Sonny Tufts
Member

It just goes to show that insurance and faith don't always work out the way they're supposed to.

You continue to miss the point. It will provide money for your family when you aren't around to do so. Whether you'll admit it or not, money and trust in God pay the bills much better than just trust in God.

Did God rebuild their homes and turn on the electricity? Perhaps you should reread my last point, which was limited to life insurance.

I guess all those people in Puerto Rico who trusted in God and whose homes were destroyed by the hurricane just didn't have enough faith, right?

But who's to decide if a State has violated the Constitution? If a State has the right to nullify a SCOTUS decision it doesn't like, it certainly has the right to nullify one that says the State has violated the Constitution. Did Kansas have the right to nullify the ruling that its segregated public schools violated the 14th Amendment?

To the contrary, there are several. Congress can limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Court. It can gut its budget. The President can refuse to enforce its decrees. The Constitution doesn't specify the number of Justices, so if Congress and the President don't like a particular decision they can appoint additional justices to overturn it when a similar case arises in the future (which is what FDR's court-packing plan was all about, although the Senate refused to go along). In extreme cases the states can amend the Constitution to overturn a SCOTUS decision, although this has happened only three times. The problem is that some political body needs to have the authority to determine constitutional issues. If you're going to allow state nullification, then you're gutting not only the 14th Amendment and the Bill of Rights in the state but also specific prohibitions on state action in the Constitution ("We don't care that SCOTUS says our law amounts to a bill of attainder, and we hereby nullify its decision."). If Congress gets to be the judge of the constitutionality of its own enactments then the Bill of Rights is worthless nation-wide. To those who think Congress should impeach members of the Court who, in the opinion of Congress, have violated the Constitution, consider a hypothetical federal ban on private firearm ownership that is overturned by a 9-0 SCOTUS decision. The entire court gets impeached, right? Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it.