Never Believe Them. Ever.
The Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s assisted suicide law today, and the issue will most likely be all over the news for the next day or so. What probably won’t get much mention is the lesson that the Court’s ruling should hold for all Democrats, especially Senate Democrats.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., dissenting for the first time since he joined the court in September, sided with the two most conservative justices — Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — in voting for the minority view.
Did ya catch that? It’s easy to miss, because it doesn’t seem that unusual for a Bush-appointee like Roberts to vote with the Court’s right wing. However, Blue Oregon points out that Roberts may just have and signaled to Bush’s right wing base — and to any Dems who happen to be paying attention — that he and other Bush nominees to the Supreme Court may talk one way before confirmation and vote the opposite way after confirmation.
Roberts seems to have backtracked on his conversation with Oregon’s Sen. Wyden prior to his confirmation.
Roberts told Wyden that he would look closely at the legislative history of federal laws and would be careful not to strip states of powers they traditionally have held — such as regulating the practice of medicine, Wyden said.
“You don’t get the impression from how he answered that he’d let somebody stretch a sweeping statute like the Controlled Substances Act,” Wyden said.
Wyden said he could not ask Roberts directly about the upcoming Oregon case. However, the two talked generally about other high-profile cases, including the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg case, in which the court upheld a state ban on assisted suicide and reaffirmed states’ rights to address the issue.
Roberts said the basic genius of the federal system is that it affords states the ability to approach problems in a way that is best suited to their different needs; imposing uniformity across the nation would stifle the intent of the founding fathers, Wyden said.
Now I know there’s some tendency for Supreme Court justices to experience some “evolution” in their views over time, but Robert’s hasn’t had a chance to even wear a decent butt imprint into his seat on the bench. It’s hard to believe his real views have change so much, so quickly. Most likely he told Sen. Wyden what he thought the senator wanted to hear back then, and voted what he really believes just recently.
But Roberts was confirmed, sworn in, and — a relatively young man as Supreme Court justices go — is now on the court for life. So, there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
The lesson here for Democrats is simple. Whatever Bush’s Supreme Court nominees say (or nominees to any other court, for that matter), don’t believe them. When they say they won’t encroach on state powers, don’t believe them. (States rights, after all, can be nullified if they don’t fit with the radical right ideology.) When they say they won’t vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, don’t believe them. When they say they will uphold a constitutional right to privacy, don’t believe them.
Don’t believe them, because they will fight like hell not to honestly answer questions on the issue during hearings (to avoid being on record as lying). Don’t believe them because when they do come knocking on your office door, they will say just enough to allay your concerns, and then do what they intended to do anyway. Don’t believe them. Ever. The stakes are too high.
And if you can’t believe them, should you vote to confirm them?
You have one week to figure it out.
January 17th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I am quite angry about Roberts joining the dissent in this case. He was very clear during the hearings that he weigh states cases a lot differently. Where he actualy answered questions was in generalities about his judicial philosophy. While I think it is reasonable for that philosophy to evolve as a result of sitting on the Supreme Court over time this implies a man who said what he had to to get the job.
I am not sure if it’s worse with Alito who has either lied or is incompetent with his poor memory for his personal beliefs. But we know that going into this situation - in Roberts hearings it was clear that unless he was lying (which it turns out he was) that he would be a suitable justice.
With Alito though we also have a clear understanding that he has had if he doesn’t now a serious agenda supportive of the Federalist society view of how our government should function including a weakened court system. They want to undermine the very foundation of this nation. The key to remember is that this society has existed since this country was just a dream. These people have been looking for this opertunity far longer than 30 years, this is a struggle with over 200 years of history and they are rigth now the closest they have ever come in that 200 years to making it a reality. They want nothing less than the legislative body to have oversight of the courts and the president to take on the duty of deciding constitutional legitamacy of laws passed by the legislature. They also believe in the supremecy of federal government over state’s rights.
I still have to wonder which is worse, Roberts outright lying in commitee hearings after coming out of them seemingly a man of integrity or Alito, coming out of the hearings with an air of deceit? I shall reserve absolute judgment until we see more of Roberts rulings but this does give the impression that he too has an agenda - he just hid it better in his hearings than Alito has.
January 17th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law
The Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts dissenting, upheld Oregon’s one-of-a-kind physici
January 17th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
quite an interestin’ post …
January 17th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I caught it…..were you the person saying Kennedy is the new swing vote?
January 18th, 2006 at 6:19 am
Roberts lied?
He’s a republican, of course he lied!
January 18th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Really, this whole post is kind of funny. Let’s set up the situation….A Republican President with a Republican Senate majority offers up someone for the Supreme Court. This person is going to believe what the majority of Republicans believe. This is the way the Constitution was set up. If that person doesn’t answer questions as fully as YOU would like, well how the heck can you blame them. When organizations dig through years and years of everything this person has written or said and tries to use it to "Bork" them, then you can’t blame them for being circumspect with their answers. I’ve seen posts that took the littlest thing Alito said through the years and tried to make it look like he was the second coming of Adolph Hitler.
President Bush won the White House. There is a Republican majority in the Senate. Alito is no Bork, he’s not that much of an extremist. If he was that much of an extremist, that’s the only way the Democrats could get by with a fillibuster. Just the threat has been enough to keep Bush from nominating anyone further to the right. So, the system worked.
Don’t like it? I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t like it either if I were in your shoes. But the answer isn’t to nitpick every little thing along the way. The answer is to come up with some ideas, come up ways to implement them, and become more palatable to the American public and take back the President’s office, the Senate, and the House.