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July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

June 13, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine

Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends

JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 12, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

June 11, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say?

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult'

JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination

June 6, 2008

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs

JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 5, 2008

David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend'

Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread

JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 4, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster'

Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus

JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler

June 3, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel

JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator?

He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 20, 2006 / 20 Adar, 5766

Scalia loosens up

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It was at a black-tie dinner in Washington in 1985 that Washington Redskins running back John Riggins boozily gave one of his table-mates, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a memorable piece of advice: ''Come on, Sandy baby, loosen up. You're too tight." Riggins then passed out, snoring his way through a speech by Vice President George H. W. Bush. Soon after, O'Connor began attending her morning exercise class in a T-shirt reading, ''Loosen up with the Supremes."


That indelible moment in Supreme Court history came to mind the other night when Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking to supporters of the New England School of Law at a banquet in Boston, allowed as how he was prepared to ''accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate tension and ought to be encouraged." Loosen up with the Supremes, indeed. It's not every day that one gets to hear a justice of the Supreme Court share his view of orgies. A latecomer entering at that moment might have thought that Scalia was explaining what it really means to be one of the high court's ''swing voters."


In fact, he was making a serious point about democracy and the blight of ''judicial hegemony" undermining it. In case after case, the people's right to decide difficult questions of social policy democratically has been usurped by judges who fashion constitutional mandates out of their own moral preferences. Scalia cited a case dealing with an orgy not just to make sure that nobody would be snoring through his speech, but to illustrate what happens when ''abstract moralizing" turns into judicial compulsion.


Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights declares that ''everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life" — a sentiment no reasonable person would disagree with. But six years ago, that provision was invoked to strike down a British law banning group sex. A European court held that the conviction of a man who had been involved in a five-person orgy violated his right to respect for his private life.


The problem with that ruling, Scalia said, isn't that sexual orgies are a social ill — one might even argue that they ''ought to be encouraged." The problem is that unelected judges had no business deciding that question. In an open democratic society, it is the public that should be making such value judgments. That is what elections and legislatures are for.


And where did European courts get the idea that it was up to them to make binding policy on controversial moral subjects? From the US Supreme Court, which in recent decades has maintained that the Constitution is a ''living" document whose meaning evolves over time, and that it is judges who are to decide when there has been an evolution and what that evolution requires.


But for most of American history, observed Scalia, it was understood that the Constitution's words were to be read in the light of the Framers' intent and the nation's legal traditions — the whole point of putting the words in writing was to prevent fundamental change, not to facilitate it. For the Constitution to say something new required an affirmative democratic act: an amendment. Judges could not unilaterally give the text a meaning it had never had before. That is why it took the 19th Amendment to extend the vote to women in 1920, even though the Constitution already provided for ''equal protection of the laws." If the Equal Protection Clause didn't guarantee female suffrage when it was adopted, it didn't guarantee it in 1920, either. Only the people could change that fact, not the courts.


These are not new arguments, of course. But it is one thing when politicians and pundits deplore activist judges who claim to discover rights in the Constitution that had lain undiscovered for 200 years. It is something different when a jurist of undoubted brilliance declares flatly that ''judges are unqualified to give the people's answer to moral questions." Does a woman have a natural right to an abortion? May someone be helped to take his own life? Should a jury sentence a mentally retarded murderer to death? Such dilemmas are inescapably political, and the more judges presume to resolve them from the bench, the more politicized the judiciary becomes. Hence the bile and bitterness that now drench the judicial nomination process.


Twenty years ago, Scalia's nomination to the Supreme Court was approved by a unanimous Senate. Today, he says, a judge with his views — a judge who believes that social policy should be made democratically, not dictated from on high — could not be confirmed. That is something every democrat — small ''d" — should regret.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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