Judges Can Thwart the Majority and That's Awesome

Even though the majority of California voters approved Proposition 8, Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to overturn the gay marriage ban does not mean that he is an activist judge who ignored the will of the people and engaged in creating rather than interpreting the law as required by the Constitution. In fact our constitution requires something quite different from that.

Many great thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill have worried that the tyranny of the majority is one of the great dangers of democracy, and it is a frequent topic in the Federalist Papers so critical to the founding of this country. The reason our constitution includes a bill of rights is specifically to protect minority rights from being squashed by majority opinion. A fundamental responsibility of federal judges is to ensure that no law passed by the majority or its representatives impinges on those rights.

Judge Walker found that Proposition 8 did just that. It isn't a terrible injustice that a single judge can thwart the will of the majority; it is one of the key components of our constitutional democracy that makes our country great.

Minnesota Corporations support Ultra-conservative Candidates

So now that the activist, conservative supreme court justices have ruled that corporations have the same rights as citizens, Target, Bust Buy, and other Minnesota corporations have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to MN Forward to support the campaign of Tom Emmer for governor, the candidate who thinks that Minnesota will be just about perfect when it looks just like Mississippi.

In addition, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel has personally contributed $10,000 to the campaign of Michele Bachmann, the candidate who thinks we should teach intelligent design in our schools, that we should drill baby drill, that a nuclear strike against Iran might not be a bad idea, that President Obama may have anti-American views, that Minnesotans should be armed and dangerous to fight against doing anything about global warming, that all taxes are bad, that the health care bill contained death panels, that people shouldn't fully participate in the census, that President Obama is the worst president we have ever had (worse than Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and James Buchanan?), and whose activities have caused more than 10,000 people to join the Facebook group "Minnesotans Embarrassed by Michele Bachmann" even though she doesn't hold state-wide office.

If corporations now have the same rights as people, it is time for them to start acting like people and looking at the entire record of a candidate; not just the candidate's willingness to let businesses do whatever they please.

Personally, I'm done shopping at Target and Best Buy.