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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (80535)	7/8/2010 4:34:13 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Kennedy's Conscience Investor's Business Daily Posted 07/07/2010 06:48 PM ET Supreme Court: Justice Anthony Kennedy has reportedly vowed to keep his job until President Obama's first term ends. Sounds like he's not impressed with the president's politicized high court picks. Serving on the highest court in the land for more than two decades now, Kennedy is the unrivaled King of Swing. Considered by some the most powerful man in America, he has in the past voted with both the conservative and liberal blocs of the Supreme Court, each of which has been four justices strong. He was nominated in the aftermath of the Robert Bork debacle in 1987. After Washington DC Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg's Supreme Court nomination went up in smoke over his marijuana use while on the Harvard faculty, the Reagan administration was in near desperation to avoid a third straight defeat. While sold as a bread-and-butter California conservative, as opposed to the ultra-intellectual Bork version, Kennedy sat on the Ninth Circuit Court based in San Francisco — a federal appeals court known for its often-quirky opinions, and for the frequency with which its opinions are overturned in the Supreme Court. As a famous Evans and Novak column reported several years after he was approved, Kennedy became a habitue of the Georgetown cocktail party circuit who, at times, seemed more in tune with liberal jurisprudence than its conservative opposite. Still, in recent years, however, Kennedy has sided with the conservatives on the court a lot more often. Because of his pivotal role as a high court swing vote, he frequently gets to write the 5-to-4 opinion himself for big cases. Who would have thought that the "borking" of Judge Bork would lead to one man wielding so much power for so long? The New York Daily News reported this week that Justice Kennedy has told friends and relatives that he'll stay on the court until after the next presidential inauguration in 2013. No shock there; it's good to be king. But it also seems clear that the man who knows the ideological plate tectonics of the court better than anyone can see what the president is doing with his own nominations, first of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and now with the near-certain confirmation of Elena Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Kennedy knows any departing justice will be replaced with someone who's fairly radical, and he's apparently determined to wait until that situation changes. It may well be a principled defense of the court's prerogatives, but it's also no doubt self-defense: One more Obama appointment and the reign of King Anthony could be over. Either way, we're glad to hear Kennedy will stay on. .