Senator Kennedy Can’t Have It Both Ways

Senator Teddy Kennedy [D-Mass] vows to grill Judge John Roberts on every possible issue that may come before him if appointed to the court. Senator Kennedy knows this would violate the tradition of the court. The purpose of the court is judging cases, case by case with no predetermined opinion. If Senator Kennedy doesn’t know, he can ask his friend Senator Robert Byrd, [A constitutional authority] the meaning of presumed innocent until proven guilty . Conformation hearing should never become interrogations. Courts and the Military are the two departments of government expected to remain free of politics.

Senator Kennedy is taking a much different position than he did in the hearings for Justice Thurgood Marshall, [1967.] Then he argued the opposite position, nominees shouldn’t be required to answer question pertaining to future cases they may be confronted with. Again, in the conformation hearings for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg [1993] Kennedy’s position was nominees shouldn’t be required to answer question pertaining to future cases they may rule on. Judge Ginsburg declined to answer any of those questions.

Which is it Senator Kennedy, answer, or not to answer. Senator Kennedy said he joins with his colleagues hoping these hearing will be dignified. Who are Senator Kennedy’s colleagues, Liberal Democratic Senators, or the entire Senate committee who’ll be conducting the hearings? I have no doubt Judge Roberts will conduct himself with dignity, I question if the Senate will follow suite.

There is some question of Judge Roberts’s possible membership in a Federalist Lawyers origination. Justices Marshall was a member of the NAACP, Justice Ginsburg was a member of the ACLU. In some circles those organizations have questionable beliefs.

Conservative Republicans are holding their breaths, hoping Judge Roberts will follow the conservative agenda. There’s no guarantee this will be the case. President Eisenhower nominated Chief Justice Earl Warren to the court and lived to regret it. President Reagan nominated Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the court, She’s a good justice, however many of her opinions flew in the face of conservative expectations. No one knows how justices will think, and act when they become Judges, at best it’s a crap shoot.

Judge Roberts could very easily answer all the Senates questions with answers they’d like to hear. If after he’s confirmed and if he doesn’t follow through with the impressions he gave them at his conformation hearings, he could simply say he lied. This is a lifetime appointment the Senate can’t fire him.

These conformation hearings give the Senate an opportunity to play Lord and Master over the President, They give the President an opportunity to hang proverbial horse thieves, I’m not sure all the harsh rhetoric isn’t meant to entertain the public. Washington is a bureaucracy, managed by a pseudo-autocracy, ruled by an absentee semi-organized mob. [How’s that for mixing metaphors.]

Judge John G. Roberts Jr. is sure to be confirmed after Kennedy and Boys gets through nailing his preverbal hide to the barn door.

They’ll go on to find another subject to keep them from doing their job, being Senators. At times I wonder if we really need a congress, the way they pass the buck to the President. It may serve Liberal congresspersons well to equate the GOP Elephant with long memories. What goes around comes around. A Democratic President looms on the horizon, just food for thought.