maxparrish
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2005
- Messages
- 2,262
- Location
- SF Bay Area
- Basic Beliefs
- Libertarian-Conservative, Agnostic.
Why do you think it's either someone like Scalia, Alito or Thomas, or Venezuela redux?Then you're likely going to have to wait. Unless Obama is willing to replace the conservative with another conservative, in a lame duck election year is very unlikely that the Republican Senate is going to go forward.
In the meantime, as most here know, I consider it crucual to get someone like Scalia, Alito, or Thomas to replace him. Otherwise it is Venezuela 'redux'.
That seems extremely improbable. How would it be like Venezuela?
Apart from my intentional exaggeration, my point stems from my long-held belief that the unelected Supreme Court is the final absolute authority over secular law...in the same sense that the unelected Ayatollah and his council in Iran are the final legal authority in Iran. The ONLY restraint on the degree of their judicial tyranny is their own conscious and 'virtue', no other.
It is, of course, a deep flaw in our Constitutional system - a latent political despotism that has emerged and become rampet since FDR's shaking up of the Supreme Court tradition. (In fact, prior to the civil war, for 60 years, the courts made NO rulings on the constitutionality of Congresses laws).
Today the Court is divided and a handmaiden to political power, unmoored to any uniform or objective political philosophy. The group on the left have shown themselves to be a "bloc", a cadre of 4 uniform and relentless decision making on important issues. The group on the right have always been more flexible and (tragically) open minded BUT are an important check composed of 2 center-rightists (Roberts-Kennedy) and 2 rightists (Alito-Thomas).
One more leftists means that the new court (unlike the old) will never deviate from hard core liberal/progressive agenda. Challenges to imperial Presidents (if Democratic) will be quashed, etc. Issues on amnesty, abortion, Obamacare, Affirmative Action, will be moot - it will be a rubber stamp to advance the leftist agenda.
Of course, the left gang of 5 won't be as reckless as the Venezuelan justices...but they will be just as dogmatically partisan.