Posted on 04/13/2003 4:44:49 AM PDT by billorites
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL candidate John Kerry called for a domestic "regime change" while visiting Peterborough, NH on April 2, mocking President Bush's policy in Iraq.
Six days later in Iowa, he gave a hint of what a John Kerry regime would look like when he told a gathering of Democratic women in Des Moines that only judges who agree with him on abortion would serve on the Supreme Court.
The double-talking junior senator from Massachusetts — who has been both pro- and anti-Vietnam War, pro- and anti-intervention in Iraq, and most recently, both Irish and not Irish — nonetheless claims this exclusionary policy is not a "litmus test" (red, you get the judgeship; blue, you don't — no other factors considered).
"That is not a litmus test. . . . Any President ought to appoint people to the Supreme Court who understand the Constitution and its interpretation by the Supreme Court," he argued.
Right. No anti-abortion judges need apply is not a litmus test. The only other person besides Kerry who could state this contradiction with a straight face is Iraq's former information minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, who recently declared on television, "There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad" as smoke and hellfire plumed behind him.
With such expertise in doublespeak, Sahhaf, unseen since Tuesday, would make an excellent Kerry campaign spokesman.
In addition to talking out both sides of his mouth again, Kerry is advocating a dangerous standard for the federal bench: To get appointed, you must agree to uphold whatever ruling — Roe v. Wade, for example — the last crop of judges handed down.
"I think people who go to the Supreme Court ought to interpret the Constitution as it is interpreted, and if they have another point of view, then they're not supporting the Constitution, which is what a judge does," Kerry said.
First of all, a judge's job is not to "support," as Kerry puts it, another judge's interpretation of the Constitution. The judicial branch is the body that decides whether existing laws comply with constitutional principles. It is the executive branch, to which Kerry wants to transfer, that is charged with upholding — or supporting — those laws.
As President, Kerry's duty would be to uphold the judges' interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, Kerry wants the judges to uphold the interpretation of the last group of judges.
That's dangerous. Kerry is effectively saying that once the Supreme Court rules on an issue, the law must forever remain unchanged.
As many observers have pointed out regarding the validity of Roe v. Wade, plenty of Supreme Court decisions have been reversed, and mercifully so. The 1857 Dred Scott ruling said that no one descended from slaves had any constitutional rights — regardless of whether they were slaves or free. Should all judges from 1857 forward have been selected for their allegiance to Dred Scott?
Occasionally, judges decide they were wrong years after they rule on a case.
For example, retired Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell told New York University law students in 1990 that he "probably made a mistake" in Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case that upheld anti-sodomy laws. His was the swing vote on the court, and states' anti-sodomy laws remain constitutional today because of him.
Does Kerry, with his declared reverence for old jurisprudence, plan to appoint only judges who agree with anti-sodomy laws, since the Supreme Court ruled to uphold them in 1986? What would gays in the Democratic Party think if he did?
Given these well-known cases, it's hard to believe the real reason Kerry wants to appoint pro-abortion judges to the bench is that he believes all judges should adhere to all past Supreme Court decisions. It's more likely that he is excluding anti-abortion judges from consideration for the same reason Iraqi scientists were forced to take loyalty oaths: he doesn't want independent thinking to get in the way of his political agenda.
But Kerry first has to win a legitimate democratic election before becoming President. Hence his desire to be all things to all people.
Since he would need to win the votes of some anti-abortion people in the general election if he were the Democratic nominee, Kerry is blaming his litmus test on a phony need to defend old — and fallible — Supreme Court rulings.
In contrast, President Bush refused to rule out judicial nominees because of their views on any one issue when he campaigned in 2000, and he doesn't let criticism derail him from doing what he believes is right. Those leadership qualities would be missing in the new regime Kerry is offering voters.
BINGO!
Kerry is psychologically scarred by his actions in Vietnam, but his political rudder is securely tied to hold the leftist course!
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