Bork the Dork

On 27 June the New York Times had an article titled “In Battle to Pick Next Justice, Right Says, Avoid a Kennedy”.

In 1987 President Ronald Reagan nominated three men to fill a position on the Supreme Court: Robert H. Bork, Douglas H. Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy. Fifty-eight members of the Senate rejected Mr. Bork, a staunch conservative, thank you God and 58 Senators. Mr. Ginsburg shot himself in the foot by admitting that, in his college days, he’d smoked marijuana (too bad, he’d have approved the medicinal use of marijuana). Mr. Kennedy was the third choice. Mr. Bork, sour grapes I think, is now on the attack against Mr. Kennedy.

According to the article: “his traditional [Kennedy’s] Catholic background has little in common with the flag-burners, pornographers or abortion advocates his reading of the Constitution protects”; “Virtually unknown to the public, Justice Kennedy was scarcely bred for the crossfire. By outward appearances, he has lived a life of utter conformity, attending his parents' alma mater, Stanford; taking over his father's law practice; and raising his three children in the house where he was raised.” And, “Liberty, especially liberty of speech, remains a defining concern, and he is a zealous enforcer of First Amendment rights. A 1980 case drew his special ire as an appeals court judge (9th Circuit). The police paid a 5-year-old to inform on his mother - an infringement of the parent-child bond he called an especially "pernicious" encroachment upon "personal liberty." And, again: “In a 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy wrote the decision that found constitutional protection for homosexual sodomy. And he did so with unexpected sweep, calling the Constitution sufficiently expansive that "persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom." Gays are "entitled to respect for their private lives," he wrote. "The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny" by outlawing sex. [By advocating abstinence and attempting to outlaw contraceptives and refusing to educate the young in matters of sex, the conservative right is trying to outlaw sex, period, notwithstanding heterosexual or homosexual.] As Justice Kennedy read from the decision, which overturned a recent precedent, some gay and lesbian lawyers in the courtroom silently cried.”

There is now a movement afoot, spearheaded by Mr. Bork, Michael P. Farris (chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association), Phyllis Schlafly and helped along by House majority leader Tom DeLay to have Mr. Kennedy impeached because he is not conservative enough to suit the likes of Christian groups such as the Family Research Council, leaders of the Federalist Society, Focus on the Family, Progress for America and the Judicial Confirmation Network. “One critic at a forum on the “Judicial War on Faith” accused Justice Kennedy of upholding “Marxist-Leninist, satanic principles.”

According to Mr. Bork (we used to refer to him as Bork the Dork back in the days they considered him for the Court), in an interview the previous Thursday, Justice Kennedy’s opinions typified a court “no longer sticking to the Constitution” but “enacting a political agenda”. Double-speak if I ever heard it. If Bork had passed inspection by the Senate he would have followed his own political agenda, and to the devil with the Constitution. What Dork doesn’t comprehend, never did and never will, is that in a position on the Supreme Court one must first study and then swear to uphold the Constitution. You must be above partisan politics; you must do your best to serve all the people. You must consider majority rule along with minority rights (Note: see Principles of Democracy: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/principles/majority.htm)

Again, according to the article: “For much of the right, his story is a dismayingly familiar one. Ever since the elevation of Earl Warren, Republican presidents have picked justices who disappoint the Republican faithful: William J. Brennan Jr. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower), Harry A. Blackmun (President Richard M. Nixon), John Paul Stevens (President Gerald R. Ford), Sandra Day O'Connor (President Reagan) and David H. Souter (the first President Bush).”
I applaud the justices mentioned. They voted their consciences and not the party platform.
I’ve also witnessed presidents who were elected on this platform or that, suddenly turnabout, for example John F. Kennedy who said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Clearly, a president elected because of his liberal views termed what is considered to be a conservative view on his inauguration day. Harry S. Truman, clearly from the conservative South, who pushed for desegregation of the armed forces and, in current years, has been vilified for his use of the first atomic weapons, in order to end a war and save American lives.
The whole point is that, even when they don’t totally and always satisfy our individual ideas of right and wrong, members of the Supreme Court should remain true to the Constitution, remain above politics, the flavor of the day, lobbyists who abound in Washington, and majority rule. I’d like to know where the ACLU has been hiding since the Patriot Act and Homeland Security was pushed through Congress. Time will tell if the ACLU will come out of hiding and take up the gauntlet. But today, right now, someone should remind all those far-right conservative fanatics that we have a separation of church and state in America. And for good reason.