New video has surfaced of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor remarking that the courts are the place "where policy is made."
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Lady Justice's blindfold
JUDICIAL DISPASSION -- the ability to decide cases without being influenced by personal feelings or political preferences -- is indispensable to the rule of law. So indispensable, in fact, that the one-sentence judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice contains no fewer than three expressions of it:
"I . . . do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God."
There are biblical echoes in the wording of that oath -- a reminder that the judge's obligation to decide cases on the basis of fact and law, without regard to the litigants' wealth or fame or social status, is a venerable moral principle.
Source
A Bad Day for Impartiality
Obama uses empathy as a code word for judicial liberalism.
It was a historic day when Pres. Barack Obama announced his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. No president had ever nominated a Hispanic woman. Nor had a recent president — or his nominee — expressed less genuine interest in the traditional craft of judging.
Impartiality has been supplanted by empathy. The old-fashioned virtue of objectivity — redolent of dusty law books and the unromantic task of parsing the law and facts — is giving way to an inherently politicized notion of judging based on feelings. Lady Justice is to slip her blindfold and let her decisions be influenced by her life experiences and personal predilections.
Obama and Sotomayor embrace this method of judging with gusto, even though it is deeply antithetical to justice properly understood. This is why Sotomayor is such a radical choice. Not only will she define the court’s left flank, she represents a judicial philosophy that is neither truly judicial nor a philosophy. The political outcome — and the personal biases that drive it — is paramount... [snip]
Sotomayor’s nomination represents an extraordinary personal accomplishment [!] and an important symbolic affirmation for Latinos. Her confirmation, though, would be another step toward eviscerating the constitutional function of the Supreme Court, as empathy trumps impartiality.
[Recommended > ]
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Advice on Consent
Sotomayor’s liberalism would not constitute a reason for denying her a seat on the Supreme Court if it merely consisted of a set of policy positions identical to those of the Senate’s 15 most liberal members. Unfortunately, liberalism has for some time now incorporated a tacit judicial philosophy in which the goal is to impose policies as left-wing as a judge can get away with. Sotomayor seems to march to that beat. More to the point, perhaps, she has shown no signs of marching to any other one.
Judges who decide cases in this manner abuse their office and undermine the rule of law.
They also generate policies that are harmful to our economy, dangerous to our national security, and destructive to our social fabric. Liberal activism on the bench has these effects even when the offending judges are geniuses. The nominee’s approach to judging is more important than her IQ, and it is on that subject that senators ought to be trying to shed light. And they should take their time doing it. Thanks to years of activism, Supreme Court justices have more power than most senators. We should spend at least as much time learning how they would exercise it as we do for Senate candidates.
Barring some shocking revelation, we know the outcome of these hearings. Some Republicans say that we could have done worse: Given what we know of her judicial craftsmanship and temperament, she is unlikely to have influence on the Court beyond her vote. But such musings are neither here nor there.
The choice for Republican senators is not between Sotomayor and some hypothetical more dangerous Obama nominee; it is between her being confirmed with their consent and her being confirmed without it...
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Meanwhile, in the MSM...
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Flashback: Nets Were Quick to Tag Alito and Roberts as 'Ultra' and 'Hardline' 'Conservatives'
ABC Minimizes 'Liberal' Label For Sotomayor; Used 'Conservative' For Alito Frequently
Matthews: Nevermind 'Crazies' Like Limbaugh, Obama 'Wowed Us' with Sotomayor
NBC's Lauer Advances WaPo Angle That Sotomayor Won't Be 'Reflexively Liberal'
Couric and Schieffer Gush Over Sotomayor's 'Very, Very Compelling' Bio
In 2003, Miguel Estrada Was Dismissed As Bush 'Affirmative Action Candidate'
MSNBC's Maddow: Sotomayor Isn't An Affirmative Action Nominee
[WHAT bias? And my personal favorite...
FLASHBACK > Wednesday, May 13, 2009
ABC's defines 'centrist'
New video has surfaced of possible Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor remarking that the courts are the place "where policy is made."
Sotomayor, who is a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, was giving a speech at Duke University in 2005 when the footage was shot. She quickly added, "And I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don't make law. I know."
This is the same person that ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos touted on last Friday's "Good Morning America." The "This Week" host spun,"She would be not only a woman, but the first Hispanic on the court. She's built up a strong centrist record on the court."
[First: control the language.]
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MSNBC: Cheney Became 'Obsessive' About Terrorism After 9/11 (Gasp!)
Just when you thought left-wing criticism of Dick Cheney had climbed over the top, it keeps reaching new heights.
