Sunday Open Thoughts On This Week’s Pending Announcement...
The next nominee that the president picks shouldn't be a "moderate." That's an Alberto Gonzales sort of pick, and would backfire against the party--not the president--badly. The president, as we all know, can't run in '08. The backlash may be against the GOP in '06 should someone like Gonzales be named. We are beginning the next election cycle already, as was evident with the Democrats who voted in favor of Chief Justice Roberts. Those that are in a dogfight in their home states discovered which way the wind was blowing, and made a strategical decision to support the man.
The president needs to pay attention to what the people of this nation want. He hasn't been a president I have been wholly happy with for a number of reasons. But, those reasons are irrelevant on this subject. And based on his choices for judges, he seems to be sticking to more Right-minded, Constitutionally-minded jurists, and less towards moderates. So, when it comes to the next pick, I have little or no worry. The people believed him when he stated he wanted judges "in the mold of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas."
That tells me that he gets it. It's the media and the Left that don't get it.
They don't seem to understand that their very ideology is wrecking the country, and the judiciary. It's not helping us. It's hurting us. A laundry list of cases proves this, starting waaay back in the late 1950's with Griswold; through the 70's with Roe and Doe; through the 1990's with Lee, Lamb's Chapel, and Romer; and into the new millenium with Stenberg, Lawrence, McConnell, Kelo, and Grutter. All of these cases have adversely affected this nation. They have upheld affirmative action, which is blatantly discriminatory. They have legalized the act of abortion, which has no jurisprudential support under the Constitution. They have even supported the seizing of private property under the auspice of "public good" rather than "public use," as the Constitution explicitly states.
And all of these shenanigans have led up to the point where we are right now. We are in the fight of our lives to put the judiciary back in it's place as not only the weakest of the three branches, but also the lone branch designed--by the Framers--to protect our rights. A textualist (as I believe both of us are) or a constructionist is what is needed now on the Supreme Court. Activists are for Congress, not for the courts.
Of course, it should always be a well-qualified nominee. It should never rest upon ethnicity, race, or gender. Those are three of the easiest ways to politicize the court; a court that already has plenty of politics within it. Should that nominee be a woman, or a Hispanic, or even black is irrelevant. Those additional benefits will not determine whether the nominee is qualified. Only a careful examination of their case records, their briefs, and addresses to other bodies (such as a student body, or an address to the Federalist Society) can determine the qualifications of a pending jurist.
The president needs to nominate the best person for the job, that abides by the criteria he stated in 2004. Those would be people who interpret the Constitution rather than engage in rogue activism. This next nominee could be one of the final nails in the coffin of Supreme Court activism. We know that Justice Ginsburg is not well, and that Justice Stevens has contemplated retirement for the last couple of years. A loss of either one, prior to the end of the president's final term in office, could prove to be disastrous to the Left. The Left always likes to bring up the concept of balance on the court. Balance has no merit on the court whatsoever. Balance is what legislatures strike. The court is to issue an unbiased, jurisprudence-backed decision.
And I feel the president will nominate one of those types of judges. He knows what America wants, and he knows what America needs, especially on the nation's highest court.
Publius II
ADDENDUM: Completely off topic, but the link below will take you to some interesting photos put up by Yahoo of the famous Red Mass in Washington, DC today. I really like the photo of Justice Thomas laughing outside on the steps when the Mass was completed. This event occurs the Sunday prior to the opening of the new session of the Supreme Court. That opening date is tomorrow, and we, at the Asylum, will be watching...
http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=%22red+mass%22&ei=UTF-8&c=news_photos
The next nominee that the president picks shouldn't be a "moderate." That's an Alberto Gonzales sort of pick, and would backfire against the party--not the president--badly. The president, as we all know, can't run in '08. The backlash may be against the GOP in '06 should someone like Gonzales be named. We are beginning the next election cycle already, as was evident with the Democrats who voted in favor of Chief Justice Roberts. Those that are in a dogfight in their home states discovered which way the wind was blowing, and made a strategical decision to support the man.
The president needs to pay attention to what the people of this nation want. He hasn't been a president I have been wholly happy with for a number of reasons. But, those reasons are irrelevant on this subject. And based on his choices for judges, he seems to be sticking to more Right-minded, Constitutionally-minded jurists, and less towards moderates. So, when it comes to the next pick, I have little or no worry. The people believed him when he stated he wanted judges "in the mold of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas."
That tells me that he gets it. It's the media and the Left that don't get it.
They don't seem to understand that their very ideology is wrecking the country, and the judiciary. It's not helping us. It's hurting us. A laundry list of cases proves this, starting waaay back in the late 1950's with Griswold; through the 70's with Roe and Doe; through the 1990's with Lee, Lamb's Chapel, and Romer; and into the new millenium with Stenberg, Lawrence, McConnell, Kelo, and Grutter. All of these cases have adversely affected this nation. They have upheld affirmative action, which is blatantly discriminatory. They have legalized the act of abortion, which has no jurisprudential support under the Constitution. They have even supported the seizing of private property under the auspice of "public good" rather than "public use," as the Constitution explicitly states.
And all of these shenanigans have led up to the point where we are right now. We are in the fight of our lives to put the judiciary back in it's place as not only the weakest of the three branches, but also the lone branch designed--by the Framers--to protect our rights. A textualist (as I believe both of us are) or a constructionist is what is needed now on the Supreme Court. Activists are for Congress, not for the courts.
Of course, it should always be a well-qualified nominee. It should never rest upon ethnicity, race, or gender. Those are three of the easiest ways to politicize the court; a court that already has plenty of politics within it. Should that nominee be a woman, or a Hispanic, or even black is irrelevant. Those additional benefits will not determine whether the nominee is qualified. Only a careful examination of their case records, their briefs, and addresses to other bodies (such as a student body, or an address to the Federalist Society) can determine the qualifications of a pending jurist.
The president needs to nominate the best person for the job, that abides by the criteria he stated in 2004. Those would be people who interpret the Constitution rather than engage in rogue activism. This next nominee could be one of the final nails in the coffin of Supreme Court activism. We know that Justice Ginsburg is not well, and that Justice Stevens has contemplated retirement for the last couple of years. A loss of either one, prior to the end of the president's final term in office, could prove to be disastrous to the Left. The Left always likes to bring up the concept of balance on the court. Balance has no merit on the court whatsoever. Balance is what legislatures strike. The court is to issue an unbiased, jurisprudence-backed decision.
And I feel the president will nominate one of those types of judges. He knows what America wants, and he knows what America needs, especially on the nation's highest court.
Publius II
ADDENDUM: Completely off topic, but the link below will take you to some interesting photos put up by Yahoo of the famous Red Mass in Washington, DC today. I really like the photo of Justice Thomas laughing outside on the steps when the Mass was completed. This event occurs the Sunday prior to the opening of the new session of the Supreme Court. That opening date is tomorrow, and we, at the Asylum, will be watching...
http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=%22red+mass%22&ei=UTF-8&c=news_photos
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:16 PM
1 Comments:
Publius,
Good, sound, reasoned post. I must concur completely. The stakes, right now, are too high to ignore the need for qualified, sensible jurists.
Mistress Pundit
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