Mount Virtus

"Happy to come back to Michigan, but I miss the mountains!"

Ben on Social Media

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Home
  • About Ben
  • Mount Virtus?
  • Writer / Editor For Hire
  • What I’m Thankful For
  • Colorado Ballot Reviews
    • Colorado Ballot 2008
    • Colorado Ballot 2010
    • Colorado Ballot 2012
  • Archives
  • Passion and Purpose:
    The Rise & Fall of Al Gansee
  • Mary and Jacob: From the Forgotten Dust
Home General Judicial Extremism

5/21/2005 By Ben 3 Comments

Judicial Extremism

Editor’s note: This is the last scheduled post on Mount Virtus for the next 10 days or so. The author is taking a self-imposed “blog vacation” but shall return to his wit and witticisms after the Memorial Day weekend holiday. May God bless our brave but media-beleaguered men and women in uniform both today (on Armed Forces Day) and on Memorial Day. They and their families remain in our thoughts and prayers. Until then, enjoy the following….

Throughout the crescendoing rancor of the ongoing debate over the judicial filibuster, the Senate Democrats and their MSM allies perpetually reassert two suppositions:

1) That President Bush’s nominees are radical and outside the “mainstream.”
2) That Republican Senators should not implement the so-called “nuclear option” because it would hurt their party in some future day when the roles are completely reversed.

In light of this, you need to go read the hard-hitting three-part essay on National Review from Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center – found here, here, and here. The three-part essay certainly adds some perspective to the Senate Democrats’ claims! Take especially Whelan’s third installment, a true gem:

Imagine, if you will, that a Democrat President nominated a judge whose constitutional and policy views were, by any measure, on the extreme left fringes of American society.

Let’s assume, for example, that this nominee had expressed strong sympathy for the position that there is a constitutional right to prostitution as well as a constitutional right to polygamy.

Let’s say, further, that he had attacked the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as organizations that perpetuate stereotyped sex roles and that he had proposed abolishing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replacing them with a single androgynous Parent’s Day.

And, to get really absurd, let’s add that he had called for an end to single-sex prisons on the theory that if male prisoners are going to return to a community in which men and women function as equal partners, prison is just the place for them to get prepared to deal with women.

Let’s further posit that this nominee had opined that a manifest imbalance in the racial composition of an employer’s work force justified court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the part of the employer. But then, lo and behold, to make this nominee even more of a parody of an out-of-touch leftist, let’s say it was discovered that while operating his own office for over a decade in a city that was majority-black, this nominee had never had a single black person among his more than 50 hires.

Imagine, in sum, a nominee whose record is indisputably extreme and who could be expected to use his judicial role to impose those views on mainstream America. Surely such a person would never be nominated to an appellate court. Surely no Senate Democrat would support someone with such extreme views. And surely Senate Republicans, rather than deferring to the nominating power of the Democrat President, would pull out all stops—filibuster and everything—to stop such a nominee.

That makes sense, doesn’t it? I’m not even going to enter the calculus of how much more “out of the mainstream” this hypothetical liberal judicial nominee is than any of President Bush’s selections. At least be fair-minded for a moment and admit that such a jurist’s views as described above would garner no more public support – and probably considerably less – than those espoused by the most conservative Bush nominee. Right?

So you think the Republicans would have to throw out all the stops, including use of the filibuster, to prevent such a liberal candidate from reaching the federal bench? Aha, then! They’re hypocrites, right?

You don’t have to be overwhelmingly clever to figure out I’m leading you to the punchline of Whelan’s essay:

Well, not quite. The hypothetical nominee I have just described is, in every particular except his sex, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.

President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg on June 22, 1993. A mere six weeks later, on August 3, 1993, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 96-3 vote.

(The source for the information in the second through fourth paragraphs is “Report of Columbia Law School Equal Rights Advocacy Project: The Legal Status of Women under Federal Law,” co-authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen Fasteau in September 1974. The information in the fifth paragraph can be found in the transcript of Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing.)

And thus the Democrats’ liberal obstructionist tactics are exposed for the desperate ploys they are. Or maybe in your fantasy world, the views Ginsburg touted are in fact mainstream… in which case, there is nothing more this blog can do for you.

Filed Under: General, National Politics

Comments

  1. Curious Stranger says

    5/21/2005 at 12:59 pm

    media-beleaguered?

