Hi Sarkie,
Re: "....the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
I couldn't agree more. Here's someone else who concurs, Maureen Dowd on today's NY Times editorial page:
nytimes.com
December 13, 2000
LIBERTIES
The Bloom Is Off the Robe
By MAUREEN DOWD
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WASHINGTON
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST. We'll hear argument now on No. 00- 949, President-Elect Bush and Vice President-Elect Cheney v. Albert Gore Jr. et al.
JUSTICE SCALIA. Mr. Olson, the legal predicate that seems to have slipped your muddled mind is that recounts are only triggered if there's a problem with the machinery, not in the case of voter error. Come on, Ted, do I have to plead your case for Bush as well as hear it?
JUSTICE O'CONNOR. Well, Mr. Boies, why can't those ninnies down in Florida simply follow the instructions for voting, for goodness' sakes? At the Chevy Chase Club, my friends have been asking me why people too stupid or slack to punch a hole through a piece of paper even deserve a vote.
JUSTICE SCALIA. That's it, Sandy, baby. Suffrage, shmuffrage.
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST. Mr. Boies, you fail to grasp the concept of equal protection for the conservative justices who want to retire. I'm 76. Sandy is 70. We started out long ago, working our hearts out for Barry Goldwater, and we're pooped. My back is killing me! But we can't leave until we install a Republican president. Al Gore would replace us with that hippy-dippy Mario Cuomo or that flower child Larry Tribe, or some minority who actually cares about the rights of the dispossessed.
JUSTICE GINSBURG. Mr. Boies — may I call you David? — I love you.
JUSTICE SCALIA. Ruthie, zip it. Mr. Boies, as you surely have noticed by now, I am the Big Brain here. So I will explain what should be res ipsa loquitor, not to mention a priori. We stopped the vote-counting because if we did not, Al Gore might have won. Then I would never have had a chance to be chief justice.
I have put up with so much hokum. When they upheld Roe v. Wade. When they made all-male military academies admit women. I became bitter and marginalized. Never mind Al Gore's due process. What am I due in this process?
MR. KLOCK. If I may, Justice Brandeis —
JUSTICE SCALIA. I'm Scalia, dimwit. To continue, it may look hypocritical if the court's conservatives suppress the will of the people and install a states'-rights president by federal fiat. I know I have spent my career fighting against muscular assertions of judicial power. But now I see that judicial tyranny, judiciously used, can be a good thing. I don't believe in making laws from the bench. But making presidents? That's different. Hey, who ever said the Constitution is engraved in stone, anyhow? Text is important, but so is subtext. Why should I prop up a pathetic pol who vilified Clarence and me during his campaign?
This court is riddled with conflicts of interest. Clarence's wife, Ginny, is over at the Heritage Foundation gathering conservatives' résumés for possible appointments in the new administration. My son is a partner at Ted Olson's law firm. Another son just got hired by another law firm working for Bush. But if I had recused myself, there would have been a tie. And then those radicals on the Florida Supreme Court could have been affirmed. And President Gore might have made Ruthie the chief.
JUSTICE THOMAS (to himself). If this thing runs long, I'm going to miss "Trailer Park Nurses" and "Room Servicing" on the Spice channel.
JUSTICE STEVENS. De novo, de- lightful, de-lovely. Why don't we just devise a standard to count all the votes?
JUSTICE SOUTER. I know the Bushes are furious at me. That'll teach 'em to assume that a guy living like a monk in an isolated New Hampshire farmhouse is some kind of Live Free or Die nut.
JUSTICE O'CONNOR. Mr. Boies, while we are on the subject of irreparable harm, are you aware that if I side with you, it could put in jeopardy the membership of my husband, John, in the Bohemian Grove? He does so enjoy his week of stag frolicking and drag shows in the California redwoods with President Bush, Cap Weinberger, Bill Buckley, David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.
CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST. We're dropping in the polls on the question of our fairness, but we still need to anoint Bush president. It's best for us. We'll just have to work harder to hide the truth: that we are driven by all the same petty human emotions as everybody else in this town — ambition, partisanship, political debts and revenge.
MR. KLOCK. How true, Chief Justice Holmes. |
