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Democrats, though a minority in the U.S. Senate, have
blocked votes on several judicial nominations made by
President George W. Bush. This inspired a big rally Sunday
at the Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. Televised
nationally on several religious channels, it was called
Justice Sunday -- Stopping the Filibuster Against People
of Faith.
In ways, it's too bad that the Almighty was not inclined to repeat the events of Chapter 5 of the Book of Acts, wherein Ananias and his wife Sapphira were struck dead for lying.
But as it is, we can try plain old logic to demonstrate that the Justice Sunday folks are playing loose with the truth. Just follow their assumptions and see where they lead.
They say that Senate Democrats are blocking votes on
nominations for federal judgeships because those nominees
are people of faith.
It follows, then, that the nominations which did get
through must be those for people of no faith,
since
they were acceptable to the faith-blockers who would have
otherwise used the rules of the Senate to halt the
nomination.
Now note that of the 215 judicial nominations made by
President Bush, 205 have been confirmed by the Senate. This
means that 95 percent of the time, Bush must have proposed
a faithless judicial nominee -- an agnostic, an atheist, a
humanist, who knows? Why weren't they railing against the
President if they think it's so important to have federal
judges who are people of faith
?
Instead, the Justice Sunday crowd was blasting away at
the U.S. Supreme Court for finding a constitutional
right to sodomy
and at the U.S. Senate for its alleged
failure to perform its proper constitutional role.
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to stop a filibuster (unlimited debate) on a judicial nomination. A simple majority of 51 could change that rule to require only 51 votes to stop the filibuster. But Democrats say that if the Republicans (who hold 55 Senate seats) change that rule, then they'll use other Senate rules to bring business to a halt.
The federal Constitution is terse about judicial
appointments. Article II, Section 2 says the President
shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent
of the senate, shall appoint ... judges of the supreme
court and all other officers of the United States.
The Federalist Papers offer explanations from several
Founding Fathers. Alexander Hamilton called the nominating
process a concurrent authority in appointing to
offices,
and predicted the nominations would
naturally become matters of notoriety.
Elsewhere in the papers, Hamilton explains that the Senate was designed to protect the rights of political minorities; that's why each state, large or small, has an equal vote there.
The Senate was also designed to be a counterbalance to
public excitements, according to James Madison in
Federalist Paper 63: ... there are particular moments in
public affairs, when the people stimulated by some
irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by
the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call
for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the
most ready to lament and condemn. In those critical
moments, how salutary will be the interference of some
temperate and respectable body of citizens ... to suspend
the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until
reason, justice, and truth, can regain their authority over
the public mind?
But what does Madison know, compared to the R. Albert
Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary? He told the Justice Sunday gathering that We
are not asking for persons merely to be moral. We want them
to be believers.
Believing judges like Tomas de Torquemada, who ran the
Inquisition in 15th-century Spain and burned books and
people suspected of heresy? Or John Hathorne of Salem,
Mass., a devout man who presided over witch trials in 1692
and sent young women to the gallows based on spectral
evidence
?
It's worth a filibuster or two to spare us from such inspired judgment. If that provokes a rule change that lets Democrats bring all Senate business to a halt, then that body will not be approving more tax breaks for billionaires, contriving new felonies or extending the Patriot Act. All clouds may not have silver linings, but this one does.
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