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Showing posts from January, 2009

Substantive Due Process

In the wake of the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade I thought I’d take a moment and make some comments about this infamous and divisive legal opinion. What is below is an expression of a lawyer’s take on Justice Blackmun’s opinion, which this lawyer views as a pockmark on American jurisprudence, not just from a moral perspective but especially from a legal point of view. For those of you who have never read the opinion, I encourage you to do so, and also to peruse its sister case, Doe v. Bolton. Before I dive into the Roe v. Wade opinion, I think it’s important that the reader understand that Roe wasn’t only decided based on penumbras and emanations from the Bill of Rights. Instead, Roe should be viewed as the fourth corner of a series of legal decisions, the collection of which now forms the basis for the Supreme Court’s social-policy jurisprudence. The first corner of the foundation is the now-infamous Dred Scott Decision, for it was in the Court’s ruminations on that case where substa...

More Than My Necessary Food

I have never been truly hungry, not desperately so. We often hear, "I'm starving," but this is just an hyperbolic cliche that means, "My body is telling me that it's time to eat." That kind of hunger is as natural as breathing, the brain's signal to the body to properly care for itself. Perhaps the most familiar example of this is the crying child who longs for his mother's milk. Every child is born hungry, and perpetually so for the rest of its life. What is true in the flesh is also true in the spirit; the newborn infant soul, as the suckling babe, cries out for the milk of God's word, and the mature man hungers perpetually for his meat. Those who have been born again unto spiritual life have tasted the Lord and seen that He is good; sweeter to them than the honeycomb is His word; like hummingbirds to flowers, they flit their wings to the nectar. But what of those with little or no spiritual appetite, strangers to heaven's hunger pangs? Why...

The Free Will of a Shackled Man

This afternoon I attended a hearing to obtain an injunction against somebody from removing a client's septic system. Talk about a messy situation! Just prior to the judge reaching my case on the docket, he said he needed to take a plea from a defendant. In came a middle-aged black man, donning bright yellow coveralls, courtesy of Smith County. When he first walked in the courtroom I didn't see him. A sheriff's deputy walked in front him (one was behind him as well) and my view of the defendant was blocked. Though I couldn't see him, I could hear the clang-jangle-clang of his ankle-shackles as he approached the dock. He was seated beside his attorney, whose hair was unkempt and who had a frayed sportcoat and seemed rather insouciant about being there, and across from the prosecutor who had before him a stack of files each representing an offender. The man was accused of driving while intoxicated. He had two prior convictions, meaning he now faced a minimum of 2 years and...

Encouragement to the Impoverished

"The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail." "A word spoken in due season, how good it is!" Even in a time of famine, as it was in Elijah’s day, or in a time of adversity and pending sorrow, as it was in the widow’s household, "thus saith the LORD God of Israel" ever suffices for every barrel and cruse in "the household of God." Consider this text in terms of temporal adversity and physical need –Elijah pursued by Jezebel; starvation, disease, and death at the widow’s door; our own Jezebels hot on our heels, distresses in our minds, bodies, and spirits; fears within, foes without–let every soul thus impoverished by the world's ways and woes hear the word of the LORD,"the barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail." Though, like the widow, God’s own elect may doubt the prophet’s word, and every circumstance seem to contradict the holy promise, "nevertheless, the foundation o...

"System of a Down"

As the conformity of contemporary “Christianity” in America to the prevalent, naturalistic culture only hastens, so too does its eventual demise. In the same way that the system of Judaism failed its followers when “the Word became flesh,” the current undercurrent of an “all-that-is-seen-is-all-that-is” culture cloaked in a “show-me-the-signs-Christian-system” is failing its followers once again. The “Christianity” of the masses today (whether Evangelicalism or Romanism it matters not), much like Judaism two thousand years ago, is little more than the naturalistic means to a naturalistic end. Either that, or it is the guise of “spiritual” means to a naturalistic end. Either way, “Christianity” today is chiefly about what is physical, what is moral, the self, and in scriptural terms, “the things of the earth.” To many, both on the inside and outside, it is merely superstition or myth. For example, the term “Conservative-Christian” carries with it an overtone that applies to the ...

God Bless Workin' Women

I mean godly women, godly wives and godly mothers . . . What a rude question to ask a virtuous woman . . . "Do you work?" If she were not so virtuous, she'd say, "Darn right I work . . . " (Sorry, Ladies, forgive the mild expletive) . . . Workin ' women, godly Wives and Mothers, WORK, whether "in" the home or "outside" the home (remember that godly, workin ' women who work "outside" the home most probably do most of the work "in" the home as well) . . . Workin ' women . . . I've always admired that in my Grandmother, my Mother, and own Wife, but now so much more . . . My Grandmother and Mother no longer work . . . they're at rest . . . my wife no longer works . . . she must rest . . . So Mama Parker, Mother (her dignified persona quietly demanded "Mother"), and Judy, shall we say, "heightened my appreciation" for workin ' women . . . I've seen Mama Parker in a bonnet on many ...