Attacking And Packing The Supreme Court

Back during the campaign, one of the long-term dangers I warned about was the inevitable attempt by liberal Democrats to pack the Supreme Court:

The New York Times published an editorial last week revealing another plan by the Democrats to take back control of the Supreme Court. The basic scenario is that if the Supreme Court continues to lean right (originalist), they'll attempt to add new justices to the court the next chance they get.

Picture this scenario: Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency in 2008 and the Democrats retain their majorities in both houses of Congress. Clinton could drive through a change that would increase the Supreme Court to 11 justices. She would then likely appoint far-left activist judges to fill the two new positions, stacking the Court with a 6-5 activist judge majority. It's not too far-fetched, if the Democrats win the next election cycle.

If you think that activist judges -- who impose their own bias on huge majorities of voters on critical issues including gay marriage, eminent domain, and civil rights for non-citizen terrorists -- are a problem now, just wait until the court is deliberately stacked toward the activist side.

That was back in July of 2007, when Hillary was the front-runner. In October of 2008, I added this:

It only takes a simple majority of Congress to change the number of justices on the Supreme Court. There are currently nine justices, with a general breakdown of four originalist, four activist, and one flip-flopper (Kennedy). Barack Obama has openly pledged to appoint activist judges who reinterpret the law as they see fit (not according to what the Constitution actually says). With a supermajority in Congress, it is likely that Obama could increase the number of justices to 11, 15, or whatever he could persuade Congress to go along with. Given that the Left's favorite tool of implementing liberal policies is the court system (since they can't win at the ballot box), and that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of legal decisions, we're looking at an irrecoverable control of the court system if this happens.

Now, let me also remind you of the recent revelation of Obama's statements in 2001 that he regrets the Supreme Court hasn't gotten more involved in economic redistribution. In that interview, Obama said that legislating economic redistribution was too lengthy a process, and that the courts could provide that redistribution much more quickly; that's why he was disappointed about the Supreme Court's lack of initiative.

If you want to see how fast your rights get taken away, just wait until an Obama-packed 11 member Supreme Court gets busy.

So why the refresher? Because the effort to pack the Supreme Court is under way. Supreme Court justices are appointed for life (i.e. until they decide to retire), and Bush managed to appoint several very good ones -- who are young and thus have a long future ahead of them -- despite tremendous opposition from Congress. The next couple of justices likely to retire are some of the most virulent activist judges, so that won't shift the balance of power in their favor. So, the only option they have is to start attacking the originalist justices in the hopes of bullying them into retirement...and that's what's happening now.

Chief Justice John Roberts:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that John Roberts misled the Senate during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be a moderate — and that the United States is now “stuck” with him as chief justice.

“Roberts didn’t tell us the truth. At least Alito told us who he was,” Reid said, referring to Samuel Alito, the second Supreme Court justice nominated by President George W. Bush. “But we’re stuck with those two young men, and we’ll try to change by having some moderates in the federal courts system as time goes on — I think that will happen.”

Reid has a long history of bashing another originalist justice Clarence Thomas, who also happens to be black...but that doesn't mean Reid's a racist, of course (you can't be a racist if you're a Democrat, you know).

Anyway, here's the initial broadside against long-time originalist justice Antonin Scalia:

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) is citing Justice Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) to justify calling the justice "homophobic." Says the congressman: "If you read his opinion, he thinks it's a good idea for two consenting adults who happen to be gay to be locked up because he is so disapproving of gay people."

Calling them liars and homophobes? Not surprisingly, both of these attacks lack any sort of foundation:

Harry Reid voted against John Roberts’s nomination to be Chief Justice. (Here’s the roll-call vote.) So it’s rather odd for him to be claiming that Roberts fooled him. In any event, if Reid is going to allege that Roberts “didn’t tell us the truth,” is it too much to ask that he identify a single statement that Roberts made that Reid alleges was false?

Scalia's dissent does not, in truth, endorse the idea of locking people up for consensual gay sex. It maintains that the idea is constitutionally permissible, not that it is "good." Justice Thomas joined Scalia's allegedly homophobic opinion even while filing a concurrence in which he said that he considered the law to be a bad one.

While sophomoric, childish, and completely false, these charges could very well be the first in a concerted effort to demonize these three justices and push them off the Court. Obama has already appointed extremely radical people to top legal posts in his administration, and there's no reason to think he would do anything different on his Supreme Court nominations. In fact, he pledged to appoint judges who would consider international law, reinterpret the Constitution according to a socialist agenda, and who would apply social justice to their rulings. It doesn't get much more activist than that.

If the Obama administration is so brazen as to ignore the Constitution now, just think what they'll be like when they control the Supreme Court, too. Your rights will only be valid until they become inconvenient for some liberal cause.

America as we know it will cease to exist, and fast.

There's my two cents.


Sources:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20560.html
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjJiYzJiODQ5MjZkZTQyMjgxZDA3ZmIyYWUwNzMxMzY=
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzE4ZjY3OGEwZjY1MDRlNWRlZjNkZjhkMjA0ZDJhNDA=