<HTML>Nathan: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Judicial activism has been historically one of the PRIME EVIL forces in American society, from Dred Scott through the Civil Rights Cases through Lochner and its progeny. </BLOCKQUOTE> Come on, Nathan, you are so on this kick about judicial activism you would attribute everything but the devil himself to it. Dred Scott was no instance of judicial activism. The bloody Constitution had a 3/5 clause, a slave fugitive clause and allowed the international slave trade to operate in the US for a number of decades. When Taney said the enslaved African-American "has no rights the white man is bound to respect" he was as thoroughly based in the bloody text of the bloody pre-Civil War Constitution as any Supreme Court decision has even been! Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --</HTML>