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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (35171)	4/27/2009 10:41:20 PM
From: goldworldnet	2 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71588

Scalia Slams 'Living Constitution' Theory Monday , March 14, 2005 foxnews.com Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process. In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court's 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty (search) based on "evolving notions of decency" was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said. "If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again," Scalia told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. "You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility." "Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?" he said. Scalia, who has been mentioned as a possible chief justice nominee should Chief Justice William Rehnquist (search) retire, outlined his judicial philosophy of interpreting the Constitution according to its text, as understood at the time it was adopted. Citing the example of abortion, he said unelected justices too often choose to read new rights into the Constitution, at the expense of the democratic process. "Abortion is off the democratic stage. Prohibiting it is unconstitutional, now and forever, coast to coast, until I guess we amend the Constitution," said Scalia, who was appointed to the court by President Reagan in 1986. He blamed Chief Justice Earl Warren, who presided from 1953-69 over a court that assaulted racial segregation and expanded individual rights against arbitrary government searches, for the increased political role of the Supreme Court, citing Warren's political background. Warren was governor of California and the Republican vice presidential nominee in 1948. "You have a chief justice who was a governor, a policy-maker, who approached the law with that frame of mind. Once you have a leader with that mentality, it's hard not to follow," Scalia said, in response to a question from the audience. Scalia said increased politics on the court will create a bitter nomination fight for the next Supreme Court appointee, since judges are now more concerned with promoting their personal policy preferences rather than interpreting the law. "If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us," he said, explaining that's why senators increasingly probe nominees for their personal views on positions such as abortion. "When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless," Scalia said. Scalia, who has had a prickly relationship with the media, wasted no time in shooing away photographers from the public event five minutes into his speech. "Could we stop the cameras? I thought I announced ... a couple are fine at first, but click click click click," Scalia said, impatiently waving the photographers off. During a speech last year in Hattiesburg, Miss., a deputy federal marshal demanded that an Associated Press reporter and another journalist erase recordings of the justice's remarks. The justice later apologized. The government conceded that the U.S. Marshals Service violated federal law in the confrontation and said the reporters and their employers were each entitled to $1,000 in damages and attorneys' fees. * * *

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (35171)	4/27/2009 10:54:08 PM
From: Ruffian	2 Recommendations Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 71588

Obama Draws Scorn of Bush Officials for Tone on Terrorism Fight Bush-era critics contend that President Obama is losing sight of the threats against the homeland, reviving the mindset of the Clinton era when terrorism was treated more as a criminal offense than an act of war. FOXNews.com Monday, April 27, 2009 Right off the bat, President Obama made it clear that his administration would try a change in tone in the way the U.S. battles terrorism around the world. He announced during his first week on the job that he would shut down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year, keeping a campaign pledge. Then his administration stopped using the term "War on Terror," favoring instead "overseas contingency operation." Though the new administration is trying to recast the war and better define the legal bounds of its fight against extremism, it has along the way drawn the scorn of officials from the Bush administration. They contend that Obama is losing sight of the threats against the homeland, reviving the mindset of the Clinton era when terrorism was treated more as a criminal offense than an act of war. "One of the worst things we could do is start to act now as though the attack of 9/11 is a thing of the past and will never be repeated. That's just not true," former Vice President Dick Cheney recently told FOX News. He complained that dropping the term "War on Terror" suggests the country is no longer at war. "It's not just 'no more War on Terror,' according to (Homeland Security Secretary) Janet Napolitano. We don't have terrorist attacks anymore -- we have man-made disasters," said Marc Thiessen, George W. Bush's former speechwriter, referring to Napolitano's reluctance to use the words terrorist or terrorism. Juan Zarate, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, also noted that closing Guantanamo will not be an easy task and that Bush wanted to do the same. "The problem that the Bush administration faced and that no doubt the Obama administration is facing is the fact that you have hardened, trained Al Qaeda-connected individuals who are in Guantanamo and there is not an easy solution as to where they should go or what process should attend to them," he said. Obama drew the most fire, though, for his decision this month to release top-secret memos about CIA interrogations and then open the door for potential prosecution of the lawyers who drafted them. "The decision to release these memos is quite literally the most irresponsible and dangerous thing an American president has done in his first 100 days," Thiessen said. "The information contained in these memos is the keys to how we interrogate and question terrorists." Obama said he decided to release the memos because so much of the information in them was public. But even Obama's national security critics give him credit for his first authorization of the use of force -- employed when pirates off the Somali coast were holding American ship Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. Obama's authorization allowed Navy snipers to take out three of the four pirates April 12 and take the fourth into custody. "I think he needs to be given credit and the administration needs to be given credit for allowing the professionals to do their job and to do it well," Zarate said. Analysts suggest Obama will earn the highest marks on national security when he heeds the advice of military commanders and intelligence officials -- and predict he'll do poorly when he allows political advisers to influence his decisions. FOX News' Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.