Wave Maker: Damned If You Don't

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Monday, November 21, 2005

Damned If You Don't

Bro here makes a an obvious, if clever, point about what "we" should expect of our judicial nominees.

It seems now that the left isn't happy with judicial candidates who haven't worn their political stripes proudly on their sleeves; and yet now they're all in a dither when one such candidate wears stripes that aren't a color of their liking(blue).

It is too much to ask of any highly intelligent, accomplished and experienced lawyer that he have absolutely no political persuasion. How would we regard a candidate who avowed proudly that, in preparation for a potential lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, he had steadfastly eschewed any involvement in the political process and in fact had never voted once in his adult life? I think we would look at him with a jaundiced eye, and well we should.

The holding of strong political beliefs should not be a red flag that raises the spectre of a filibuster, as was so fatuously suggested by Joe Biden yesterday on Fox News Sunday (only a few weeks after he assured the nation that should not happen). This is especially the case where the political views at issue were stated over twenty years ago.

What matters is that there is a comfortable assurance that a candidate is capable of laying aside his or her personal beliefs in the application and interpretation of the Constitution and prior case law.

No one (with a shred of intellectual honesty) who has had any interaction with Judge Alito suggests anything but that.

Posted by: Wave Maker / 9:42 AM/ |