Here Come Da Judge

Remember Laugh-In? If you're too young, I understand it's running on some cable channels now. I never fully understood the joke ('Here come da judge'), but vaguely understood it to have something to do with prosecution of drug users.

So those who were in on that joke in the 60's now make up the "establishment" in the Democratic party. They still love peace, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Maybe that partially helps explain the whole confusing senate machinations around voting to confirm or reject Bush's judicial nominations.

We could argue about what value there is in the filibuster rules themselves, which have been a senate tradition for so long. But anybody who's been out there claiming the other party is shredding the constitution, whether by threatening to eliminate filibusters or actually using them is lying. There's no other way to say it. Very simply, there is no constitutional right to filibuster. It's a longstanding senate tradition that allows the minority party the ability to block legislation they find egregious.

So to compound the whole constitutional lie, the Democrats went a step further with a whopper of a lie about the right to filibuster judicial nominations being part of the longstanding senate tradition while suggesting it was enshrined in the constitution. Whoa, time for a reality check.

First of all, the Republican leadership was not even suggesting removing the filibuster from normal legislative debate; just judicial nominees. And they correctly pointed out that judicial nominees have never before been filibustered until the Democrats began doing it when they lost the majority in the senate. And it's become clear to me that the reason Democrats were filibustering the Bush judges was not at all about qualifications and only peripherally about the judges' philosophy. It's simply a power play to make sure they deny Bush the ability to nominate any judges at the highest levels from the Appellate courts to the Supreme Court.

Then the other lie is buried inside a truth. Democrats like to point out that they've allowed approvals on the vast majority of nominations brought to the senate from the president. It's a meaningless statement that's purpose is to mislead - that large majority of confirmed judges were for minor court appointments that have little bearing on what sort of high court decisions we will see over the rest of our lifetimes.

So was Priscilla Owen an extremist right-wing activist nominee? Well, if your view of the world is so skewed as to call a track record of outstanding abilities to interpret and apply the law extremist, maybe so. But the reality in Priscilla Owen's case is that she's one of most experienced and qualified judges in the country. What disqualifies her from appointment in the eyes of Democrats is that she apparently has expressed views against partial-birth abortion and in favor of parental notification of abortions for minor children. And she appears to be a church-going Christian (gasp!). The other disqualification might be simply that she's from Texas.

Democrats say that the Republicans blocked lots of Bill Clinton's nominees, and that's true. However, the way they blocked them was with their votes, not with filibusters. And of course the majority party controls the chair of the judicial committee, and they can just simply hold back a nomination from review in committee. Would the Democrats like to try to suggest that no Reagan or Bush Sr. appointees got tabled in committee when it was chaired by a Dem?

So which party has been more successful at getting their own "extreme" judges appointed to the bench? I think we only need to look back at Robert Bork and Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. Bork is a brilliant jurist who happened to have a conservative constitutional viewpoint. His nomination got huge media play and so much spin that the casual observer may have thought his appointment to the supreme court was tantamount to a Nazi regime taking power. In stark contrast, Clinton's appointment of Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, a radical leftist ACLU lawyer, sailed through with little scrutiny and not a little cheerleading from the news media.

Honestly, which is more extreme? Believing that the US Constitution set the clear direction for our free republic and all laws must be held up to its standards, or believing that the Constitution doesn't matter and a judge's own feelings about what is just and right should drive their decisions? Need I state the obvious conclusion I've reached, that if we appoint a majority of judges with the second opinion, we will lose our republic to a tyrannical socialist-communist elite government? I believe we're already almost there.

The compromise deal reached by the gang of 14 so-called "moderates" that allowed Priscilla Owen to get to the floor for a vote probably hasn't actually solved the problem. There are plenty of indications that the deal has probably already fallen through:

• As soon as the deal was made Harry Reid stated that they will continue to filibuster. Apparently, the wording that says they reserve the right to filibuster only the "most extreme" nominees he's going to feel free to interpret once again as pretty much every judge Bush sends for advice and consent.
• They've already engaged the filibuster on Bolton, the UN nominee. So it's business as usual less than a week after the deal.
• Gleeful Democratic leaders gloated about their victory in the compromise, effectively hanging the 7 Republicans who signed onto the deal by painting them as stupid and naive losers. Reminds me of what they did to Bush Sr. on the tax increase deal - they made the deal, immediately reneged on their part of the bargain, and gleefully watched as their efforts enraged the republican base and cleared the way for the election of Bill Clinton.
  

What is disheartening for me is seeing that only 2 Democrats had the courage to defy their party leadership to vote for Owens. That shows that the majority of senators have lost their ability to make their own decisions and have placed their party's political aspirations for power above doing the right thing for their country.

Republicans are guilty too, just look at the messes with healthcare, trade and immigration that neither party is willing to tackle in a meaningful way. One might say with some credence that this judicial stuff is just a distraction from what's really important. However, at least one Supreme Court nominee is likely this year, and that nominee will represent what philosophy will dominate the court for the next generation. So it is true that both parties understand how critical this fight is to the future of the nation.

As do I.