Keeping the Subprime Court in Check
You’d think that after Heller, I’d be giddy about the Subprime Court. Sorry, not happening. Heller itself should have been the easiest case in the world to decide, right up there with determining that the First Amendment gives the people a right to speak freely, the Fifth guarantees a right not to have private property taken to be given away to other private parties and prohibits the states from discriminating by race, or at least as easy as deciding that the Constitution doesn’t say anything about abortion, sodomy, contraception, execution of 17 year old thrill killers who murder innocent neighbors for fun because they know they are minors, hard-core pedophiles who only ruin their victims’ lives figuratively rather than literally, or habeas rights for non-citizen terrorists. Have I missed anybody? Probably.
Four years ago countless pro-gun conservative or bloggers rooted for President Bush’s defeat, figuring that if we can’t elect a model conservative to the Oval Office, we might as well give up the reins entirely. Now, in the past week, we came one Supremer Court Justice’s vote shy of seeing the bill of Rights literally decimated. [Some argue that it was already decimated when McCain-Feingold was upheld 5-4. Perhaps so, but we also made significant headway in reversing that dreadful precedent, thanks again in no small part to Bush appointees Roberts and Alito. Now we have one candidate who promises to appoint more Robertses and Alitos, vs. a guy who voted against confirming either of them, and even joined a filibuster against one, and who promises to appoint judges with big hearts instead. Conservatives can either vote for McCain, and fear he may be lying, or they can vote for Obama and hope to God he is.
If, for some reason, you still can’t get the picture, here it is:
June 30th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I didn’t root for his defeat. I just didn’t vote for him.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:57 am
No, but you did say there was no real difference between Bush and Kerry. I for one think there’s a pretty friggin’ huge difference between winning Heller 5-4 and losing 6-3, but that’s just me.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I have this fantasy where Scalia writes the opinion he wrote in which Stevens, Souter, Bryer and Ginsburg join, and Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalito separately concur by demanding a higher level of protection of the Second Amendment rights. I blame it on the fact that I not only stopped drinking whiskey but have been doing CLE for the past two weeks.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
CLE will mess with your mind, brother. I quit CLE cold turkey and have been CLE-free since January. I hope to remain CLE-free for the rest of my life but for now, I’m taking it one day at a time.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I think you’re right. I found “Ethical Considerations for Insurance Industry Practitioners”, a subject I previously knew almost nothing about, fascinating. I thought a Minnesota prosecutor talking about gun cases was a complete doofus. He knew only one thing about guns — that he did not like them. Did you know that a Crossman CO2 BB gun has “a velocity of 330 foot pounds (sic) per second”? He did get a Minnesota court of appeals to accept the fish and game laws definition of “firearm”, over the criminal law definition, and he is pushing it as much as he can. He is bitter over the fact that some judges acquit the defendant and others “exercise their discretion” and refuse to impose “the mandatory (sic) minimum”.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
And when did you start moderating comments?
June 30th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
About a year ago, when the spambots gave me little choice. Usually triggered by a high number of links; not sure why your last comment went to moderation.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I’d look into whether the large number of quotation marks tripped the filter.
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
[...] Thanks to XRLQ, I found this sticker. Given that our good friend Brian wrote: I will never, not in a million years, cast a vote for McCain. I will be voting in the other races (Congress, state, and local), but I won’t go against my principles and vote for him, [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
As I recall, McCain didn’t say he would appoint judges “like” Roberts and Alito, he said he would appoint judges “with the characer of” Roberts and Alito, which struck me as a pretty empty promise. Everyone assumes that presidents will appoint judges of good character. It’s their legal philosophy that is of concern.
July 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I will not for a man who:
-defended Kerry and insulted those who questioned his military record
-voted to restrict political speech
-championed amnesty
-hates tax cuts
-described Christians as hate mongers
-called for an end of torture, although our troops endur the same sort of treatment as part of their training
-will not drill in ANWAR
-isn’t a leader so much as someone who plays to the media
Anyone who has faith in McCain will be bitterly disappointed. Carter gave us Reagan. Better an Obama than McCain.
Nixon gave us Ford.
Heaven help us if McCain is elected. He can’t even confront Obama about his lies how can he confront our enemies?
July 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Sorry to burst your bubble, Thomas, but the primaries are over and the “I will not vote for a man who…” train left the station a long time ago. Like it or not, this is now a two-way race, so while you can still vote for Bugs Bunny or anyone else in form, in substance you can only vote three ways:
Since this is a two-way race, the third option is equivalent to saying “I will not vote for a guy who does blah blah blah, I’ll split my vote between two guys who did.”
I’m half tempted to repeat my prior observation that saying “Carter gave us Ford” is as stupid as endorsing polio because it took polio to get us the polio vaccine, but as a commenter noted in that thread, the analogy was actually unfair to polio. Reagan was a rising star before Carter, so the notion that it took Carter to get us Reagan is purely speculative, while it is crystal-clear that were it not for polio, Salk and Sabin’s efforts would have been spent elsewhere. Moreover, just as the polio vaccine didn’t cure its present victims or bring any of its past victims back, four years of Carter caused (and, every time that asshole travels abroad, continues to cause) a hell of a lot of damage that eight years of Reagan, four more years of Reagan-lite and eight years of Bush have been unable to reverse. If Carter and Reagan really were a package deal as you claim, then from a conservative perspective, we’d be a hell of a lot better off today if neither had been elected rather than both.
They say that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. In reality, those who vote as ignorantly as you advocate doom us all to repeat history.
July 6th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Doc Rampage:
Unsurprisingly, you recall wrong. What McCain actually said was that both Roberts and Alito were “the model for my own nominees” not in terms of “character” (you made that part up) but rather, in terms of their “judicial ability, experience, philosophy, and temperament.” Note in particular the word “philosophy.” Where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah, in your own comment above about what mattered, as opposed to character.
Given that you now know that you and McCain agree on the need for more Supreme Court Justices who share Roberts and Alito’s judicial philosophy, and not just their character (though admittedly, that would be nice, too), and that McCain intends to make good on this promise by limiting his appointments to those with “a proven commitment to judicial restraint” rather than letting the next Souter slip through on “a hunch, a hope, and a good first impression,” can I count on you to do the right thing in November, rather than continuing to lamely protest the outcome of a primary in which you couldn’t even be bothered to participate? Perhaps I should remind you that your original excuse for bowing out of the Republican Party was the Bush prescription drug plan (which McCain opposed)?
If the answer is no, then with all due respect you haven’t just abandoned the Republican Party; you’ve abandoned conservatism altogether.