I was afraid that Sen. Arlen Specter merely had to bow down before every fellow Republican senator standing between him and the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I was wrong.
It's worse than that.
He's had to swear, if not sign, a Loyalty Oath.
Promising, swearing, that he wouldn't use his own mind when chairing the committee that stands between the Supreme Court and Attila the Hun when Attila comes up for confirmation.
Specter has promised to use President George W. Bush's mind instead.
Specter has a mind. I'd like to see him use it.
Specter has no guts.
Bush has guts.
As to what kind of a mind he has (he's not at all stupid, as he's made out by opponents, he just doesn't always express himself very happily), the jury is still out. It was out for a long time on Reagan, too. Maybe that's not such a bad idea in a president. Who would want a president whom the Soviets could read like a book? The former-Soviets, I guess we'd have to make that now...
We'll see who President Bush nominates when a vacancy on the Court opens.
If he nominates a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal who threatens to ratchet back the Constitutional clock, not that he would, of course, but John Ashcroft should be looking for a new job now that he's worn himself out as A-G and might like to retreat to the relative quiet of the Court, I'd like to think that Specter will disregard his pledge.
He cannot, of course.
He's sworn his soul over to the Devil by giving up control over his independent judgment, the main reason for becoming a trained lawyer in the first place.
Shades of Salem, and Faustian bargains.
Bell, book and candle.
Now all we need is a sign from God.
What is the penalty clause in Specter's Oath, I wonder.
Has he handed in his undated resignation as Chair of theSJC at the same time?
Exercisable at will by the GOP leadership?
Violate the Oath, lose your head?
With not even a Star Chamber proceeding to see if the refusal is justified?
Specter gets to parade as as Chairman, but in reality is a puppet of the president.
When Specter supports a nominee likely to overrule a woman's constitutional right to decide for herself whether to bring a child into the world and care for it for the next oh-so-many years, the Hard-Right will be able to say that if Specter, who has supported this right for years, can support the candidate, then he must be all right.
Specter will be trotted out like the show-pony he's shown himself to be.
Why would anyone want to have a job where one could not use one's own mind but had strictly to kow-tow to the beliefs of others?
We can ask Specter, I guess.
Here and below is Dahlia Lithwick-from-Slate's report and Constitutional Law take on this example of the Rule of Eunuchs instead of the Rule of Mind and Law.
Dahlia L. is one of the most perceptive and expressive Con-Law writer around.
For sheer expressiveness, forget the Con-Law, see Wonkette.
Why not just install a robot?
Or no one?
Because puppets are better.
You can control a puppet.
And pull him off-stage when necessary.
We've got Specter protecting us.
Thank YOU, Pennsylvania!
No Nittany Lion, he.
***
jurisprudence
Specter Resurrected
Sworn fealty to the president as the answer to everything.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Nov. 19, 2004, at 3:05 PM PT
It's easy to forget how radical a document the U.S. Constitution really is. It demands no oath of fealty to the president or even to God. Officeholders swear instead to uphold the strange, ambiguous, open-to-interpretation document that is the Constitution itself. This is a radical notion because it allows for individual judgments about what that Constitution means—and recognizes that sorting that meaning out can sometimes be a messy business.
It's worth recalling all this, as we are reminded yet again that neither individual judgment nor messiness seems to be tolerated by the current administration. Sen. Arlen Specter saved his seat as the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee by signing a pledge—a pledge that had to be drafted, then redrafted to the specifications of the GOP leadership. Specter had the temerity to offer a descriptive statement after the election—not on its face a warning or a normative declaration of his own intentions, but the obvious observation that "When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, who'd overturn Roe v. Wade, I think [their confirmation] is unlikely," he said. "The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster." He has said that whether or not he'd vote to confirm judicial nominees "obviously depends on the president's judicial nominees. ... I hope that I can support them."
Following the firestorm, the pray-in, the retractions, and the bloodletting, Specter's endorsement could come only after he'd agreed, in writing, to "not use a litmus test to deny confirmation to pro-life nominees" and that he had "no reason to believe that I'll be unable to support any individual President Bush finds worthy of nomination." Over his initial objections, he further pledged to support the so-called "nuclear option" to put an end to filibusters: "If a rule change is necessary to avoid filibusters, there are relevant recent precedents to secure rules changes with 51 votes," he said.
Just to clarify: In order to claim the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter was forced to abandon future personal or independent judgment—the very judgment the people of Pennsylvania elected him to exercise. He has pledged—in advance of knowing who they are—to endorse the president's judicial nominees and to vote for a highly controversial GOP rule change to end filibusters and effectively terminate dissent of any sort in the Senate. Is it ironic that judicial nominees may not speculate at their confirmation hearings about how they will vote in future cases, but the chairman of the Judiciary Committee himself cannot be seated until he's pledged in advance to confirm those unknown nominees?
This new national requirement for an oath of presidential fealty seems to extend to judges as well, following John Ashcroft's stupid statement last week that judges who hold the Bush administration to any type of constitutional restrictions in the war on terror "put at risk the very security of our nation in a time of war." Ashcroft did not specify which judges he was sliming, but it's clear his statements include U.S. District Judge James Robertson, who ruled on Nov. 8 that the special military trials for detainees were unlawful absent meaningful procedures to evaluate whether they were legally held in the first place, as well the Supreme Court justices who found unconstitutional the president's claim that he can hold enemy combatants indefinitely without due process or access to counsel.
Just to clarify: Courts that don't interpret the law in the ways the president wishes to have it interpreted are, in the view of the attorney general, no longer performing their judicial function. Loyal judges should uphold not the Constitution but the rule of the president.
The framers of the Constitution understood that checks and balances, independent judicial review, and freedom to dissent marked the difference between a democracy and a monarchy. All that complexity was embodied in the Constitution itself—not in the person of the president. When elected officials swear to uphold the Constitution, it's not just another tired election promise. It's their one promise that keeps us most free.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109983/