Anti-sodomy laws are a cultural artifact, and obsolete in most places. Jim Crow? Last time I checked the history books it was the Democratic party that passed the Jim Crow laws, not the evil conservative Republicans. The Defense of Marriage Act may indeed by something I overlooked as one of the very few times that a move to restrict someone's rights came from the right. Roe has not been suspended, but if it were, you'd have a hard to showing me, at least, that it amounted to eliminating someone's rights. I'm pro abortion, but I can't find the right to it (or the power to restrict it) in the U.S. Constitution -- it ought to be a states-rights issue, left up to the states and the people. There have been more moves from the left to require a national ID card than there have been from the right. I'm not certain where you came up with "suspension of Miranda" but most of the invasive "war on drugs" breakdowns are driven by both left and right -- both sides are equally wrong.
Most of the other "rights" you are citing aren't rights at all in the constitutional sense. People have a right to peacably assemble, for example, but is a strike "peacable?" The ones my Dad's union was involved in weren't. Where is there a constitutional right to unionize, other than the right to free association. What you are essentially doing is blaming the right for pointing out that none of these things existed in the law in the first place.
As for the Koran and Yoga examples you cite, they aren't even political examples -- they're just silly commentary. No one changed any law in any way that restricted anyone's rights in either case. You don't need to go on with the list, because there is no list. With the exception of DOMA what you have provided is a collection of out-of-date legal artifacts, worries about things that haven't happened, and the attempt to impose constitutional rights into areas about which the Constitution itself is silent. It isn't a list, it's a rant, and not one of your more lucid ones.
Terry is essentially a violation of the 4th Amendment -- find me the liberals in Congress who opposed the war on drugs, and opposed Terry searches -- you can't. Outside California, you probably can't find a more than a handful of politicians, either side of the aisle, who supported Raich, and in both cases, Raich and Terry, the extension of government power comes for the same reason. It is an utterly bipartisan extension of governmental power because a: Most people who use drugs don't vote, and that makes them easy political targets for both sides; and b: Almost no sitting lawmaker has the guts to admit "a."
(Liberals who dismiss "law and order" conservatives have a tough case to make with voters, IMHO. Are they favoring "anarchy and disorder"?)
Conservatives no more want smaller government than they want adherence to strict Constitutional limits - as evinced by their active support of DOMA, stripping of Habeas rights of those convicted, and the consistent expansion of Government budgets and staff in EVERY conservative administration since 1968 (during which the GOP has held the White House 28 of 40 years).
There are splits in the conservative movement, as with any other. A lot of political conservatives want smaller government, but they also want to stop or slow the erosion of what they see as cultural standards. I didn't and don't agree with DOMA, but I understand the people who do -- they see, for good or ill, homosexual behavior as a moral wrong, and they don't believe the government should encourage such immorality -- this is very akin to the sort of liberals who see driving SUVs as a moral wrong and call for them to be outlawed (or vandalise them <link>)
So the split in conservatism is between those small-government conservatives and the cultural conservatives. That they are allied lies in the fact that only together can that slow the slow slide into socialism seemingly favored by peopole o the left.
As for expanding the government's size, well, Reagan submitted budgets that were a: balanced, and b: reduced the size of government, for eight consecutive years -- but the budgets and the programs he cut were restored by a Democratic-controlled Congress. Bush has been a disappointment to all conservatives in this area.
If SCOTUS hadn't ruled at all in Bush v. Gore, people like you would still have complained because the matter would have gone to the Republican-controlled Florida House of Representatives. Althernatively, the original vote certification put in place by the Republican Secretary of State would have been allowed to stand. But the fact remains that in attempting to set new election count standards, Florida's Supreme Court was in violation of Article I, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, and 3 U.S.C. ยง 5 -- and these are appropriately addressed in federal juridiction, in which SCOTUS is the highest court of appeal.
Note that you argue the conservative BELIEF about when the recount should have stopped, NOT the actual issue of the BushVGore decision.
To me, the actual issues of the Bush/Gore controversy in 2000 came to only a few items. The big one was Gore's desire for a recount of only selected counties (in which case he would have lost, according to the actual count done in those counties). Then, there was the desire to count the over-votes, which I still think is ludicrous -- an overvote invalidates the ballot, period. Finally, there was the manuevering to keep out the military absentee ballots. Any or all of these matters could have been handled by certifying the final election tally as required under Florida law. Attempting to rewrite the balloting standards after the election was over (which was essentially the move tried by Florida's supreme court) is such an obvious violation of U.S. election law that I'm still a little suprised it was tried.
Thus to parse Natural Language - in particular one that is symbolically laden - REQUIRES that you bring your contemporaneous experience to the understanding of that text. And it is neurophysiologically impossible to set aside the contemporaneous training/understanding without also inherently setting aside your ability to understand the language.
Bullshit, Degs. Now -- 200 years from now, if someone finds some sort of electronic archival representation of this discussion, are they going to think I agreed with you when I wrote "Bullshit, Degs?" Of course not. Text, context and definition will show them that I disagree, and that my intent was to disagree. Text, context and definition show that "use" in the 5th Amendment means "use" and not "purpose."
As for criticizing the conservative justices for voting as conservatives, do you offer the same criticism of the liberal justices? If so, I haven't heard it. In every case where you've cited Thomas or Scalia, I've been able to cite the constitutional language they used in support of their arguments, and you have not refuted that constitutional language. Your sole argument is that the document doesn't say what it clearly does say. This is a far cry from many of the much-lauded liberal justices of the past who found new "rights" in the "penumbra" of the constitution. If this is conservative activism, it is at least more soundly constitutional than liberal activism. I don't think you'd deny there is such a thing, even among the exalted SCOTUS justices.
As for Roe, it created enforcement powers for the federal government -- it took the power to regulate abortions away from the state's local control, thereby expanding federal power. That IS the creation of new law. As I said, I see it as a 10th Amendment issue. (The odd thing is, I read a really interesting article in Atlantic, I think, saying that Roe probably wasn't necessary -- there was a rising trend toward legalization in the states. So not only was it a bad ruling, it was generally unnecessary policy).