Well, what happened after 9/11 was, he was dissatisfied with the kind of information that had been given to them from the CIA. And so they demanded just every single piece of scrap of information about threats that might be coming towards the United States. And, at his direction, they took away the filter that the CIA had had where previously ...
After 9/11, they saw everything. It was called the threat matrix report, it was this extensive thing they started every morning, Cheney started every morning with the matrix report and then went through it all again sitting down with the president, so he did it twice every day...
Can you believe the nerve of this Cheney? Using the "man caused disaster" of 9/11 as pretext, Cheney sought raw intelligence from the CIA instead of the synthesized version previously provided. Not only that, Cheney wanted the data twice daily, going so far as to start each workday with it. What's with this guy -- did he forget he worked for the government?
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The anonymous accuser of Guantanamo
Have you heard of Matthew Alexander? Unless you follow the debate over terrorist suspects and "enhanced interrogation techniques" very closely, the answer is probably no. Yet Alexander is one of the most influential voices in the deliberations over what to do with the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"Major Matthew Alexander, who has actually interrogated al Qaeda suspects in Iraq, attributes half of the deaths of Americans in Iraq to the detention abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said on "Meet the Press" Sunday. "Continuing Guantanamo, unfortunately, makes our troops less safe."
A moment later, moderator David Gregory asked Durbin for evidence to support President Obama's assertion that "the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained." Durbin's answer? "I just gave it to you: Major Matthew Alexander."
It is widely asserted that Guantanamo has been a key recruiting tool for terrorists around the world. Indeed, it has been asserted so often that the assertion has become conventional wisdom. But what is the source of the conventional wisdom? To hear Sen. Durbin and some of his allies in the Guantanamo debate tell it, the source is Matthew Alexander.
Here's the interesting part: Nobody knows who he is...
[Recommended > ]
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State Department's love affair with Islamists
With the United States battling Islamist extremists, making America's case to Muslims around the world has never been more of a priority for policymakers. Unfortunately, the State Department continues to take a counterproductive approach: serving as a veritable infomercial promoting Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) while giving the back of the hand to the very anti-jihadist Muslims that Washington should be cultivating.
The latest example is a State Department booklet issued in March titled "Being Muslim in America." Unfortunately, the booklet perpetuates the mythology that American Muslims are united in the belief that law enforcement and the public are willing to flout innocent Muslims' civil rights post-September 11, describing American Muslim reactions to the attacks as follows:
"A new, truly American Islam is emerging, shaped by American freedoms, but also by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks - planned and executed by non-Americans - [which] raised suspicions among other Americans whose immediate responses, racial profiling among them, triggered in return a measure of Muslim-American alienation."
This is an extremely tendentious, even intellectually dishonest, description. From reading it, one would have no idea that there have been numerous convictions and guilty pleas on terrorism-related charges since September 11 that involved Muslims living in the United States. This includes terrorist plots to attack the military base at Fort Dix, New Jersey, to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon and to attack US military and Jewish targets in California.
THE BOOKLET makes no mention of the fact that organizations like CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) were listed by the government as unindicted coconspirators in the successful Hamas-support prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).
But from reading this passage in "Being Muslim in America," one would get the impression that public concern about Islamist terror has no basis in reality and is merely the result of backward Americans' "discrimination and resentment."
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'Welcome Pelosi. Pay close attention to human rights
House Speaker Nancy has flown from one human rights controversy (waterboarding) right into another one (the fight for democracy in China).(Snip)So far, Pelosi has publicly declined to discuss the issue of free speech or Tibet explicitly on the trip -- or during the surreal Capitol press conference on Friday, where she dodged the question.
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China says rich nations must cut emissions by 40 pct
China confirmed Thursday that it will demand [?] rich nations cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 in upcoming global climate change negotiations. In a position paper published for negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December.
China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, did not commit to any legally binding reductions...
[They're not stupid.]
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Bipartisan Team to Destroy Sanctity of Contracts
As if any more proof were needed, here's further evidence that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is practically nil in many parts of the country.
The St. Louis Business Journal reported on Friday, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Kit Bond (R-MO) have sent a joint letter to President Obama "seeking answers to concerns raised by Chrysler and General Motors dealerships in Missouri that learned last week their contracts will be terminated."
There is no doubt that Dealership Agreements (contracts) between dealers and automobile manufacturers include specific bilateral termination provisions. If those termination provisions were violated by either the dealer or the manufacturer, or even if one party cared to challenge the validity of termination, the remedy is litigation NOT whining to politicians.
Frankly, it is no surprise that Democrats would miss this point but for the distinguished Republican Senator from Missouri to join the error is jaw-dropping.
Note to Dealerships: If you've got a legal leg, file suit.
