|
Justice Gorsuch
[NYSUN] The Senate’s confirmation of Neil Gorsuch as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court is certainly the occasion for congratulations. They’re in order not only for the cautious Coloradan but for President Trump and for Senator McConnell and Republican colleagues and to the three Democrats -- Senators Donnelly of Indiana, Heidtkamp of the more northern of the two Dakotas, and Manchin of West Virginia -- who eschewed the politics and voted on the merits.Much is being made at the moment of the decision of the Senate to dispense with the filibuster. The Democrats are retailing this as the end of bipartisanship and moderation in respect of the justices. What, though, would have been done in respect of bipartisanship and moderation had the filibuster been allowed to stand? The fact is that the rules of the Senate have nothing at all to do, one way or another, with the bitterness that obtains in our politics today. This obtains because of the fury of a Democratic Party that has lost what it had come to think of in the wake of the New Deal and World War II as its rightful inheritance of moral leadership. It turned out that the party wasn’t up to it. There’s a lot of blame. It really started to come apart, though, with the Clintons, him with his scandalous behavior and her with the sale of her office, and President B.O.’s years of scandal and retreat (and slow growth). Yet we are in a reserved frame of mind in respect of the new justice. We can see how smart he is, and are no less impressed than any other editorial column with, say, his skepticism of administrative power and his grasp of the religious freedom issues in, say, Hobby Lobby. We didn’t like it, though, when the Justice huffed that he’d have stood up and walked out the door if President Trump had asked him to overturn Roe v. Wade. There was just something off about that answer. For one thing, we doubt Judge Gorsuch, or any well-brought-up person, would have walked out on the president, even in the face of such a poser. The judge could have said simply that he was uncomfortable with the query, lest he say something that might smack of ex parte deal making. Or he could have said, "Mr. President, I can’t tell you how I’d rule -- for who knows how this question may be presented to the court? -- but I agree with Justice Ruth Ginsburg that court decisions on abortions are in tension." Posted by: Fred 2017-04-09 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=485343 |