Wingnut watch
Judicial nuts
October 30, 2005
The wingnut faction's overwhelming power over this administration, although never in doubt, was exposed for the world to see last week. On Thursday, October 27, President Bush and accepted the withdrawal of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. In addition to the op-eds, talk show rants, and Senators’ speeches, a comprehensive, grassroots web-based campaign targeted the Miers nomination and, ultimately, scored a big victory for the right wing—over a right-wing president.
David Frum of the National Review organized a petition to the White House, declaring that the President owed the voters that put him back in office in 2004 a Supreme Court nominee with a “clear, consistent, and unashamed conservative judicial philosophy.” He collected nearly 7,000 signatures. The Christian Coalition of America asked its members to sign a petition pledging to support “President Bush’s conservative nominees to the US Supreme Court.”
The wingnut Christian website, www.fidelis.org launched a new website, www.withdrawmiers.org. The petition sponsored by this conservative site argued that “the Supreme Court would be best served by a nominee whose judicial philosophy reflects a clear commitment to the Constitution.” Predictably, every wingnut organization with an opinion on Miers echoed this tired “judicial activism” criticism. As we discussed last week, the Constitution is an evolving framework containing certain immutable principles. How could it be otherwise? What did Thomas Jefferson intend to tell us about the taxation of goods purchased over the Internet? Nothing. He couldn’t conceive of the Internet because he was too busy congratulating himself over the dumbwaiter. He probably would not have approved of affirmative action. Then again, he did approve of the ownership of slaves and having extra-marital sex with them. Original intent, it seems to me, is a judicial philosophy derived—at least, in part—from a misguided romanticism of an earlier, more conservative era, but that’s utter nonsense. Or else a cynical smokescreen. Either way, we owe it to ourselves to reap the benefits of 200 years of progress.
The Christian Coalition takes it a step further, claiming, “Our Founding Fathers NEVER intended that the branch they wanted to be the weakest of the 3 branches of American government -- the federal judiciary -- to be as strong as it is today.” The claim that our founding fathers clearly intended the judicial branch to be the weakest branch is unfounded. Though the Constitution contains nothing about the branches being equal, the system of checks and balances it created were designed so that no branch of government could be too powerful or too powerless. This claim is a curious one for an organization that made a fuss over the Kelo case. A truly weak judicial branch wouldn’t even have the power to overrule the government of New London, CT. The truth is that complaints of judicial activism and an excessively strong judiciary are about power. Right now, conservatives dominate the legislative and executive branches, but not the judicial branch. Consequently, they hate/fear the judicial branch because it is the only impediment to the application of unconstitutional conservative ideology.