[From CEOs groveling in congressional 'hearings' to dealership owners with contracts, our 'captains' of industry have become girlie men - and all such deserve what they get for not having the grandies to forcefully reject government interference and remind our 'representatives' that that they works for us, and not the other way around.
We've an epidemic of cowardliness in the country which is empowering an overreaching government to just keep expanding.]
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Here We Go Again: This Time Gov't. Is Trying to Shaft Unsecured GM Bondholders
[AKA: 'ENT: Enhanced Negotiation Techniques'...]
According to a Wednesday Reuters report, offering secured bondholders a much better deal than the 29 cents on the dollar Chrysler's secured creditors have been offered. Chrysler's "non-TARP secured lenders," after what they allege with much evidential support was a campaign of threats and intimidation by President Obama and the White House, abandoned their efforts to have their first-lien rights recognized in bankruptcy court. [again our 'captains of industry' prove to be wimps]
But Indiana pension funds holding some of that secured debt representing teachers, police, and other workers have taken legal action objecting to the terms of the Chrysler bankruptcy that don’t give first-lien lenders their proper and legal due.
It thus appears, despite a chest-thumping May 2 assertion in the New York Times that the White House's Chrysler hardball might have taught GM lenders a "lesson," that Obama and his car guys don't have the stomach for riding roughshod over the rights of GM's secured bondholders and ending up in a regular federal district court.
Now what? Well, if you're Team Obama, you instead try to put the screws to GM's unsecured bondholders -- to the benefit of the United Auto Workers' Voluntary Employee Benefits Association (VEBA) trust...
[Read to learn the mechanism of how corporations are stolen in America...> ]
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"The Future of Capitalism."
The topic: "The Future of Capitalism." To discuss this, Time magazine assembled a "stellar cast." One such "honoree" works as a Public Broadcasting Service/National Public Radio host. The tax dollars produced by the capitalism he criticizes help pay his salary. (The irony was apparently lost.)
"I don't think that left to its own devices," ..."capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: If you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child."
Good grief.
Every dollar spent by government is one less dollar spent by taxpayers. Money comes from somewhere — taxes, borrowing (taxes on layaway) or printing, which, if not offset by productivity, causes inflation, a stealth tax on everyone.
Who can spend, save or invest more efficiently and humanely, you or some tenured bureaucrat in D.C. who's never run so much as a hot dog stand or lent himself out as a United Way volunteer?
Private enterprise is the most proficient job- and wealth-creating "system" ever designed. Obama's anti-capitalist, Big Government, command-and-control economic vision exceeds mere "childishness." It is dangerous...
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Broadcast Networks 'Hail' Obama Auto Fuel Efficiency Standard
After 120 days of the new presidency, the automobile industry provides some of the best evidence of an administration that favors the heavy hand of government meddling in the private sector. And as is the case with mostcoverage of President Obama and his policies, criticism of his automotive tinkering has been sparse.
On May 19, Obama announced a 30-percent increase in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which would come to a 35.5 miles per gallon (mpg) average for both cars and light trucks.
Across the board, the announcement the federal government would be dictating what automobiles would be manufactured in the United States received lots of fanfare and very little criticism on the three evening network broadcasts.
During the May 18 evening newscasts and the May 19 morning show coverage, the networks featured the comments of pro-CAFE standard experts by a margin of 6-to-1 over skeptics... [snip]
ABC's Jake Tapper did say increased CAFÉ standards would bring added costs for consumers.
"This will mean the cars will cost more to manufacture and therefore to buy - an average of $1,300 a car more by 2016," ... "But the president said that cost would be more than made up for by savings at pump."
However, Nick Loris explained on The Heritage Foundation's blog that these cost-savings in the name of bettering the environment are a fallacy.
"Although touted as a measure to curb global warming, fuel efficiency standards have very little environmental impact. Newer vehicles with better efficiency standards may emit less carbon dioxide per mile, but increased fuel efficiency often leads to more driving and new cars ‘constitute a miniscule source of overall carbon dioxide emissions.'"
"But will the cars be as safe? That's an open question for automakers, if they're being given enough time to meet these requirements. In the late '70s, the U.S. pushed for better fuel efficiency very quickly. The result: Cars like the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto."
An editorial in the May 20 Wall Street Journal also mocked this government-mandated path to prosperity by pointing out that this is folly even by the standards of traditional socialists.
"The auto industry is in full-fledged collapse, and what does Washington decide to do? We're going to put in some new CAFE standards on it - to fight global warming or whatever they're calling it these days," ... "The government isn't content with just firing car company's CEOs and then slashing advertising budgets. It's now telling the American people that they need to spend between $1,300 and $7,000 extra [that's you truck drivers] to drive a car that is likely to be less safe."
