The Future is Now

Manuel Miranda wrote in OpinionJournal Today's debate over Roberts is really about Justice O'Connor's replacement.... The liberal debate is simple because, to put it bluntly, Democrats lost the 2004 election and then they lost the filibuster in May. Their debate is not over Judge Roberts's merits. In fact, even the best liberal opposition to Judge Roberts first concedes that he is excellent, and then it reveals its true concern: whether Chief Justice Roberts will rule their way on this or that.

USSC Justices should not be picked based on which way they will rule on this matter or that. They should be picked because they will do their job as judges. If Dems want a particular law passed, they need to convince a majority of both houses to pass it, and then they need to convince the President to sign it. Or they need to convince 2/3 of both houses to support passing it over the President's veto. And if they want something they fear the USSC will say is unconstitutional, then they need to persuade 2/3 of both houses, and 3/4 of the state legislatures, to approve a Constitutional Amendment, which will force the USSC to allow them to do what they want. You say they can't convince that many they are right? Well maybe it should not be done, then.

Often, the ideologue's goal is put in colorful language such as "He will turn back the clock." What liberals mean by that, of course, is that they fear that George W. Bush's nominee might move the clock at all beyond the hour at which they peaked, circa 1973.

Even so, liberals know that Judge Roberts will have been confirmed a week from now. They know that the fight is now all about the next nominee. They also know that they have only one approach left: to intimidate Mr. Bush and defeat him even before he makes the next selection. Their aims are twofold: to get a less conservative nominee and to ensure that the president does not send someone up who will excite the widest possible spectrum of conservatives and unite them with blacks, Hispanics and religious swing voters--groups with which the GOP made inroads into Democratic turf in 2004 as never before.

And by the same token, that means that George Bush needs to be looking for a nominee that will do exactly what the Dems fear.

There is another goal: to ensure that, if the president nominates a woman, she is their kind of woman.

I.E. one that does not mind killing babies.

Remarkably, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did some politicking on this point earlier this week. On Wednesday, Justice Ginsburg told an audience that she doesn't like the idea of being the only female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, but that in replacing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "any woman will not do." There are "some women who might be appointed who would not advance human rights or women's rights."

That is not the court's job. That is the legislature's job. The court's job is to make sure that laws passed by the legislature are consistent with the Constitution.

When she was counsel for the ACLU, Justice Ginsburg advocated that there was a constitutional right to prostitution and that the age of consent should be lowered to 12. With a "human rights" standard as high as that, Mr. Bush's job just got a whole lot tougher.

I recall a state legislature where some woman proposed a law to lower the age of consent to 15, and then found some of the others in the legislature that thought they would have a little fun with her, and so they introduced an ammendment to lower it to 12, and she found herself having to fight that ammendment (apparently she did not agree with Ginsburg). They thing ended when another legislator proposed an ammendment to raise the age of consent to 21, but make it mandatory.

I don't thing George Bush wants to go there.