Judge Roy Moore: For supreme court

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Written By Christian Hartsock

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Conservatives have gone into ecstatic raptures over Judge John G. Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, on the mere basis of what others have said about him. This is, pretty much, because What Others Have Said About Him is all that anyone truly knows.

Conservative radio talk show host Sean Hannity, who seems to harbor an instinctual compulsion to embrace any move President Bush makes, has wrapped his arms around Roberts and said on his radio show that Bush must have made the right decision inasmuch as he has a history of appointing conservatives to high positions, such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice (who describes herself as “mildly pro-choice”). Former education secretary Bill Bennett echoed this sentiment on Hannity and Colmes, saying that Roberts should be trusted simply because conservatives close to him trust him.

What about us? Shouldn’t we be able to rely on something other than word-of-mouth before we support a nominee for lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court? An open record perhaps? Past statements about controversial issues?

Unfortunately, John Roberts has not made any double-take-warranting statements about any controversial issues in his entire career, which, as Ann Coulter said, “is just unnatural.” Conservatives have been moaning and groaning about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s demands for Roberts to unveil his personal views, suggesting that he is invoking some sort of litmus test for Roberts to pass.

So what’s the big deal? Amen to Schumer’s demands. Make Roberts ask tough questions. Let’s see what his real views are and whether or not he has the will and the cojones to overturn Roe v. Wade. We deserve that much.

A preferable nominee would follow the example of Sen. Rick Santorum, whose new book, It Takes a Family, a clear and candid espousal of his staunchly conservative social views, was published just 16 months before a tough bid for re-election to the Senate. As Santorum has said: “I didn’t run for election to be re-elected, I ran to make a difference to the country.” To the contrary, Roberts seems to have moved to and from each stage in his career with the next stage in mind, carefully keeping his personal views unknown to the public so as not to compromise his prospects of reaching that next stage.

The reaction of liberal interest groups to Roberts’ nomination is certainly comforting, however. MoveOn.org raised $1.3 million against Roberts before he was even nominated and called him a “right-wing crony.” People for the American Way has claimed to be “extremely disappointed” with the nomination, calling it a “constitutional catastrophe.” Planned Parenthood insisted that the selection “raises serious questions and grave concerns for women’s health and safety.” The National Organization for Women whined that “our hard-won rights will be in jeopardy if [Roberts] is confirmed.” NARAL Pro-Choice America warned that “President Bush has consciously chosen the path of confrontation, and he should know that we…are ready for the battle ahead.” Ooh, scary.

Now call me a radical conspiracy theorist, but are these groups secretly trying to work up conservative enthusiasm over Roberts, or have they just not done their homework?

Perhaps they, like many conservatives, have been duped by the much-trumpeted account of the brief Roberts coauthored for the case of Rust v. Sullivan in 1990 while serving as the Deputy Solicitor General. The brief read: “We continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overturned…[T]he Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion…find[s] no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution.”

But Roberts has since denied that the brief reflected his personal views and that he was merely speaking on behalf of his client, the United States of America. He even went so far as to say at one point: “Roe is the settled law of the land. If I am confirmed as a circuit judge, I would be bound to follow it. Nothing about my personal beliefs would prevent me from doing so.”

What has also not been comforting is the fact that it is now conventional wisdom that there will be no filibuster against Roberts. Is it me, or is it a little creepy that Roberts has received the endorsement of Sen. Hillary Clinton and that Sen. Schumer has said, “I would like to vote for him”?

We need a filibuster-friendly nominee. Coulter put it beautifully when she said on Hannity’s radio show: “We don’t want someone who will get 98 percent of the vote. We want someone who will get 51 percent of the vote.”

And there is no need to fear, because if the Democrats do feel they are facing “extraordinary circumstances,” then as Sen. Bill Frist warned, despite the compromise made by the “Gang of 14,” the Republicans still can and may resort to the “nuclear option” and eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominees.

