Our thoughts, and the most amusing Supreme Court prediction
As noted in a previous post, we’d nominate Janice Rogers Brown in a heartbeat. She’s just been confirmed by the Senate, for goodness sakes, and has gone through a recent FBI investigation. Further, the nomination would replace a white woman with a minority woman, making for very bad TV for her opponents, who have already been reduced to inanities like the idea that she would repeal child labor laws. She was explicitly covered by the agreement of the Gang of 14, which, theoretically, could exempt her from filibuster (hah!). Did we mention that she has just been confirmed by the Senate, or that she has just been confirmed by the Senate?
We are amused when we read endorsements by blogger-lawyers of great legal scholars for nomination to the Court. Guys, being a Supreme Court justice is not rocket science. Sure, you have to be a good lawyer, a student of judicial history, and a clear thinker, but following the Constitution should not be an arcane art. If it has become so, that is a problem whose solution should be greater simplicity, not complexity.
Getting a reliable conservative on the Court is all about politics. Period. Any conservative is going to be called an “extremist” whose views are well “outside the mainstream,” no matter who they are and what they believe or have written. The so-called front runners — Luttig, Roberts, McConnell — might as well be Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, since these names seem to get tossed around with abandon now. The reality doesn’t matter; they could be the finest legal scholars in the land. If their backgrounds are pristine, then the Left will make things up — the objective of the opponents is to keep a reliable conservative off the Court, and no weapon is out of bounds. To those who say Bush can get any nominee he likes confirmed, we say: Voinovich, Graham, Chafee, Snowe, DeWine, Warner, and God only know what other weak sister who can be reduced to tears by the big, bad Democrats.
We scratch our head when we read the whitebread Republicans who seem to think there is going to be some sense of propriety about this process; this confirmation process will have almost nothing to do with the competence and expertise of the nominee. Today’s situation is Bork to the nth power, Bolton on steroids. The objective of our Senate opponents will be to discredit and personally destroy the nominee to a swing vote seat. There are two plausible grounds for our opponents’ opposing Brown: (a) she hasn’t served on the circuit court for more than a month (though she was on the California Supreme Court for nearly a decade, and her situation would parallel Souter’s); and (b) while she was okay for a circuit court, that particular Senate confirmation is a lesser imprimatur than what is required for confirmation to the Supreme Court — she is thus too radical for the highest court. That is Joe Biden’s argument: “totally different ballgame“. Thus the list of attacks on her a lot shorter than what the Left will invent about some fresh meat that the President might serve up.
There is a third line of attack by the opposition, and we expect it to be used against Brown as it was against Bolton and Thomas: SHOCKING NEW ALLEGATIONS!!! Somebody from Brown’s past will likely accuse Judge Brown of misconduct, perhaps relating to events conveniently decades old. The MSM will go wild. Brown’s very recent confirmation by the Senate should help diffuse the credibility of this sort of faux Perry Mason moment. In any event, this tactic is to be anticipated whoever is nominated.
We’ll conclude on an upbeat note. David Wissing is running a contest for Supreme Court nominees — who, when selected, and when confirmed. We laughed when we saw this entry:
Hillary Clinton
Nominated July 11
Confirmed July 12
UPDATE
We found Peter Kirsanow’s NRO discussion of Judge Brown to be particularly helpful.