Chief Justice John Roberts Was An "Obama Judge"

Flopping Aces ^ | 11-28-18 | Daniel John Sobieski

[Starman417]

If the Kavanaugh hearings showed Chief Justice Roberts anything, it should have been that the notion that the Supreme Court is in a pristine bubble immune from political considerations and thoughts is false and has been at least since the days that the character assassins of Robert Bork made his name a verb in the dictionary his failed nomination left on the ash heap of history:

The year was 1987. It was fall. It was November 11. It had been a tough year for President Ronald Reagan. Liberals were going bonkers with Iran-Contra as a hopeful tool to destroy a great president on the verge of winning the Cold War. The media was dubbing Iran-Contra the worst mistake of Reagan’s presidency. It was not. What happened on November 11, 1987 would, in due course, constitute the worst mistake of the Reagan presidency: the nomination of Anthony Kennedy for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kennedy pick was supposed to calm the waters after the storm generated by the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg nominations. Bork would have been a brilliant justice, but leftists savaged the man, transmogrifying him into an ugly beast — a gargoyle. Bork suffered the ignominy of the likes of Senator Ted Kennedy portraying him as “anti-woman.” A new verb was introduced into the political lexicon: the process of being “Borked.”

It had dawned on the Democrats that they could bypass the cumbersome legislative process still tied to that inconvenient “consent of the government thing” by concentrating on the courts and populating it with judges who believed in the “living constitution” which was to be interpreted in the context of the times inflamed by public passions and the liberal cause du jour. Original intent was an anachronism.

Bork’s nomination scared the hell out of Democrats who thought the unalienable right to life Thomas Jefferson placed in the Declaration of Independence didn’t really mean that:

When President Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court, there was no serious question about his qualification for the bench. Just five years earlier, he had been unanimously confirmed for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, having earned an “exceptionally well qualified” label from the American Bar Association. But in the interim, the Democratic Party had taken control of the Senate. The late Senator Ted Kennedy orchestrated a smear campaign against Bork so breathtaking in its distortion that even the liberal Washington Post denounced it as a “lynching.” On Oct. 3, 1987, Bork’s nomination was rejected by the Senate on a 58-42 vote.

Bork was an originalist meaning he believed the Constitution contained no “penumbras” and “emanations” one could hang an imaginary eight to an abortion on, a factoid which prompted Chappaquiddick’s champion of women’s rights, Sen. Ted Kennedy, to cross that bridge when he came to it in his epic rant on Bork’s nomination:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution," Kennedy said.

With a Senate cowered by political considerations and the passions of the moment, we got Anthony Kennedy’s America, a land of weather-vane SCOTUS decisions and coat-hangers continuing to be beaten into scalpels. Thanks to President Trump, who realized the Supreme Court was and still is a political arena, at least for those who confirm SCOTUS picks, the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanugh have shifted SCOTUS back in an originalist direction. Are they “Trump” justices per se? Perhaps not, but they share his views on the role and limitations of the Supreme Court.

Your rebuke of President Trump for saying there was such a political animal as an “Obama judge” was a poster child for hypocrisy that hearkened back to the day that you sat silent as President Obama scolded the Supreme Court during the State of the Union over the Citizens United victory for free speech:

[Lurkinanloomin]

Roberts is compromised.

Pictures from college or illegal adoptions, either way he cannot be trusted as he proved with the Obamacare ruling.

[BenLurkin]

It had dawned on the Democrats that they could bypass the cumbersome legislative process still tied to that inconvenient “consent of the government thing” by concentrating on the courts and populating it with judges who believed in the “living constitution” which was to be interpreted in the context of the times inflamed by public passions and the liberal cause du jour.

Exactly

[gunnyg]

was?/and/or is?

++++++++++++++++++++++++

[WashingtonFire]

He is a globalist judge along with the rest of the picks of BJ Clinton, Obozzo and the Idiot Bush son.