To put it simply: We can do whatever we want. It does not matter how far-right or ideologically driven our candidate is – we have a congressional majority, we have the power to eliminate the filibuster – if we want him or her on the Supreme Court, he or she will be on the Supreme Court. Why has President Bush wasted all these advantages? The right-wing Clarence Thomas was elected to the Supreme Court before the GOP even had a congressional majority, when 10 out of the 14 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were pro-abortion. Anita Hill aside – we didn’t have problems then, why should we have any now? Why are we stuck with a wishy-washy stealth nominee whom we know nothing about?

Ironically, Hannity and Coulter both agreed that another good choice would have been Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. But Luttig has the exact same problem as Roberts. Luttig is renowned for being summoned by Virginia officials who sought a judge to issue an emergency order blocking a lower court ruling that invalidated Virginia’s ban on partial-birth abortion. He granted the order in 1998, but when the Supreme Court rejected the order and the case returned to him, he conceded his obligation to reverse course. He wrote: “Our responsibility is to faithfully follow [the Supreme Court’s] opinions,” and added that its ruling on abortion deserved respect from lower court judges.

No. A good choice would have been former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, whose righteous refusal to obey a higher court’s ruling that the Ten Commandments monument he had erected in the rotunda of the State Judicial Building was unconstitutional substantiates his credentials as a tough-minded yet thoroughly reasonable individual who will not only uphold the Constitution but acknowledge the foundation upon which it was formed. We need someone like Judge Moore – a man driven by conscience and not robotic acquiescence to corrupt rulings; the type of judge who would not let a perverse 32-year-old Supreme Court precedent be the final say on such a colossal life-and-death issue; a judge who will look to the laws of nature and nature’s God before the sentiments of mortals. As Moore wrote in his book So Help Me God: “The laws of man originate with God, and man is consequently bound by the laws of God.”

In his new book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, Bernard Goldberg lists Judge Moore (between Michael Newdow and Howard Dean!), stating that “what Judge Moore did should enrage true conservatives—in fact, it ought to make them even angrier with the judge than liberals were.” Goldberg asks us to imagine “if not just one, but hundreds of judges all over the country did what Judge Moore did—and not just in matters involving religion, but in a whole variety of cases. We would have anarchy.” He goes on to insist that Moore’s actions follow “a formula for chaos.”

But Goldberg is mistaken. What is a formula for chaos and anarchy is having our leaders and rulers forget the divine source of our law and liberty. Judge Moore was merely compelling us to acknowledge that source. And it is highly doubtful, if Moore would sacrifice his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court (which he had to) to refuse the order of the higher court to deny that source, that he would have much trouble refusing to pledge allegiance to Roe v. Wade. As of yet, there is no evidence that we can feel the same way about Roberts.

Who knows? Maybe we are in for a pleasant surprise. The fact that we don’t know enough about Roberts leaves not only room for cynicism, but, of course, for optimism as well. There is no doubt that Roberts is a fully competent, brilliant man and strong Christian. That does not make it any less inappropriate, however, for the president to nominate someone whom we can only have blind faith in. Anyway, it is not surprising that Bush would let his conservative base down on this, inasmuch as it has been clear in the past year that overturning Roe was never a particular ambition of his. This was evidenced when Barbara Walters interviewed him and Laura last winter and when she specifically asked him if he wanted to see Roe overturned, he pathetically dodged the question.

In the New York Times on July 27, Vikram David Amar wrote: “In its confirmation hearings, the Senate should ask Judge John G. Roberts to analyze specific cases that have come before the Supreme Court in the past. That is the only way to get a meaningful sense of where he may move the nation’s jurisprudence.” Amar lists a handful of cases involving controversial issues that Roberts should be asked about, including Sterberg v. Carhart (2000), in which the court struck down Nebraska’s ban on late-term abortions, and McCreary County v. ACLU (2005), in which the case of Kentucky’s display of the Ten Commandments in its courtrooms was at hand. I could not think of a better way to find out where Roberts stands exactly and where he will stand on the Supreme Court. At least with Judge Moore, we already know. With Judge Roberts, we don’t.

Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”

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