Of course both liberal and conservative judges have legislated from the bench, liberals more often than conservatives, naturally, but let’s not quibble. Sometimes legislating from the bench has been, rarely, but still, not only a good thing, but a necessary thing. For example, in the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision (that’s the only one I can think of).
The fact that Supreme Court nominees must now pretend that legislating from the bench is anathema, is not a good thing, because sometimes it is actually the right thing to do.
But who started it? Who started making ideology a determining factor in Supreme Court nominations, trumping all other qualifications? It started with Robert Bork’s nomination.
I’m not saying taking ideology into account is wrong. I’m just saying that legislating from the bench, necessary as it may be in very rare cases, is not a very popular idea. As a result, Democratic nominees now sound exactly like John Roberts, only not as smart, handicapped as they are by being chosen for their gender and ethnicity, rather than their God-given and personally developed abilities.
I listened to Shields and Brooks tonight on the PBS Jim Lehrer News Hour. They did not disagree about a single thing, health care, cap and trade, Sotomayor, you name it. I think Obama and the Democrats are in big trouble. The economic realities, not to mention the foreign policy realities, are about to catch up with Obama’s fantasies.
Big trouble? Well, uh, yeah, the collapse of the world economic structure, default on all debt, armageddon, the apocalypse, the rapture, oh, wait, have you recanted on all that?
Not at all. That is all still coming, except for the rapture and apocalypse and armageddon. I don’t know anything about the rapture and apocalypse and armageddon. Maybe so. I just don’t know. Do you?
It is true that it is not Obama’s fault. There’s nothing he could do about it. So far, what he and the Democratic Congress have done makes everyting worse, but making it better is not really under their control.