Certainly One Cannot Ban Cross Burning In

In A Big Family The First Child Is Kind Of Like The First Pancake. If It's Not Perfect, That's Okay, There Are A Lot More Coming Along.

You Can't Come In Smugly And With Great Self Satisfaction And Say 'oh It's Torture, And Therefore It's No Good.' Is It Really So Easy To Determine That Smacking Someone In The Face To Determine Where He Has Hidden The Bomb That Is About To Blow Up Los Angeles Is Prohibited In The Constitution? It Would Be Absurd To Say You Couldn't Do That. And Once You Acknowledge That, We're Into A Different Game.

More Importantly, The Court Forgets That Ours Is A Government Of Laws And Not Of Men. That Means We Are Governed By The Terms Of Our Laws, Not By The Unenacted Will Of Our Lawmakers. 'if Congress Enacted Into Law Something Different From What It Intended, Then It Should Amend The Statute To Conform To Its Intent.' In The Meantime, This Court 'has No Roving License ... To Disregard Clear Language Simply On The View That ... Congress 'must Have Intended' Something Broader.

Justice White's Conclusion Is Perhaps Correct, If One Assumes That The Task Of A Court Of Law Is To Plumb The Intent Of The Particular Congress That Enacted A Particular Provision. That Methodology Is Not Mine Nor, I Think, The One That Courts Have Traditionally Followed. It Is Our Task, As I See It, Not To Enter The Minds Of The Members Of Congress - Who Need Have Nothing In Mind In Order For Their Votes To Be Both Lawful And Effective - But Rather To Give Fair And Reasonable Meaning To The Text Of The United States Code, Adopted By Various Congresses At Various Times.

The Death Penalty? Give Me A Break. It's Easy. Abortion? Absolutely Easy. Nobody Ever Thought The Constitution Prevented Restrictions On Abortion. Homosexual Sodomy? Come On. For 200 Years, It Was Criminal In Every State.