How to Judge a Potential Justice

The questions before the courts are not and should not be whether the judges like the laws at issue, think they are in the public interest, think they would have written them differently had they been legislators, or would like to rewrite them now. That is not their job. They are in essence umpires (no, not vampires). They are not (or in any event should not be) on any team and should merely call the shots as they see them, as impartially as is possible. Believe it or not, many if not most of them try very hard to do just that. . . . The requisite judicial experience and temperament are what matter. These have as a very important, and in my view overriding, component: respect for and adherence to the Constitution.

On a political level, Obama is calling for campaign finance in an effort to slime the Post-Kelo Court:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2504524/posts

Kelo and F.E.C. are very definitive rulings of justices, I think.

Kelo was judicial tyranny against property rights. F.E.C. was defense of free speech. Three justices ruled against the Bill of Rights both times:

Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer proved themselves to be tyrants in Kelo. Kennedy was the only Kelo “just-us” to cross over.

Kelo Court vs. 2010 Supremes: A Vast Improvement — for now
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2499753/posts

[Blast from the Past — Saddleback debate]

Clarence Thomas Was More Experienced Than Obama
http://www.thehotjoints.com/tag/saddleback-church
August 18, 2008 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Politics

One of the most revealing things said during Saturday night’s Saddleback forum, was when Barack Obama was asked which Supreme Court justices he would not have nominated.

Obama wasted no time in naming Clarence Thomas, because “I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation.”

It’s impressive that Barack Obama is able to keep a straight face while criticizing anyone for lack of experience, given the fact that he’s the most unqualified lightweight to run for President in our nation’s history.

Putting aside that irony, Obama is also just flat wrong about Thomas. As The Wall Street Journal points out, Clarence Thomas had far more experience than Obama does.

By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s second most prominent court. Since his “elevation” to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

The fact of the matter is that Clarence Thomas has proven to be one of the most respected members of the of the entire court.

Black people have always loathed Thomas because even though he’s the first African-American elected to the Supreme Court [uups — Th. Marshall], he’s said publicly that he doesn’t think that means he owes anything to the black community.

In other words, just because he’s black doesn’t mean he’s going to pretend the constitution says something it does not just because a particular ruling would benefit the black community.

Barack Obama of course finds that offensive and would expect his supreme court nominees to legislate from the bench and inact socialist policies the founding fathers never intended.

I think Justice Thomas takes the view that he owes the black community what he owes the country at large - his best effort to adjudicate the law as understood by those whose votes established it.
To the extent that a a more specific, more limited, debt than that were acknowledged, the only debt that should matter would be denied.

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Pick somebody who wears a funny hat!