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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (721347)	1/11/2006 3:44:59 AM
From: TideGlider	Respond to of 769670

That is excellent CK From George Conway-NRO: <<Along the lines of some of the quotes I posted last week about the underlying cause of Abramoff scandal, George Will observes today: The way to reduce rent-seeking is to reduce the government's role in the allocation of wealth and opportunity. People serious about reducing the role of money in politics should be serious about reducing the role of politics in distributing money. But those most eager to do the former — liberals, generally — are the least eager to do the latter. Exactly right: To get the money out of politics, get politics out of money. The spectacle of a judicial confirmation process that looks like a political smear campaign prompts a somewhat analogous thought: To get the politics out of confirming judges, get the judiciary out of politics. Consider these words from Justice Scalia's dissent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey: In truth, I am as distressed as the Court is — and expressed my distress several years ago — about the "political pressure" directed to the Court: the marches, the mail, the protests aimed at inducing us to change our opinions. How upsetting it is, that so many of our citizens (good people, not lawless ones, on both sides of this abortion issue, and on various sides of other issues as well) think that we Justices should properly take into account their views, as though we were engaged not in ascertaining an objective law but in determining some kind of social consensus. The Court would profit, I think, from giving less attention to the fact of this distressing phenomenon, and more attention to the cause of it. That cause permeates today's opinion: a new mode of constitutional adjudication that relies not upon text and traditional practice to determine the law, but upon what the Court calls "reasoned judgment," which turns out to be nothing but philosophical predilection and moral intuition. . . . [I]f in reality our process of constitutional adjudication consists primarily of making value judgments; if we can ignore a long and clear tradition clarifying an ambiguous text, . . . ; if, as I say, our pronouncement of constitutional law rests primarily on value judgments, then a free and intelligent people's attitude towards us can be expected to be (ought to be) quite different. The people know that their value judgments are quite as good as those taught in any law school — maybe better. If, indeed, the "liberties" protected by the Constitution are, as the Court says, undefined and unbounded, then the people should demonstrate, to protest that we do not implement their values instead of ours. Not only that, but confirmation hearings for new Justices should deteriorate into question and answer sessions in which Senators go through a list of their constituents' most favored and most disfavored alleged constitutional rights, and seek the nominee's commitment to support or oppose them. Value judgments, after all, should be voted on, not dictated; and if our Constitution has somehow accidently committed them to the Supreme Court, at least we can have a sort of plebiscite each time a new nominee to that body is put forward. Justice Blackmun not only regards this prospect with equanimity, he solicits it. So do Senators Leahy and Kennedy and Schumer and the others attacking Judge Alito; they, like Justice Blackmun, solicit a politicized confirmation process, so that they can preserve politicized judicial interpretations of the Constitution. And on one thing they are right: the nomination of Judge Alito is a watershed event. Because his confirmation would be one more vote — and one giant step — toward get the judiciary out of politics once and for all.>>