Free Republic

The nine august justices of the United States Supreme Court — or at least the five conservative Republicans — chose the wrong time to make a sea change in constitutional law, admitting the Second Amendment to our pantheon of civil liberties. By demonstrating how willing they are to toss aside decades of jurisprudence in pursuit of a conservative agenda, they sent a chill into the souls of women all across the nation and resurrected fears that Roe v. Wade is next on the chopping block.

If there was a single thread that ran through President Bush's two very different picks for the Supreme Court, it was stealth. Neither Roberts nor Miers had committed themselves on Roe v. Wade. Is the president ducking a fight? If so, in this he is not his best self. He hasn't shrunk from confrontations over taxes, or war, or medical research, and his forceful arguments in those areas have amounted to leadership. Seeking a stealth candidate for the most important seat (i.e., the swing vote) on the Supreme Court certainly looks like weakness. And it's borrowed trouble. Despite the accumulating...

On Bush Supreme Court nomination I am very curious about the question that Sen. Charles Schumer has asked Supreme Court nominee John Roberts: "Is it appropriate for the Supreme Court to overturn a well-settled precedent, upon which Americans have come to rely?" Is Sen. Schumer referring to Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), where the Supreme Court overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), a well-settled precedent upon which Americans had come to rely for 58 years, and which consigned black Americans to Jim Crow laws, second-class citizenship and legal segregation? What puzzles me is why Sen. Schumer seems so opposed to...