[fireman15]

The Supreme Court has always been a political branch of government. It is just that the justices terms are longer so that theoretically their decisions should be more consistent. In Washington State all of our State Supreme Court Justices are elected. We now have a court that is completely made up of leftists and they no longer seem to feel any obligation to follow any of the basic tenants of the law. It is absurd.

[bigbob]

Matters not.

[PapaBear3625]

We will see how it goes in this current term. There will be a number of interesting cases.
Be ready for all out war once Ginsberg dies (I think those broken ribs will have a bigger impact on her health than the media admit to)

[arthurus]

The Conservative majority on the USSC is evanescing as John Roberts continues to “grow in office.” We need the Sleeping Judgette to retire or otherwise leave her position on the Court posthaste. One hopes that Sotomayor will very soon find something else to do, too.

[arthurus]

And the fact that he is on Dilantin. Long use of that robs one of willpower and will bend the user to the source of the greater pressure.

[Logical me]

Roberts is a rotten communists. Only hope is an opening in the SC and we get another Constitutional Judge in.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Roberts is a strategist. Had he voted against Obamacare it would have still passed, with everything the leftists wanted in it. But by voting for it, he was able to insert a poison pill almost guaranteeing its destruction.

Now this time, making such a seemingly naive statement I strongly suspect also has a deep, ulterior motive. On the surface, it is just him defending the judicial branch. And had it been just between him and President Trump, it would have had a different meaning.

But senator Grassley, current but outgoing chair of the senate judiciary committee also chimed in. This changed everything, and created a “strategic triangle”. Please also note that the next senate judiciary committee is going to be pruned in size, making it easier to act.

President Trump of the Executive Branch, and the Republican US Senate, with the Chief Justice of the POTUS asserting the neutrality of the SCOTUS.

The purpose of this almost has to be a *major* reorganization of the judicial branch, led by the incoming chairman of the senate judiciary committee Lindsay Graham, who is positively chomping at the bit to carry out such reform.

Senator Grassley could only chime in because he is leaving, and so Senator Graham won’t have to. A smaller committee won’t have as many Democrats to set up roadblocks and waste time.

Tacticians fight battles. Strategists win wars.

[dead]

[MichaelCorleone]

“The Supreme Court has always been a political branch of government.”

Always? I think not.

[italianquaker]

President Bush nominated Justice Alito. Would easily take 8 more of him

[vigilence]

The proposition that the status quo of the government is all sweetness and light with daily examples of bi-partisanship is a fantasy perpetuated by the media to sell papers/clicks/viewership as they cover normal conflict in a robust democratic republic. Politics is the daily give and take on how we slice (or grow) the pie. Conflict is normal and to be encouraged. Without it, and the mechanisms that regulate it, we would decend into socialism/communism or monopoly/fascism. Both of which are tyranny.

[Boomer]

Yep. Compromised. How? Who knows but he is definitely a bought and paid for Justice. Whether that is due to blackmail, money changing hands, or simply a radical change in ideology is still to be determined. He may have been a plant. A radical leftist from the beginning posing as a republican. God knows we have a bunch of politicians like that (Flake, Corker, Kasich, Murkowski, Collins, McCain, etc).

[Lurkinanloomin]

Alito was nominated after he had to rescind the nomination of Harriet Myers.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

It had dawned on the Democrats that they could bypass the cumbersome legislative process still tied to that inconvenient “consent of the government thing” by concentrating on the courts and populating it with judges who believed in the “living constitution” which was to be interpreted in the context of the times inflamed by public passions and the liberal cause du jour. Original intent was an anachronism.

Compare:

“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander Hamilton

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

“The Supreme Court has always been a political branch of government.” - fireman15

Always? I think not.

I’m afraid so. Remember the Dred Scott decision . . .

OTOH SCOTUS was far less politicized before the passage of the 12^th Amendment than afterward - and less, but nontrivial, before the nomination of Judge Bork than it has been since.