One of the more important powers delegated to the president by the Constitution is the power to appoint judges ... in particular the justices of the United States Supreme Court. These are lifetime appointments and short of impeachment most justices hang on for a long time.
Several years ago in Citizens United the Roberts Court essentially ruled money, in the form of political contributions by corporations, is the same as free speech and protected by the First Amendment. This was an astonishing finding on the part of the Court and dramatically changed the political process in our country ... essentially putting our government on the auction block to the highest bidder.
This is the power of the Supreme Court and why we must carefully consider the person who will be appointing future justices. Personally, I make no apologies for my fervent prayers asking that today's opportunistic and lying Republican leadership be struck by lightning before being allowed to appoint another justice.
During the last presidential campaign, Romney's go to guy for advice selecting potential judges was the odious (now dead) rejected Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork. Bork would scare the hell out of Attila the Hun ... abject evil.
Here are a few of Bork's views Conservatives so readily embrace:
Bork defended poll taxes and literacy tests for voters and he called the Civil Rights Act unsurpassed ugliness.
He believed politicians should be able to outlaw birth control.
He believed the First Amendment shouldn't apply to literature, art, or science.
Bork believed the Constitution's promise of Equal Protection didn't apply to women.
He ruled that a corporation is free to tell female employees to be sterilized or be fired.
Following Bork's nomination to the Court in 1987, Senator Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork declaring:
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."
Bork was not confirmed but his influence endures in Conservative circles. Senator Kennedy may as well have been describing Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or any number of today's Republican hopefuls.
Those who love our democracy must never allow another Republican to appoint another Supreme Court justice ... can I get an amen?
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