"We wish these folks luck ‘working together' with the Obama auto-design team. One thing seems certain by 2016: Taxpayers will be paying Detroit to make the cars Americans don't want, and then they will pay again either through (trust us) a gas tax or with a purchase subsidy. Even the French must think we're nuts."[That stung.]
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It's not going to be pretty
Obama's plan to get us all into small cars is going to cost lives. It is the blood for oil tradeoff we always heard about for Bush, brought to life by Obama.
Doug Ross looks into the safety of the Smart Car, those little two-seaters. There haven't been enough of them driving around yet to generate impressive safety stats, but the laws of physics, and some confirming pictures suggest that EMTs are going to be dealing with more and more gruesome crash scenes.
Doug does a masterful job of explaining through pictures. This is a visually arresting presentation.
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A preview of Obamacare
For a truly frightening preview of our future under Obamacare, Peter Simpson of The Daily Telegraph informs us of the real life conditions of socialized medicine as practiced in Great Britain and Scandinavia--countries often touted as role models for health the US should follow and admire.
To cut down on long waiting lists for knee surgery, mostly on the elderly, an English clinic imported "flying doctors" from Scandinavia. These doctors fly in, skim the reports on the patients' medical condition, perform the surgery and whoosh! fly home again, with little follow up.
The results were predictable.
Dozens of elderly people were left in pain and requiring further surgery after botched work by Scandinavian surgeons brought in to reduce NHS waiting lists, an investigation has found. (snip) Now, an audit of more than 200 patients who underwent knee surgery between 2004 and 2006 has revealed that the number of operations which were botched was ten times the national average.
And why was there such a long waiting list and why was it necessary for England to import these doctors?
Doctors and other medical personnel and institutions basically operate on a regular business schedule rather than having extended hours and shifts as is common here. The number of English trained doctors has fallen, necessitating the importation of doctors from other countries who work there with minimal competence in English and little knowledge of their clinical skills.
So, no matter how the American policy wonks oh so sincerely protest, the same--and worse--would happen here if government sponsored, single payer" healthcare infests our country. Why, they may even long for the bad old days of healthcare circa 2009.
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Calif. could run out of cash in 2 months
SACRAMENTO -- California will run out of cash in two months unless lawmakers act swiftly to close a widening deficit and pass a budget, two state finance officials warned Friday.
Failure to balance the state's books quickly will trigger a financial storm much greater than the one the state endured this past winter, when it stopped infrastructure projects and delayed payments to vendors and refunds for taxpayers...
[Unbelievably {sadly, 'not'}, all indications are we'll actually have to tell them to cut spending now - they're still in delusion...]
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The Coming California Bailout
[HT:LD: "Next up on Obama's "I break you, I own you" agenda.]
California, the sunny incubator of America's future, has relished its role as a leading indicator of political trends. Tuesday it became what it thinks it should be, the center of attention, but not in the way it wants to be... [snip]
Now California's mostly Democratic political class will petition Washington for a bailout to nourish the public sector that is suffocating the state's dwindling -- and departing -- private sector. The Obama administration, which rewarded the United Auto Workers by giving it considerable control over two companies it helped reduce to commercial rubble, will serve the interests of California's unionized public employees and others largely responsible for reducing the state to mendicancy.
These factions will flourish if the state becomes a federal poodle on a short leash held by the president. He might make aid conditional on the state doing things that California Democrats and their union allies would love to be "compelled" to do: eliminate the requirements of two-thirds majorities of both houses of the legislature to raise taxes and pass budgets, and repeal Proposition 13, which voters passed in 1978 to limit property taxes.
These changes would enable the legislature (job approval rating: 14 percent) to siphon away an ever-larger share of taxpayers' wealth and transfer it to public employees. Such as prison guards, whose potent union is one reason California's cost-per-inmate (about $49,000) is twice the national average.
California's voters are complicit in their state's collapse. They elect and reelect the legislators off whom public employees unions batten...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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Bushes receive award for promoting AIDS awareness
Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative honored former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush with the 2009 Leadership Award.
President Bush was cited for creating the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, while Laura Bush was acknowledged for her role as an advocate for mothers and children suffering from HIV/AIDS.
Since its creation in 2003, PEPFAR has saved more than 1.1 million lives in countries across sub- Saharan Africa...
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New Animated Series on ABC to Lampoon Environmentalists
With television hosts unwilling to joke about President Barack Obama as those comedians regularly ridicule conservatives, there’s a bright spot coming up this week in a new TV show set to debut on ABC which will mock leftist environmentalism. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday:
The series will debut Wednesday night at 9 PM EDT/PDT, 8 PM CDT/MDT.
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The new animated television series ‘The Goode Family’ is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words ‘What would Al Gore do?’ Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet's dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid.
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