you must go beyond it.”

I agree in the sense that he issues new commandments that supercede the old but are much more difficult (impossible) to obey. A man might go through life without committing adultry, but he will never go through a day without committing lust. In those “You have heard it said…” statements we have a direct contrast between Mosaic laws (primarily of action) and Jesus’ new laws that are of the heart.

And of course later we have Jesus’ summarizing of the law with his two commandments–the one of which covers interpersonal relationships being to love your neighbor as yourself.

I read it this way (and freely admit that there are alternative interpretations, take your pick, but I can plausibly defend mine based on the Greek and on the NT as a whole)

1) There is a new and better motif of the NT. A new and better covenant, a new and better priesthood, and a new and better law. The old was always a type or foreshadowing of the new.

2) The old law was given (by God) via Moses and carried with it civil punishments for sin.

3) The new law was given by Jesus who never advocates civil penalties for sin. He instead teaches eternal death for sin–and worse the sin is not of deed (possible to obey) but of motivation (impossible).

4) Of course he offers a way out of this impossible situation.

5) While it is inevitable that we cannot save ourselves (who can stop lusting, coveting, hating, etc?) he offers us simple practicle advice, not especially novel or profound, which is, again, to love your neighbor.

And for those who think I am towing the calvinist line–my position is a minority one in Calvinism. The classic reformed position (which taken to the extreme leads to theonomy) is that Jesus was not teaching new laws replacing the Mosaic laws, but correcting pharisaical distortions on Moses’ law.

I won’t rehash that debate again–which we have had many times here, but simply ask you if you know that “The Law” is how Jesus would have referred to the Pentateuch and “The Law and/or the Prophets” is how he would have referred to the bulk of the OT? – heddle

No, I wasn’t aware of that, and thanks for the information, but I don’t see that it makes much difference, since this usage implies that first-century Jews did not make a clear distinction between the text of the Pentateuch, and the laws therein. As for Jesus himself breaking some of the OT laws, well according to you, he’s God, so he can do whatever he likes, and has the authority to allow anyone else to do so. But let’s look at the context of Matthew 5:18.

Matthew 5:
1 Seeing the crowds, ohe went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

5 “Blessed are the wmeek, for they shall inherit the earth.

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely hon my account.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for jso they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Salt and Light

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven [emphasis added], but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus then goes through various commandments, and in every case what he says is most naturally interpreted as saying “Yes, you must obey the commandment, but you must go beyond it.”

I’m sure you can come up with a justification for the claim that this passage permits the abrogation of OT laws (not just the stoning for homosexual sex, but dietary laws, etc.); but it appears to the outsider that you are starting with what you want the text to say, and torturing it until it does. Paul, we know, wanted to bring Gentiles into Christianity, so he had a clear motive for relaxing OT laws which Gentiles would find irksome. As I understand it, the scholarly consensus is that there was friction, if not conflict, between him and those of Jesus’s followers who wanted to maintain Jewish law for Christians.

There is a not well understood concept, clarified by courts up to and including the Supreme Court, that law enforcement is not responsible for an individual’s safety. The courts have released police from liability even if the police are notified heinous crimes are happening but the cops failed to respond because fresh donuts are coming out of the oven. OK the part about the donuts was hyperbole, but in fact the police do not need to have a reason to fail to protect an individual.

A New York Times article from June 28, 2005, describes a case that had made it to the Supreme Court. A Castle Rock, Colorado woman wanted to sue the town because the police would not respond after she told them her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three daughters:

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

The Castle Rock police could not be bothered to help one of their citizens until the estranged husband showed up at their house (station) shooting a gun with his three dead daughters with him.

Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion after the Supremes denied Ms. Gonzales’ right to sue the city of Castle Rock. The opinion included this illogical statement:

Justice Scalia said, “a well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.”

Say what?

That is the long way around to explain why I do not think “cops are there to help people.”

Check it out for yourself, google “police duty to protect.”

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I still don’t see what harm comes to me from a different understanding of the institution of marriage.

but you don’t understand! her boyfriend didn’t marry her when she got pregnant!!@!