Feb 21 2016

Page 5

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2016

|

|

OPINION

|

|

THE JONESBORO SUN

|

A5

www.jonesborosun.com

LETTERS CONTINUED FROM A4

Perrin power

I do not live in Jonesboro, but I read The Jonesboro Sun every day. I have been noticing some people refer to Mayor Harold Perrin as a Sun God. While most readers may completely disregard comments like these as nonsense, I think something needs to be said about it. Personally, I believe an elected position’s salary too often attracts the type of person who has no business being an elected oďŹƒcial. I think we have too many people who simply chase after the salary rather than putting in the service. We would probably attract better oďŹƒcials if most of our elected positions were on a volunteer-only basis without any pay whatsoever. With that being said, I do believe Mayor Perrin is an exception. I think Jonesboro is fortunate to have him as its mayor. With its current and projected future growth, Jonesboro needs a mayor who truly understands business, finance, banking, etc. For example, I bet when Mayor Perrin receives a financial report or reviews the city budget, he doesn’t have to have the chief financial oďŹƒcer explain what everything means to him. I bet other cities’ mayors know that Harold Perrin isn’t in over his head as mayor. I bet when business owners and leaders meet with the mayor, they are confident he understands what they’re saying. I bet it doesn’t take long for the mayor to make a great impression on business executives who are touring the town to see if they want to open a new location or manufacturing facility in Jonesboro. It is OK to disagree with an elected oďŹƒcial. That’s government. Obviously no one will ever satisfy everyone all of the time. However, you could have a mayor who does more harm than good to your town, its reputation and its future. Fortunately for the residents of Jonesboro, they do not have that problem with Mayor Harold Perrin. Garrett Barnes Bono

Scalia’s death won’t transform Supreme Court They are right that Antonin Scalia’s sudden death nearly a year before Barack Obama is to leave oďŹƒce is an epochal event, but for the loss of the nimble and dazzling old man himself and not because it will produce a major transformation of the U.S. Supreme Court. From the Senate majority leader’s dramatic announcement within hours of Scalia’s death that the Republican majority in the Senate was united in preventing even consideration of any nomination by the president, in flagrant disobedience of the Constitution, you would surmise, wrongly, that Obama would be dramatically remaking the Supreme Court for another generation. There is scant chance an Obama nominee will become a justice, even if he were to name a conservative Republican like Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah or Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. That was settled 15 months ago when the GOP gained a solid majority in the Senate, every single member of which pledged to allow no enhancement of the Obama legacy his last two years and make every eort to shrink it, like undermining the Aordable Care Act and clean-power rules. It is true that, for the first time in 44 years, Republicans do not have a majority on the Supreme Court and for the first time in 25 years do not have a virulently conservative majority. Now and at least for the next 15 months they are tied on both counts, 4 to 4, with little chance for a precedent-setting decision during that period on a big conservative issue, unless one of the softer justices on either side buckles on some issue like the carbon-dioxide rules. If Scalia’s seat remains vacant until the spring of 2017, it will be filled either by the Democratic president, giving liberals their first dominion on the court since the torrent of liberal reforms by the court after Republican Dwight Eisenhower packed it

Ernie Dumas |

It was Antonin Scalia’s towering talent and mystique that he could be blatantly political but be respected, even revered, for it. The original originalists Madison and Hamilton, but no one much today, would be dismayed.

with liberals and moderates, or else by the new Republican president — likely the neo-populist Donald Trump. Whether the new president on Jan. 20 is a Democrat or Republican, his or her party will control the Supreme Court for a generation, regardless of what Obama does. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will retire early in 2017, if not sooner, and fellow Democrat Stephen Breyer not long afterward. So the equilibrium on the court caused by Scalia’s death or the impact of a successful Obama appointment will be momentary. But the absence of Antonin Scalia will be nonetheless profound. Many have written about the huge impact Scalia, by dint of intellect, brass and wit, made on the court and jurisprudence. No one mentions his biggest legacy, which is that he made a politicized judiciary not only respectable but the expectation. Since the 2014 election, it has been common knowledge that the Senate would not allow the Democratic president to appoint another justice. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it in writing Saturday, appropriately upon Scalia’s death. Republican justices like John Paul Stevens and David Souter often turned out to be liberal rocks. The ultraliberal John F. Kennedy’s single nominee to the court, Whizzer White, was at least as conservative as Scalia though not as talented or influential. Scalia had a passion for the law, for he found in its vast tenets the latitude to support whatever he would like for the law to be in any situation. The force of his intellect and brass almost always brought

Letters invited

The Sun welcomes original letters from our readers. Letters must be signed by hand and include the writer’s full home address, plus daytime and evening telephone numbers for verification. We will not publish personal attacks, libelous material, falsehoods, unsubstantiated claims against businesses or evidentiary matter in lawsuits. Mail letters to: Letters to the Editor, The Jonesboro Sun, 518 Carson St., Jonesboro 72401. Letters can also be emailed to cwessel@jonesborosun. com or faxed to (870) 935-5823.

