Liberal Lunacy of the Day ~ The Judge Roberts' Hearings

Liberal Lunacy ^ | 9/22/2005 | Beckwith

[Beckwith]

The Judge Roberts' Hearing ~ bring on the clowns

The Judge Roberts' Hearings for his appointment to the office Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court featured the antics of liberal senators Biden, Kennedy, Schumer and Feinstein, who demonstrated that the Democrats are indeed in the throes of a collective nervous breakdown.  They are really frustrated and there are few things as entertaining as a frustrated liberal.

While Judge Roberts patiently fielded questions from the liberal senators, they continually  embarrassed themselves on national TV with their misunderstanding of the constitution, the law and the government. 

Their inquisition was peppered with with inanities, such as:
 
Biden ~ "Just talk to me as a father."
Kennedy ~ ""We can only wonder what they don't want us to know."
Schumer ~ "Are you within the mainstream?"
Feinstein ~ "I'm trying to see your feelings as a man."

In the ramp-up to the hearings, the Democrats and their proxies searched high and low for anything with which they could tar Judge John Roberts. The New York Times went so far as to dig into the adoption records of Judge Roberts children.

Roberts turned out to be as clean as a whistle. He also turned out to be a brilliant legal scholar and a whole bunch smarter and more eloquent than his interrogators.  This really flipped out the Democratic members of the committee and left them with few choices except to babble on to fill their allotted time.

Say it ain't so, Joe

Joe Biden, who asked 15 minute questions and then prevented Judge Roberts from responding, clearly played lead Doofus during the hearings.  He demonstrated that he knows as little about baseball as he does the United States Constitution.

Commenting on Judge Roberts' observation that a judge is like a baseball umpire, Biden said to Roberts, "Your job isn't simply to call balls and strikes but to determine the strike zone."

No, Joe, that's wrong.  It's the rules committee that formalizes the rules of the game.  The strike zone is described and formalized by the rules committee, not the umpire on the field.  It's the umpires job to enforce the rules.  Not to create the rules.  You can't have each umpire deciding what the strike zone was.  It would be the end of baseball.

In the same manner, it is the Congress of the United States of America, the legislative body of government that is chartered by the Constitution of the United States of America to make the rules (laws).  It is the Judicial Branch that is chartered to interpret those rules (laws).

But smilin' Joe, who claims to have taught Constitutional Law, is confused about that too.

On CBS's "Face the Nation," July 3, 2005, Biden actually differentiated between Supreme Court judges and other judges saying, "Because a circuit court judge is bound by stare decisis, they don't get to make new law.   They have to abide by [legal precedent].  [The Supreme Court] is a different ball game."

Yup, you read it correctly.  Joe Biden, senator, constitutional scholar and professor, believes it is the proper roll of the Supreme Court to make law.

Ted gets it wrong too

Ted Kennedy, proving he's as knowledgeable about the U. S. Constitution as Joe Biden, began his questioning of Judge Roberts with the following statement: "Judges are appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and it is our duty to ask questions on great issues that matter to the American people and speak for them. Judge Roberts, I hope you will respond fully and candidly to such questions, not just to earn our approval, but to prove to the American people that you have earned the right to a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land."

I'm no lawyer or constitutional scholar, but I take issue with the statement, "Judges are appointed by ... the Senate."

It's my understanding that judges, federal AND state, are appointed by the executive. The president appoints federal judges and governors appoint state judges. Yes, Teddy, senators do provide advice and consent, so you got part of it right.

The senator couldn't sit still during his inquisitio of Judge Roberts. He shook his head, huffed, snorted, flipped through his notes, and continually interrupted the judge with outlandish statements. He often left his seat to give various news networks his liberal color commentary.

Rambling along, Kennedy asked Roberts if he would be one who makes law or interprets law, digressed into the price of gasoline and the safety of prescription drugs and returned to civil rights issues by disputing the nominee's contention that memos he wrote as a young administration lawyer did not necessarily reflect his own views, but those of the administration he served.

The committee chairman had to speak to Kennedy 5 times to let Roberts respond.  Roberts finally pushed back when he told the aggressive Kennedy that Kennedy was misstating his position on the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I⁴⁹

Chuck Schumer couldn’t wait to begin and referred to himself forty-nine times in his opening statement.

Throughout his questioning Schumer claimed that he only wanted to know if Roberts was a “mainstream conservative” or an “ideologue.” 

He said, "To me the pivotal question, which will determine my vote is this: Are you within the mainstream --albeit the conservative mainstream --or are you an ideologue who will seek to use the court to impose your views upon us?" 

Oozing insincerity and implying that there was a chance he might vote to confirm him, Schumer blasted Roberts for refusing to answer numerous questions before the committee.

Since joining the committee, Schumer has been on a mission to re-define the standards for judicial confirmations by attempting to force nominees to endorse a broad menu of liberal policy positions.

This is the same Schumer who has opposed every contested Bush nominee to the federal bench and who held confirmation hearing “practice sessions”, using a Harvard lawyer to play the part of Judge Roberts.

Schumer's greatest insight, noting the chief justice's future responsibilities were "awesome -- not in the way my teenage daughter would use the word but in the biblical sense, like angels trembling in the presence of God." 

Whoa, hey senator, don't you know there's no God stuff in the public square?

Enter the Nazis

Not to be outdone, Senator Dianne Feinstein couldn't get past the first day of the hearings without comparing American religious conservatives with Nazis and fascists who murdered Jews in World War II.

Feinstein’s attack occurred when she raised the issue of “the separation of church and state.”  After reviewing the history of religious persecution, Feinstein described a memorial, consisting of copper-covered shoes, that she saw in Budapest.

Feinstein said, "During World War II, it turned out that Hungarian fascists and Nazi soldiers forced thousands of Jews, including men, women and children, to remove their shoes before shooting them and letting their bodies float down the Danube."

Feinstein asserts that various religious groups came to America to escape persecution and “to protect against religious persecution, the framers” of the Constitution “established a secular government that would remain separate from religion.”

Then comes the kicker: “[T]hese basic principles could be severely weakened or unraveled depending on the Court’s allowing government funding of religious education, prayer in school, and the display of religious symbols on public property and land.”

So, according to Senator Feinstein, if you allow school vouchers, graduation prayers, and a crèche in a city park, you will end up with the corpses of shoeless Jews floating down the Potomac.

[Beckwith]

Someone made sense

If Democrats will not support Roberts, said Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, then they will not endorse any GOP nominee.

"They all admit that his is qualified," Hatch said in an interview. "So if they vote against him, it just means they are playing partisan politics and they'll look like hell."

In a way, Schumer did a favor for every judge who will follow in the future.  Roberts didn’t fall into his trap and, as a result, has further established precedent for not taking legal positions or opinions as a prequalification for confirmation.

Now that's really gonna drive them crazy when the appointee for the next seat refuses to answer their crazy quaestions.