Soap Box

This past weekend, the world awoke to the news that America had lost Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, patriot, great American, fervent defender of the Constitution and what he perceived the founder's original intentions to be.

He was not a mincer of words and wrote some of the most descriptive and colorful opinions ever penned by any member of this august body, unmindful of ruffled feathers and stepped on toes.

The Supreme Court is many times the last resort in deciding which policies will go forth and become the law of the land and that is a very serious undertaking and the makeup of the court is tantamount to real justice for all people.

The court is supposed to be politically neutral, totally impartial and beholden to no one, unfortunately, we all know this is not true, they are not ideologically unaligned, they basically vote along party lines and I think Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan have proven, during their short tenure, they are definitely inclined to �dance with who brung them,� little more that rubber stamps that can always be counted to vote however Obama wants them to.

Justice Kennedy is totally unpredictable, which I consider to be a good thing, and Justice Roberts has been full of surprises lately. Everybody knows how Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to vote, Clarence Thomas is a staunch conservative and Samuel Alito and Stephen Breyer are usually fairly predictable.

Before the death of Justice Scalia at least both sides of an issue got a hearing and with the makeup of the court could go either way, which was going to be displeasing to one side of the issue or the other.

Though we know that most presidents are going to try to pack the court, it's the Senate's responsibility to see that both liberals and conservatives are fairly represented, a responsibility that through back room deals and promised perks many times is circumvented.

Anything less than equal representation on the highest court in the land is unfair.

Everybody knows that if Obama was able to replace Justice Scalia he would choose someone who, like Kagan and Soto Mayor were ideologically aligned with his way of thinking, therefore the court would swing to the left with Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer and the new appointee solid left, actually making the unpredictability of Roberts and Kennedy immaterial.

Obama has already appointed two justices and although appointment of three by one president is not unprecedented, with the appointment being something proposed by a lame duck president with ten month left in office, since Supreme Court appointments are permanent, America could be saddled with the ramifications of Obama's choice for decades.

The only fair thing to do is to leave the vacancy to the next president, who could very well be a Democrat with the same ideology Obama has, and America could end up with the same thing any way.

In my opinion the Supreme Court should have to stand a review every eight years and if a majority of the American people disapprove of them, new justices should be nominated and confirmed.

That way they would be accountable to we the people, and ain't that the way it's supposed to be?

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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