A circle complete
From Newsweek...
Barack Obama will take the oath of office this week on the same Bible used to swear in Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln was sworn in by the then Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. This means that when Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office, Obama will lay his hand on the same Bible once used in a ceremony by the author of Dred Scott v. Sanford. It is in some ways the symbolic closing of a constitutional circle. Obama will be the first black president of the United States. And Taney, in writing Dred Scott in 1857, concluded that blacks could never even be citizens. Taney ranted that blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." It was one of the most shameful court decisions in history, and Lincoln made his opposition to Dred Scott a cornerstone of his political career.
I sincerely hope that Taney is rolling over in his grave.
Barack Obama will take the oath of office this week on the same Bible used to swear in Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln was sworn in by the then Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney. This means that when Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office, Obama will lay his hand on the same Bible once used in a ceremony by the author of Dred Scott v. Sanford. It is in some ways the symbolic closing of a constitutional circle. Obama will be the first black president of the United States. And Taney, in writing Dred Scott in 1857, concluded that blacks could never even be citizens. Taney ranted that blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." It was one of the most shameful court decisions in history, and Lincoln made his opposition to Dred Scott a cornerstone of his political career.
I sincerely hope that Taney is rolling over in his grave.