Carnal Reason

A reader recently commented that ‘Senator Kennedy is doing his job under the Constitution, “advising and consenting” regarding a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court’.

Here is how the NY Times chararterizes the Democrats’ role in the recent hearings on the Alito nomination.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - Disheartened by the administration’s success with the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Democratic leaders say that President Bush is putting an enduring conservative ideological imprint on the nation’s judiciary, and that they see little hope of holding off the tide without winning back control of the Senate or the White House.

In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.

That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.
The New York Times

According to the Times, the Democrat’s premeditated intent was not to advise and consent, but to oppose the President and to obstruct the nomination of qualified judges. For once I believe the Times.

Another reader wrote “Sychophants on one side, buffoons on the other, and I heard not one question about the Kelo vs New London travesty.” Nor will you, and certainly not from Democrats. The Kelo decision was a major victory for socialism.

I would have liked to have heard some discussion of cases such as this, this, this, or this. Of course, if the Senate wanted to put an end to such travesties, it could do so directly and without the help of the courts.

But it is instructive to notice what Kennedy, Schumer, et alia actually chose to focus on.

Throughout last week’s hearings, the Democrats had five key concerns: abortion, warrantless wiretaps, abortion, abortion and abortion. Neither abortion absolutism nor constitutional protection for terrorists resonates with the broader public — and, indeed, going on cable TV round the clock for a week to flaunt such peculiar fixations only makes them look ever more disconnected from reality. When Ted Kennedy & Co. were demanding that the ancient records of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton be subpoenaed, I received a fluttering of e-mails comparing the Dems to Sen. McCarthy. But Red-baiting, unlike partial-birth abortion, had the advantage of public support.
Mark Steyn, the Chicago Sun-Times

Posted on January 16th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: law, politics