Brian Tamanaha
Senator John McCain identified his legal priorities in an
essay published today in the National Law Journal. The good news is that he promises to depoliticize the Justice Department, and to halt torture. The bad news is that, following what has become a Republican tradition, he demonizes judges:
Terrorists are not the only threat to public safety. Lax enforcement policies, judges who legislate from the bench and lack of support for law enforcement personnel all continue to force our innocent citizens behind the barred windows of their homes and allow criminals to roam free.
Did you get that? "Judges who legislate from the bench" are a
threat to public safety who "force our innocent citizens behind the barred windows of their homes..."
Who are these dastardly judges? You can guess:
None of these law enforcement efforts will succeed without a judiciary that understands its proper role and its proper mission. Senator Obama would appoint liberal activist judges and supply them with greater sentencing discretion. I will appoint judges who will strictly interpret our Constitution. Senator Obama's judges would coddle criminals. I will appoint judges who will hold criminals accountable.
Demonizing judges is a cheap political trick. Since judges cannot respond to defend themselves, and judges are weak institutional actors who have no army and no money, to run against judges is political bullying. (Never mind that a substantial majority of sitting federal judges, including a majority of Supreme Court Justices, are Republican appointees.)
It is also irresponsible. The only capital judges have is their credibility. The cost of this tactic is a deterioration of our collective faith that judges try their best to apply the law. Without this faith, the rule of law cannot exist.
We all lose, conservatives and liberals (and everyone else) alike, when politicians indulge in attacks on judges.
Unbelievable that McIdiot actually sees a benefit in writing this BS. It appears that a week before the elections, he and the right wing have realized that they need to do something beside sleazy attacks. They're now in sober crazy mode: trying to sound like they're presenting thoughtful arguments using the same tired and disgusting RW spin.
Here's a piece on free markets from the WSJ:
The Age of Prosperity Is Over American Spectator on the infighting:
Post-Defeat Planners (second item at link)
National Review Online goes nutty over a Drudge piece on redistribution:
Shame, CubedAs other
right wing site points out that Drudge is full of it:
What I don't understand is why this is surprising, or interesting enough to be headlining Drudge (UPDATE: Beyond the fact that Drudge's headline suggests, wrongly, that Obama states that the Supreme Court should have ordered the redistribution of income; as Orin says, his views on the subject, beyond that it was an error to promote this agenda in historical context, are unclear.). At least since the passage of the first peacetime federal income tax law about 120 years ago, redistribution of wealth has been a (maybe the) primary item on the left populist/progressive/liberal agenda, and has been implicitly accepted to some extent by all but the most libertarian Republicans as well. Barack Obama is undoubtedly liberal, and his background is in political community organizing in poor communities. Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more "fairly" distributed than it is currently?
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