Posted on 05/26/2005 5:32:56 AM PDT by OESY
In the just-ended fight over filibustering judicial nominees, the Senate gave us something new: defining extremism leftward. Judges whose views Democrats would once have regarded as merely conservative are now seen as right-wing extremists — or, to use the phrase that keeps coming up in the current Senate debate, "out of the mainstream."
But what does the phrase mean? From Democrats' recent public statements, it seems to mean the following: Judges who would uphold a state's ban on gay marriage are out of the mainstream; judges who would rule that parents should be notified before their underage daughter has an abortion are out of the mainstream; judges who would question the wisdom of affirmative action are out of the mainstream.
Yet each of these positions is well within the mainstream of popular opinion — indeed, each arguably represents the view of a majority of Americans.
What might an actual extremist look like? A judge ruled who not just to uphold a state's ban gay marriage but to re-criminalize acts of sodomy, perhaps. Or one who ruled not just to allow legislative restrictions of abortion, but to ban abortions outright, by judicial fiat. If a judge ruled not just to disregard race in college admissions but to re-establish separate-but-equal schools, that would be out of the mainstream.
None of President Bush's judicial nominees is an extremist — or even close....
The Democrats who were filibustering President Bush's judicial nominees were seeking, in effect, to define extremism leftward. Coming from a minority party, this was pure hubris. Should it ever happen again, Republicans must not compromise. If the so-called "nuclear option" is required to re-orient Senate debate, and also to remind Democrats why they keep losing elections, so be it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, nominated by President Clinton for the Supreme Court in 1993 and confirmed by the Senate 96-3, once proposed the abolition of Mother's and Father's Day in favor of a unisex Parent's Day; she also once called for co-ed prisons and speculated that prostitution and polygamy might be rights guaranteed under the Constitution. Yet none of that put her "out of the mainstream" in the eyes of an overwhelming majority of Republican senators.
I thought the idea of having an independent judiciary was that they'd be out of the mainstream so they could make judgments based on what is right and wrong.
What a bizarre concept -------------- sort of like children learning history, reading, and math in school today!
;-)
mainstream is anything that the democrats agree with.
Just another day at the office.
The Democrats' public statement repeat the mantra that Republican nominees are "out of the mainstream." The Compromise leaves the future use of the filibuster for "extraordinary circumstances." Both phrases have variable definitions, as if they were written in sand, in a high wind, at high tide.
And the 14 Senators who signed onto the Compromise apparently wanted it that way. The dirty little truth is that the 14 Senators used a deliberately fuzzy definition, because those men and women COULD NOT AGREE TO A SINGLE SET OF TERMS.
Of course the Compromise will fail. It already HAD failed before the ink was dry, and before the last self-congratulatory speech had been given.
Congressman Billybob
It seems that McCain is involved with many failures.
TS
GOOD ONE!
Years ago, the Detroit Free Press (imagine the Minneapolis Star and Sickle at a third-grade writing level) had a piece on the SOTU judges, which classified them as being either "conservatives", "centrists" or "moderates". No "liberal" or even "progressive" in their system. Guess where they placed Red Ruth.
there ya go, falling back on such weak and out-dated concepts of historical accuracy and original intent < /sarc >
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