A reader offers the following challenge to prove the liberal bias of the Houston Chronicle:

I love how all of you will just dismiss the Chronicle a “liberal rag” and disparage the op/ed writers, but some of us don’t exactly see the Houston Chronicle as a bastion of liberalism.

I challenge the fine folks of LST (and its readers for that matter) to count the number of editorial pieces that lean left versus the number that lean right. Let’s do this for a week and we will have an answer to how “liberal” the Chronicle really is.

Ron

First off, does Ron even read the Chronicle? Let’s list the positions of its editorial board:

- Against the Iraq War
- In favor of more environmental regulation
- Pro-light rail
- Pro-abortion
- Anti-death penalty
- In favor of gay "rights"
- Opposed to the Bush tax plan
- In favor of more social spending
- Thinks Tom DeLay is the anti-Christ

Well, that sounds pretty liberal to me! But let’s take up this fellow on his challenge. Here’s today’s editorials:

Hard of hearing: Give the public equal say in issuing plant permits

- In favor of the NIMBY mentality. Their position restrains industrial development, supposedly for environmental reasons. A liberal staff editorial.

Real leader: Fox places democratic legacy above party’s passion

- A staff editorial praising Mexican President Victinte Fox for halting prosecution of Mexico City’s left-of-center mayor. Pretty liberal.

Another Voice: Arnold and the immigrants

- An LA Times editorial condemning Governor Schwarzenegger for praising the "Minutemen." Very liberal.

U.S. to blame for erosion of nonproliferation treaty

- An op-ed from Jimmy Carter blaming the US in foreign policy matters. It doesn’t get more liberal than the peanut farming peacenik.

Brooks: Frist blew the chance to make a deal, avert disaster

- A David Brooks column condemning the actions of Republican House Speaker Bill Frist. Brooks is middle-of-the-road, but the editorial appeals to liberals.

Dionne: Bush playing Social Security hand with stacked deck

- E.J. Dionne condemns the Bush Social Security plan. Liberal.

That’s it. If anybody wants me to do this all week, that’s fine. But I think the point is made. The Chronicle may run some conservative op-eds and columns (and occasionally even a conservative staff editorial) but these are few and far between. The paper is overwhelmingly liberal.

You heard the interview with Dan Patrick– now buy the book: "The Supremacists", by conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly.

Over at De Novo, a blog run by law students (like myself), there is a post addressing the issue of the 9th Amendment that I find interesting.

In a discussion of the privacy line of cases (Griswold-Lawrence), a constitutional law classmate remarked that he didn’t see why we didn’t just use the 9th Amendment — "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" — to avoid the textualist problem of privacy rights’ being penumbral. To say that the states could deny all rights that were not specifically enumerated in the Constitution surely conflicts with the 9th. I replied that this would give us a libertarian constitution, which he initially didn’t see as a bad thing until I pointed out that such a constitution might also deny government the ability to regulate economic liberties. The right of contract is also an unenumerated "right," and it would appeal to originalists as being much more likely to have been contemplated by the elite white males who wrote the 9th than the right to contraception or abortion.

I’ve studied the 9th Amendment a fair amount, and I reached one inescapable conclusion: it has a very narrow purpose and meaning.

Here’s the skinny. As you all probably recall from civics class, there was a huge debate over the adoption of the Bill of Rights between the federalists and the anti-federalists. The anti-federalists, who weren’t fans of the new powers given to the federal government, favored adding a bill of rights as added protection against tyranny. Many federalists, on the other hand, argued that this wasn’t necessary since the rights of the people against the federal government was already protected by enumerated powers. The government couldn’t restrict free speech, for example, because nothing in the Constitution gave them the power to do so.

But the federalists went further than that. They argued that tacking on a bill of rights could actually ruin the doctrine of enumerated powers, since the federal government would read the bill of rights as being the only restraint on its power, thus implying rights beyond what is explicitly permitted. This actually relies on old legal maxim: "expressio unius est exclusio alterius," meaning "the expression of one thing is the exclusion of another." Accordingly, the fear was that the bill of rights would be interpreted as the only limitation on federal power.

In the end, the anti-federalists obviously won, and we had a bill of rights. But the concern of the federalists that the bill of rights would wreck interpretation of enumerated powers remained. Hence the 9th Amendment. The 9th Amendment simply states a rule of interpretation — that the Bill of Rights should not be read to imply new government powers.

The confusion often comes become the 9th Amendment refers to "rights" and not "powers." However, Madison — who wrote the 9th Amendment — once openly expressed the idea that expanding rights and restricting government powers were essentially the same thing (this is highly dubious, considering that some rights are procedural, but you get the idea). The 9th was seen as working in tandem with the 10th Amendment, which reserves all non-enumerated powers to the states, to restrain the federal government. It does not mean the same thing as the 10th Amendment, though. The 9th states a rule of interpretation vis-a-vis the Bill of Rights; the 10th says nothing about interpretation. Without the 9th, the 10th Amendment would have no teeth because federal powers could be implied by the fact that they didn’t violate any specific provision in the Bill of Rights.

Why did I go through this long expanation? It’s because I think too many people accept the explanations of certain libertarians who argue that the Constitution should enforce their dogma through the 9th Amendment, when that’s just plain absurd. The 9th Amendment was not intended as some grand "catch all" by the founders. It doesn’t guarantee a right to sodomy. It doesn’t guarantee freedom of contract.

Robert Bork argued that the 9th Amendment is an "ink blot" without meaning. He was wrong — it does have a narrow meaning. However, in practical terms he was correct. Everyone who reads the 9th Amendment seems to salivate at the potential to twist it into a vehicle for enforcing their ideology through the courts. The liberals see it as protecting the right to abortion, sodomy, etc. Libertarians see it as enforcing libertarianism in both the social and economic realms. And conservatives see as protecting common law rights (like freedom of contract) while not honoring those rights not respected at common law (the right to sodomy and abortion). It’s time for everyone to admit that the 9th Amendment isn’t one’s own personal bill of rights.

Before you get too excited about this and fork over some cash, you may want to read what my former boss has to say.

Click pic for story.

For some people it was the International Festival that rocked their boat. For some of us, we’ll be having more fun at the Offshore Technology Conference. The governor says welcome, here at Lone Star Times, we’d like also to say howdy to the hard-working people who get oil out of the ground and into our gas tanks.

The secret meeting with Vice President Cheney will be on Friday evening, the agenda is world domination. If you didn’t get the memo on where it will be held, find me on Wednesday morning, give me the secret handshake and I’ll give you the password.

Avalanche Advisory Issued:

Per Drudge.

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