Gregory D.

Lee

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June 23, 2008

Future Obama Court Choices: Don’t Let Constitution Stand in the Way of Liberals

The recent Supreme Court decision of Boumediene v. Bush concerning the habeas corpus rights of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Naval Base illustrates the need for a president who will nominate jurists that follow the Constitution and not their own political ideology. For the first time, the Court has now extended U.S. constitutional rights to foreign nationals residing outside the country. What’s all the more galling is that the recipients of this right were engaged in killing U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Now, this same court has agreed to hear the petition of a deported Pakistani national who wants to sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller. He claims they subjected him to harsh treatment during several years of detention, and discriminated against him because of his nationality and religion. Have the liberal members of the Court secretly converted to Islam, or do they just hate President Bush like all other left-wing ideologues?

Habeas corpus means: “Produce the body.” A writ of habeas corpus is a court directive for an agency detaining a prisoner to bring him to the court to determine the lawfulness of the imprisonment. 

The ploy of extending habeas corpus rights to the enemy was unsuccessfully tried shortly after World War II when 21 German soldiers were captured in China and transported to a U.S. Army facility in Germany, where a military tribunal tried them for war crimes. The Supreme Court’s decision not to grant writs of habeas corpus to these enemy soldiers made it clear that the Court had no jurisdiction on foreign nationals outside the boundaries of the U.S. Even though the comparisons of World War II and the Global War on Terrorism detainees are stunningly similar, that didn’t stop the liberal wing of today’s Supreme Court from granting rights to our enemies.

Sen. Barack Obama embraced the decision. Sen. John McCain denounced it.

There could not be a more stark difference between the two presidential candidates. If it wasn’t clear before, you now know where they stand and what to expect from an ultra-liberal President Obama when it comes to picking federal judges. You can bet his judicial nominating search committee will have litmus tests for perspective judges about their feelings on Roe v. Wade, gun control, illegal immigration, enemy combatants, affirmative action, slavery reparations, gay marriage, gay adoption and oil exploration on federal lands. He could seed the federal court system with like-minded liberal judges in district and appellate courts all over the country that will legislate from the bench with impunity. Think of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on steroids. That’s the circuit that recently declared the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional, only to be reversed by the Supreme Court.   

Sen. John McCain has pledged to nominate strict conservative constructionists to the federal courts who will not legislate from the bench. We’ve seen federal judges legislate time and time again, and this practice needs to stop. The Constitution is what it is. It isn’t a “living document” that modernizes itself. Only amendments can do that. We don’t need Supreme Court justices and lower court judges making case law based on their particular political agenda and not the Constitution.

The Supreme Court will most likely experience at least two openings during the next president’s term in office. Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens is 88, and several others are in their 70s. The next president needs their replacements to be persons with character and integrity who will provide honest interpretations of the Constitution.

Currently the Supreme Court consists of nine members, although the Constitution does not address how many members there shall be. It doesn’t even specify that a justice has to be an attorney, and several non-attorneys have served. But with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate and Obama as president, what’s to stop them from stacking the court with two or four more liberal justices?

Because the majority of Americans reject radical liberalism, the courts are the only way Democrats have in advancing their screwy ideology and making it the law of the land.

Think it won’t happen? I wouldn’t bet on it. The number of Supreme Court justices set by Congress has changed at least six times. The last attempt was made by FDR in 1937.

Democrats lust for power and the control of all three branches of government. That’s a scary proposition, and a guaranteed pathway to the destruction of many traditional values and concepts the vast majority of Americans hold dear.

Gregory D. Lee is a nationally syndicated columnist and can be reached through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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