Posted on 02/04/2005 2:22:09 PM PST by cpforlife.org
CHICAGO - Pro-lifers here have been engrossed in a book issued two weeks ago by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich which may point to a solution to woes social conservatives have with the federal judiciary. Gingrich was a dependable pro-life vote when he served in Congress, but never exactly a champion of the movement. Yet in his book Winning the Future (Regnery, Washington, D.C., 2005), he outlines probably a last-ditch, nuclear strategy that can restore the balance between Congress and the judiciary that the founders intended.
The book is ostensibly tied to his possible run for president in 2008: That he entertains even the slightest hint of running for president involves a great deal of chutzpah. Given his track record as speaker, there is little doubt that, brilliant as he is, a President Gingrich would be the same disaster he was as speaker.
He is unsurpassed when it comes to molding issues to fit a strategy, but he cannot stand political prosperity. After victory he messes up by applying arrogance and disdain to his followers. In the early 1980s he designed a battle plan to win a Republican majority in the House that will forever be a model for those seeking victory.
Once he became speaker, however, he kept key allies in the dark on his quick changes of mind in mid-legislative battle; boldly sought to tame President Clinton by shutting down the government, then lost his nerve; allowed his personal goals to overshadow the , speakership; ran the risk of ethics censure from a lucrative book and: teaching deal; permitted his noisy objection over not getting a preferential seat on Clinton's plane to distract from news coverage of his program.
These things and his being married three times, the latest to an ex-staffer with whom he conducted a tumultuous affair which erupted during the Clinton impeachment, revealed his weaknesses. With ex-allies turning against him, he resigned his seat for a lucrative sinecure as a lecturer and TV commentator.
But Gingrich's failings as a leader do not subtract from his brilliant conceptual grasp of politics. Despite his manifold errors, he built a majority that survived him, having achieved the rust tax cut in 16 years, welfare reform (reducing those on welfare by 60%), the first four balanced budgets since the 1920s, the first financial audit of the House in history and term limits for committee chairmen.
More than anyone else, Gingrich resembles Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was a renaissance man: excellent scholar, soldier, cunning lawyer, self-taught economics wizard, rhetorical genius. While he reported to George Washington, a man of superb judgment and common sense, Hamilton had no peer. Relying on his own judgment, he soon allowed bitterness and quarrels to defeat him. A sexual scandal caused him to retreat to the backroom.
Similarly, when Gingrich had Dick Armey (R., Texas) and Bill Paxton (R., N.Y.) to test his ideas on, he followed a prudent course. Once elected speaker he relied upon no one but himself and went bottoms up. So the good that comes from Gingrich stems from his ideas, not from him in the role of presidential candidate. Two vitally important chapters in the book are "The Centrality of Our Creator in Defining America" and "Bringing the Courts Back 'Under the Constitution". He does not elucidate on pro-life as such, but draws an eloquent battle plan for taming the federal judiciary.
As pro-lifers know, article IlI, section 1 of the Constitution gives members of the Supreme Court lifetime tenure during what it stipulates as "good behavior." Also, Congress has the power to withdraw certain legal subject matters from Supreme Court review, in section 2, subsection 2 which reads: "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact" - and here is the key phrase -- "with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make."
The power given Congress over the courts is outlined in The Federalist, nn. 80 and 81, written by Hamilton. And it has been used before: by liberals with the Norris-LaGuardia Act in the 1930s and by conservatives in 1996 with the Anti-Terrorism and Death Penalty Act, limiting the Supreme Court's power to review death penalty cases involving terrorists.
A scant majority in the past has kept Republicans from doing it with respect to abortion. Gingrich attests that the time may well be at hand to utilize it on behalf of the; Creator, citing the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance "one nation under God" is unconstitutional. A possible Supreme Court agreement by a 5 to 4 vote endangers our Judeo-Christian heritage, he says, as indeed it does.
The wonder of it all is that Gingrich, a truly revolutionary thinker, has not prescribed the tactic for pro-life: but he has not. One reason may be that in his philosophy he is heavily libertarian. Now with the subject of the Creator he has come aboard.
The National Anvil
Gingrich's proposal is as simple as it is radical. Congress passes a bill which the president signs into law that describes the legitimacy of "our Creator" in undergirding American rights. If the court finds the legislation is unconstitutional, Congress finds those justices who so believe as falling short of "good behavior," the constitutional requirement for judges. You can imagine the liberal insurrection that will occur when the Congress does this.
Will we be antagonized unendingly by impeachment trials? There's a quick way which is as old as the public purse. Congress should simply eliminate the judgeships and thereby cut their pay. "Thus," he summarizes, "much of the 9th circuit could find themselves without a court to serve on." That is the brilliant Gingrich who has become a priceless national resource.
For many of us, Gingrich (Ph.D. history - Tulane) has an overabundance of imperfection – but it is in idea implementation, not with the ideas themselves. In the coming years he will serve as an excellent hammer with which to pound out ideas on the national anvil. The sparks from that forge should serve the nation well.
We had a 90 second minor discrepancy. The only one accusing is you and we've all been more that patient with you.
Why are you behaving like a belligerent high school hall monitor? Don't you realize how utterly sad you are making yourself look. Step back take a deep breath and look at how you are coming across. It was self defeating for you to start this and now it's become self immolating for you on this site.
You are fighting something that's only in your mind and it's very sad.
Please just take a break. I will pray for you.
"Why don't you realize that I am not in any competition with the mods or FR"
Because you are, on this very thread.
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