[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

There's no such thing as an "activist judiciary"

Any judge who rules on a case in a manner that supersedes the letter of the law he/she is supposed to use as a tenet is an activist judge. Changes to law are to be made by the legislative branch, no matter how inconvenient or unfair that might seem at the time. The 9th circuit court of appeals is an activist court.

If you don't like how an issue has come out, you can turn it into a legislative one... if you have the will of the people that should not be a problem, and the issue's urgency in the public eye will mirror the legislative urgency. If the majority of the people think an issue is really a capital-P Problem, the legislature will RUSH to address it. Ham-handedly, even.

If only the non-existent activist judiciary had the same view.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Let's grant that theism (or perhaps deism) is inherent in the founding documents. Saying that judges can make that irrelevant implies that it has some relevance to begin with. What is the relevance, and what is the practical result of that relevance? Should political office be limited to deists? Should laws be written to endorse deism?

I posit that there is no relevance, and mention of creators is incidental rather than inherent in the documents, and that this choice was deliberate on the authors' part.

Should political office be limited to deists? I'm new to the word, but I think that's a non sequiter.

You'd have a hard time proving your point, I think. I think that it's obvious that the FFs were against state-run religion, but it's equally clear that the concept of God/Providence was the linchpin of everything they were trying to do. Just because God isn't de rigeur at the moment doesn't mean you can retroactively apply today's cultural whims to what's already happened.

And at any rate, Pat Robertson holding a view that opposes yours doesn't make him a dick. He's a dick, but that's not why.