    Percentage of judges confirmed during Clinton’s 2 terms: 81%
    Percentage of judges confirmed during Bush’s 2 terms (so far): 88%

    Were Republican’s obstructionist when they refused to allow Clinton nominee’s out of committee? Or is it only filibustering that’s obstruction? Would you be alright with the Judiciary Committee reinstating the blue-card rule used by the Republicans to hold up Clinton’s nominee’s?

  2. Temujin says

    5/21/2005 at 5:23 pm

    Hope your hiatus from blogging is a good one, and you come back fully refreshed, and ready to roll.

  3. Kappy says

    5/21/2005 at 8:17 pm

    Gonna miss ya. Could try this as an option:
    http://www.autoblogger.net/switch.htm

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Inside

  • About Ben
  • Archives
  • Colorado Ballot Reviews
    • Colorado Ballot 2008
    • Colorado Ballot 2010
    • Colorado Ballot 2012
    • Colorado Ballot 2014
  • Mary and Jacob: From the Forgotten Dust
  • Mount Virtus?
  • Passion and Purpose:
    The Rise & Fall of Al Gansee
  • What I’m Thankful For
  • Writer / Editor For Hire

About Me

Ben DeGrow
Grateful and growing Christian, devoted husband and father of 3, public policy analyst, returned to Michigan by way of Colorado, conservative writer, lifelong learner, Detroit Tigers fan.

Recent Posts

  • Tips to Teach Kids to Set and Achieve Goals
  • The Christmas Music Countdown You’ve Been Looking For: 2022 Edition
  • Sleep Deprivation and Parental Controls: How to Ensure Your Kids are Safe from Media Exposure
  • 8 Original Ways To Leverage Influencer Marketing
  • Why Every Single Business Needs A YouTube Channel

Colorado News

  • Colorado Senate News
  • Complete Colorado
  • Independence Institute
  • Loveland Politics
  • The Colorado Observer

National News and Politics

  • Drudge Report
  • Hot Air
  • National Review
  • Politico
  • Real Clear Politics
  • Reason
  • The Washington Times
  • TownHall
  • Wall Street Journal
  • Weekly Standard
  • World Magazine

Blogs Extraordinaire

  • American Thinker
  • David Harsanyi’s Blog
  • E!! The True Conservative Story
  • EIA Intercepts
  • Evangelical Outpost
  • Hugh Hewitt
  • Instapundit
  • LaShawn Barber
  • Lileks
  • Little Green Footballs
  • Michelle Malkin
  • NRO's The Corner
  • Power Line
  • Red State

Completing the Blogroll

  • Alarming News
  • Black Five
  • Blogs of War
  • Eduwonk
  • Flypaper
  • Fraters Libertas
  • Historical Conversations
  • IMAO
  • Jay P. Greene
  • Mike Anderson
  • Mullings
  • Professor Bainbridge
  • Right Thinking
  • Right Wing News
  • Right Wing Nuthouse
  • Shot in the Dark
  • Talking Points Memo
  • Virginia Postrel
  • Volokh Conspiracy

Christian Commentary et al.

  • Kevin Pierpont
  • Sharper Iron

Conservative and GOP Sites

  • Backbone America
  • Cal Thomas
  • Colorado Republican Party
  • Colorado Republican Study Committee
  • Dennis Prager
  • Denver Metro Young Republicans
  • Free Republic
  • Heritage Foundation
  • Jefferson County Republican Party
  • Mackinac Center for Public Policy
  • Mark Steyn
  • Michael Medved
  • Rush Limbaugh

Colorado Blogs

  • American Kestrel
  • Bob Agard
  • Colorado Charter Schools
  • Colorado Peak Politics
  • Colorado Pols
  • Colorado Right
  • Conservative Libertarian Outpost
  • Coyote Gulch
  • Ed Is Watching
  • Free Colorado
  • Jeff Crank Show
  • Mark Hillman
  • Patient Power
  • PirateBallerina
  • Protein Wisdom
  • Reagan Girl
  • Rocky Mountain Alliance 1.0 (Archive)
  • Rocky Mountain Alliance 2.0 (Archive)
  • Rossputin
  • Stop the ACLU Blog
  • The Spot (Denver Post)
  • We Stand Firm

Other Sites

  • Technorati
  • Word Press

Rocky Mountain Alliance 2.0

  • Reclaim the Blue
  • The Business Word
  • The Daily Blogster
  • View from a Height

To Contact Me:
bendegrow-at-gmail.com

Copyright © 2023 RSS Feed · WordPress · Log in