On Obama's Supreme Court nominee

A jurisprudential doctrine was expressed by a certain Illinois state legislator in a 2001 radio interview: "The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. ... It says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."


I don't really care whether or not she is a Latina. I don't really care that she is a woman (except that I do think that there was a decide lack of XY chromosome balance). I don't really care that she is from the Bronx (go Yankees!).

I care whether or not she honestly believes that the Constitution guarantees a basic standard of living.

Don't get me wrong, I think it SHOULD guarantee that - but as my liberal and libertarian friends assert - I am a strict constructionist. I think that the constitution should apply to the words and intent behind it.

It was, after all, judicial activism run amok that transformed "the right to bear (not bare) arms" against a corrupt government into "the right to own armour piercing bullets."

Some commentators have suggested that the vetting process has to go back to looking at decisions made in a previous life. I couldn't disagree more. I think a) that excludes non-judges from selection and b) ignores the facts of any particular case - as any student knows, the facts are more important in arriving at a just result than the principles extolled at appeal.

I think that vetting should be about the fitness of the person to hold office, and that it is up to the President to decide what kind of judge they want on the bench. Let him/her read the decisions and say "I want you to write the same kind of decisions for our country."

The new appointees political/academic views on the breadth that the constitution can take, however, are fair game.