Souter’s Gone. Let the Democratic Carnage Begin!
The big news today is the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who I prefer to think of as The Man Who Should Have Been Bork. There will be much speculation about who President Obama will name to replace him (Michelle Malkin has a solid opening list) and what Republicans should do about it (early returns leans toward digging in only on the very worst nominee to lay back and wait for the President to step into a chuckhole).
Given the President’s track record on nominees thus far there’s a good chance that his first nominee will be so terribly flawed that they won’t even make it to a confirmation hearing and we may not see a relatively scandal-free nominee until August or September. When the nominee does make it to the Judicial Committee, the Democrats are likely to find themselves already painted into a corner thanks to Arlen Specter’s perfidity.
Even before we get to that point, though, the President is going to have to tiptoe through a minefield of political correctness and it’s inevitable that he will trip an explosion or two. The battle inside Democratic Party over the next couple of months over who eventually gets nominated is going to be very ugly. Every activist group that hitched their wagon to President Obama is going to push their pet jurist on the White House and there won’t be much room for compromise or civility. There will be blood on the floor and conservatives should make sure America sees every bit of it.
In the end, the nomination will come down to what President Obama has already said he dream judge will be – a feeling, empathizing social engineer and not an impartial arbiter who rules without fear or favor. I think it’s pretty obvious that his ideas are miles outside what most Americans think a Supreme Court Justice should be and make a joke of hundreds of years of legal tradition but it’ll be up to Republicans in Congress to make those points when the time comes.
By the way, if you you’re not familiar with the President’s recipe for a good judge, here what he said before Planned Parenthood:
I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And one way is a cramped and narrow way in which the Constitution and the courts essentially become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society. And then there’s another vision of the court [sic] that says that the courts are the refuge of the powerless. Because oftentimes they can lose in the democratic back and forth. They may be locked out and prevented from fully participating in the democratic process. That’s one of the reasons I opposed Alito, you know, as well as Justice Roberts. When Roberts came up and everybody was saying, “You know, he’s very smart and he’s seems a very decent man and he loves his wife. You know, he’s good to his dog. He’s so well qualified.”
I said, well look, that’s absolutely true and in most Supreme Court decis–, in the overwhelming number of Supreme Court decisions, that’s enough. Good intellect, you read the statute, you look at the case law and most of the time, the law’s pretty clear. Ninety-five percent of the time. Justice Ginsberg, Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia they’re all gonna agree on the outcome.
But it’s those five percent of the cases that really count. And in those five percent of the cases, what you’ve got to look at is—what is in the justice’s heart. What’s their broader vision of what America should be. Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire but the issues that come before the Court are not sport, they’re life and death. And we need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges. Alright?
In other words, a judge is not an impartial arbiter of the law but just another powerful bureaucrat who should tell us what to do based on their feelings.
He made essentially the same point to Wolf Blitzer on CNN here.
UPDATE: Duane Lester found yet another place where the President expresses his desire to appoint a Supreme Court Oprah instead of a judge.
Here’s a question. Would you want to put the entire law of the United States – every line of it – in the hands of someone who can change any part of it that comes before them based primarily on how they’re feeling that day?
I sure as heck don’t and I don’t care whether that person’s a baby-eating right-winger or a tree-hugging lefty.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Anyone Remember Miguel Estrada? Hispanic Democrats in Congress Don’t
- Let The Court Cases Go…
- President Obama Suddenly Discovers A Taste for Executive Power
Category: President Barack Obama, The Rise of the Nanny State, The Social Issues
Thanks for reminding me of that comment. If the Framers wanted judicial activism, the thing Obama is describing above, why did they include the amendment process?
Don't consult your feelings, consult the Constitution. It really isn't that hard, is it?
A fairly and impartially-applied law is anathema to the progressive movement. If judges interpret the Constitution strictly and based on the understandings of the people who ratified it, progressives can never have the power they need to create the world they believe should exist. Our law stands in their way. It is their sworn enemy.
[...] by Duane Lester on May 1st, 2009 • 1 views Clicks Jimmie at the Sundries Shack reminded me in this post that Obama has detailed what his criteria would be for a new [...]
There are over 300 volumes of set law precedent in this country because judges have had to legislate from the bench. The founders planned the system to work like that. If it wasn't for judges legislating from the bench, we'd still have slaves in the backyards and churches would have to pay their fair share of taxes just like everyone else and Al Gore would've been president for the past 8 years.
It's all about dimwits chasing that pro-life carrot and trying to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing activist judges. The 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats on the bench for the past 40 years just isn't enough for them. It's not like there are any abortion cases scheduled to appear before the court. The Republicans of South Dakota resolved all them and made Roe vs. Wade null and void. Still chasing the carrot though even though Republicans set back the pro-life movement three decades in South Dakota. How simple minded the truly simple can be.
Obama will probably pick a liberal to replace the liberal picked by Republicans. The Liberal picked by the same Republican who promised he wouldn't pick a Liberal just like the Republican before him who promised not to pick pro-life judges for the bench and gave us 2 pro-life judges for the bench. It was under the Republican watch that abortion was legalized and its under the Republican watch that abortion remains legal to this day. (cue soundbite of Palin advocating her choice at an anti-choice rally)
Syntax, I'm afraid that you don't understand the founders intention for the judicial branch. Read a bit of the Federalist papers, or Jefferson's own writing on how making the Constitution a "living" document would be incredibly bad for the country.
The reason we don't have slaves is twofold: the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither of which involved legislating from the bench. Also, Justice Hugo Black attempted to remove the tax-exempt status of churches. His decision was the minority not because of legislation from the bench but the First Amendment.
As for the Al Gore decision, well, you need to read a newspaper on occasion. I suggest the Miami Herald.
Wow! I thought the constitution's limits on what government can do were protecting this powerless person from those "powerful in society" using the government to impose their will on me. Thanks for setting me straight Obama. /sarc
The quote above looks like something out of a high school valedictorians graduation speech. The ignorance, the stupidity, the emotions over all else senselessness. How can people imagine that this guy is intelligent?
Another hot-air blog from first-name-only right wing extremist, "Jimmy" merely recycles, (oops, sorry for that leftist term)the misinformation that permeates the Fox network and everything Murdoch. How sad that these pathetic fools drape themselves in our flag and proud heritage. The hatred and rampant racism that is promoted around the clock by Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck and the Bush apologists is not just un-American, it's disgusting.
Your opinion would carry a bit more weight if you spelled my name correctly. Aside from that, you get a C- for your diatribe. You forgot to mention the Jews and the Gnomes of Zurich. Any good anti-Murdoch boilerplate has at lease one of the two. Come back after your Advanced Talking Point Recitation class is over.