Ernie Dumas, a veteran Arkansas journalist, writes a weekly column for the Arkansas Times. He can be contacted by email at dumas.eande@gmail.com.

?jY\Z @Z^i] 7aVX`bVc ]Vh ZVgcZY V gZejiVi^dc [dg WZ^c\ [V^g! Xdch^hiZci! VcY IIDJ<= DC 8G>B:

Good old days

I heard the report of a gunman on campus at ASU and thought back to 1966-1971. I lived in Indian Hall at various times and can remember the athletes walking down the hallways carrying their guns/ rifles to their rooms. We did not worry about some nut going on a shooting spree. Cecil LaGrone Centreville, Ala.

other Republicans into the fold. When they strayed, as Kennedy, John Roberts and Sandra Day O’Connor sometimes did, they felt the sting of his fierce dissents and the need to get back under the blanket. Originalism was the doctrine that he revived and made the bulwark of constitutional law. The Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution had to be interpreted precisely as people understood them when they were written, not in light of advancing knowledge and sensibilities. Phrases and concepts like freedom of speech, assembly, association and religion obviously were not intended to protect black people, who were at the time not considered full persons, or other irregular people, like women or gays. Race was a peculiar issue that confounded Scalia. He dodged questions about segregation, though he told one interviewer that he might have voted for the court’s1954 decision outlawing school segregation although it violated his principle of originalism. No theory is perfect. He was maddeningly inconsistent about the doctrine whenever the partisan need was heavy. When the Aordable Care Act came before the court and the party as one demanded its dissolution, Scalia found that the commerce clause relegated things like health care to the states and outside the ambit of the national government, although the court had many times recognized it as national prerogative. But Arkansans may remember that Scalia took precisely the opposite stance when President Ronald Reagan’s energy

commission, ignoring an act of Congress that made intrastate utility rates a state matter, ordered Arkansas electric customers to pay for giant nuclear power plants in Mississippi and Louisiana. Arkansas was run by an ambitious Democratic governor and Mississippi and Louisiana were firmly in the Republican fold. Scalia, writing for the Supreme Court, said the commerce clause gave the federal government autonomy on state utility regulation. We duly paid our southern neighbors $4.5 billion to help them on their electric bills. Then there was the switch on interpreting the religiousliberty clause, from American Indians’ peyote-smoking ritual to the recent opinions on religious exemptions in Obamacare and elsewhere. And there was last week’s order, violating all precedents but cheered by all Republican aspirants, that halted implementation of Obama’s clean-power rules even though no appellate court had ruled on their validity. Without Scalia, the court’s stay is almost certain to be lifted late this year when a circuit court upholds the rules. It was Antonin Scalia’s towering talent and mystique that he could be blatantly political but be respected, even revered, for it. The original originalists Madison and Hamilton, but no one much today, would be dismayed. One of Scalia’s nastiest dissents was in Obergefell, the gaymarriage case. Jim Obergefell, who brought the suit to force Ohio to recognize his marriage in Maryland to his late partner, who died of Lou Gehrig’s disease soon after the marriage. Sunday, Obergefell sent a tweet to the fallen jurist who had condemned the ruling: “Thank you for your service to our country.� Scalia would have reciprocated.

29(5 <($56

2) 3529(1 -8',&,$/ (;3(5,(1&( $6 -8'*( :&"3 "3.: 7&5&3"/

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yCVU IF LOPXT UIFZ BSF OFDFTTBSZ JG XF BSF HPJOH UP LFFQ PVS DPVOUZ UIF UZQF PG QMBDF XF BMM XBOU UP MJWF XPSL BOE SBJTF PVS GBNJMJFT

%P ZPV SFBMMZ XBOU B KVEHF XIP JT 40'5 PO DSJNF

ZZZ .HLWK%ODFNPDQ FRP

1213$57,6$1 (/(&7,21 0$5&+

1"*% 10-*5*$"- "%

Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.