The Gap: Not Just a Store in the Mall
From The Washington Times:
"It took less than an hour before Senators considering federal Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court fell into disagreement over Hurricane Katrina. In their opening remarks, the two top Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee invoked the tragedy as a reminder of the gap between rich and poor and the need for a Supreme Court that wants to close that gap."
I don't think that even the Senators spouting this tripe really believe it. The hurricane didn't discriminate between the rich and poor. It destroyed the lives and property of all economic classes.
And to the extent one can argue that poor people couldn't get out of New Orleans when the levees failed --whereas rich people had already left or happened to live in neighborhoods unaffected by the flooding-- what on earth could the Supreme Court have done about that? David Souter putting on waders and launching himself into the floodwaters to rescue the drowning? Ruth Bader Ginsburg powering up the RV and motoring down to Nawlins to drive the victims to safety? John Paul Stevens commandeering a helicopter to fly in supplies to those stuck on their rooftops?
The Supreme Court might come in handy should Congress or some state legislature pass a law that confiscated the property of the poor and transferred it to the rich because rich people pay more in taxes and make better neighbors, say, but that would be as the result of the Court deciding that such a law was unconstitutional by reason of the 5th and 14th Amendments....oh, wait...the Court already decided such a law was OKAY...and it was the Court's liberal members...Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer, joined by the so-called moderate, Kennedy... who voted to allow such takings in the Kelo case this winter.
Well maybe the liberal wing of the court isn't so compassionate...maybe they need to get to work on closing that gap between the rich and poor.
posted by Presley Bennett @ 9/12/2005
4 comments
4 Comments:
I'm a self avowed liberal, and I can't see where anyone could work the hurricane into Robert's hearing...unless it was to score political points.
And I thought Kelo was one of the shittiest decisions ever made by the Supreme Court. Liberal, conservative, whatever...I'd like to smack the whole group that voted in favor of that one. I haven't seen a decent defense of Kelo yet...it was frankly a crap decision. Maybe I feel that way because I'm a property owner, but to me the justices who voted on the majority side on that one left their sanity at home that day...
BA~~212
Yup, Kelo was a bad decision.
And Chucky Schumer is the biggest political whore going these days, so it doesn't surprise me at all that he would be so classless as to try to tie Katrina to the Supreme Court nominee hearings.
How any self-respecting human being can bring themselve to vote for this idiot is beyond all comprehension.
I've listened to lower federal court deliberations on C-SPAN. I'm left with the impression that, when all is said and done, the personal beliefs of the judges are the main factors in their decisions. In other words, at the end of the day, the U.S. Constitution doesn't really enter into it. I think we need an ammendment which would curb, in some way, the power of the courts.
We shouldn't be may to play this idiotic guessing game every time there's a vacancy in the federal judiciary.
Sorry if all that is slightly off point.
I'd actually go out on a limb and say that most of the time the Supreme Court sticks pretty well with the Constitution and the law. Kelo was an exception, but take the medical marijuana law...while I favor medical marijuana use, their determination was, to the Constitution, correct. The law regulating pot at the federal level was applied correctly within the guidelines of the Constitution. The justices even indicated that while they may personally favor allowing medical marijuana, their duty was to rule on the Constitutionality of the law, not whether the law was a good one or not.
As a liberal, I had a great respect for Rehnquist, as I think he guided the court in a way consistent with this...ruling as to law, not to ideology. Not to say I always agree with him (I agreed with the majority on Roe v. Wade, he was in dissent), but for the most part I felt the decisions of the Rehnquist Court were good ones (Kelo being one exception).
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