Tag Archives: politics

Judicial Nominations

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In a more extensive piece about the vacancies into which President-Elect Donald Trump can nominate Federal judges, The Washington Post emphasized the nature of President Barack Obama’s (D) appointments—and by extension, the differences in judicial qualification philosophy between the two Presidents, although that wasn’t necessarily intentional.

Trump is likely to appoint judges with a view toward

[s]tate gun control laws, abortion restrictions, voter laws, anti-discrimination measures, and immigrant issues are all matters that are increasingly heard by federal judges and will be influenced by the new composition of the courts. Trump has vowed to choose ideologues in the mold of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon….

Even though none of those are matters of ideology, much as the newspaper would like it to be, but rather are matters of adherence to the Constitution and understanding of the legal questions involved in today’s controversies.

On the other hand, Obama selected his nominees on the basis of…diversity.

Obama has used his nominations to systematically diversify the federal courts to look more like the fast-changing country. He appointed far more female and minority judges than any other president in history, and he has paid particular attention to sexual orientation. When Obama took office, there was only one openly gay or lesbian judge, and he appointed 11 more.

“The president, my predecessors and I spent a significant amount of time looking for all different kinds of diversity—racial, sexual orientation, gender, and professional background,” [White House Counsel Neil] Eggleston said.

Not at all an emphasis on Constitutional adherence, or even legal qualification: just whether a nominee was a member of an identity group within Obama’s identity politics.

Desperation of Ego

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President Barack Obama (D) has both.  In a podcast interview with his bud David Axelrod, he said

I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that…if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.

And

Obama also warned [against ending up] “…starting to shut ourselves off from different points of view, shutting down debate, becoming more dogmatic, becoming more brittle. And I don’t see that being a successful strategy for us winning over the country.”

Which is exactly what he’s been doing these last eight years.

Contemplate that for a moment against the backdrop of the bubble in which he lives, thinking in all seriousness as he does that his foreign and domestic policies actually are successes.

Some Folks Get It

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Whether or not the attack on Pearl Harbor was treachery or straight-up war, or whether our dropping nuclear bombs on Japan at the other end of that war was butchery or straight-up war, it’s more than three generations ago; the folks responsible are mostly gone.

No apology needed, said 96-year-old Alfred Rodrigues, a US Navy veteran who survived what President Franklin D Roosevelt called a “date which will live in infamy.”

“War is war,” Rodrigues said as he looked at old photos of his military service. “They were doing what they were supposed to do, and we were doing what we were supposed to do.”

This sailor who was there understands the thing.

It’s past time to move on, especially for the press, whose interns seem to have been having trouble—ever since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Pearl was set up—finding things for their scribes to write about.

It’s an Old Technique

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The technique is illustrated in HL Mencken’s Minority Report, excerpted by Don Boudreaux in his Cafe Hayek:

The really unanswerable objection to Prohibition was always the Prohibitionists.  If, in fact, they had believed honestly that forbidding rum to man would improve the world and had offered serious arguments for it, however unconvincing, most other men would have been disposed to listen to them politely.  But it was quickly manifest that improving the world was the last consideration in their minds.  What moved them was simply a violent desire to satisfy their egos by harassing their fellow-men.

It’s been about ego and not about social betterment for the Left for some time.  Even Mencken’s remark merely repeats the Left’s own characterization of its ego.  Here, to repeat a theme of my own, is Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive movement, on his intellectual and moral inferiors:

[T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Completely Despicable

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The Wall Street Journal accurately summed up President Barack Obama (D) regarding his betrayal of Israel with his decision to allow a nakedly anti-Israeli resolution before the UN Security Council to pass unopposed.

The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.

It defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of public policy into personal pique at adversaries.

Obama didn’t even have the courage to vote, through his UN mouthpiece Samantha Powers, for the resolution: he hid behind the moral cowardice of an abstention.

Although the WSJ‘s op-ed went on to describe as well other aspects of Obama’s act, those opening sentences sum up the man.  This is a petty, small man who has chosen throughout his reign [sic] to allow his ego and his penchant for hurt feelings to interfere with policy.  His legacy has become one of unbroken venality, failure, and betrayal of American values and of America’s friends and allies.