Cuomo Weighs in on the SCOTUS (Wrong, as Usual…)
The title of the USA Today article was promising enough: “Keep Wall Between Judiciary and Politics”. Had the author, Mario Cuomo, had some revelation, changed his ways, revolutionized his thinking in light of the runaway judicial activism that produces travesties like Kelo v. New London? My father-in-law reported that none other than Lanny Davis, former counsel to the First Felon, had expressed his thoughts that judicial activism had gone too far. I’ve yet to confirm this, but if it’s true, was Governor Cuomo having similar thoughts?
In a word, no.
Actually, a good bit of the article is dead-on. The byline says, “the founders wanted separation. Any effort to bridge that divide should be enough to wake a quiet populace.”
Would that that were the case, Mr. Cuomo, would that that were the case. Because bridging that divide, introducing politics into the judiciary, is exactly, sir, what you and your compadres have been doing for decades—and America has, largely, been snoozing right through it.
Listen to this first paragraph: “Most political analysts believe that President Bush, by nominating Judge John Roberts, seeks to put on the Supreme Court a justice who will help achieve significant changes in laws through judicial decisions that the political branches of our government have failed to deliver. That would include limitations on abortion and the separation of church and state.”
This, Mr. Cuomo assures us, is what “most political analysts believe”. Let’s see…that’d be, who, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Anna Quindlen, Molly Ivins, uh…yeah, that’d qualify as “most”, I’m sure…
Then, after admitting that this is a temptation for “all presidents”, Cuomo suggests that Bush has a particular problem in this area, and that his choice of John Roberts is further evidence of this predilection to politically “stack” the Court. One wonders: did Mr. Cuomo raise similar concerns when WonderBoy nominated the ACLU’s lead counsel, Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg, for the Court? Nothing political going on there, of course…
One would think, from a quick overview of Cuomo’s piece, that he and Robert Bork were bosom buddies. Methinks. however, that it is the Cuomo-types of whom Bork warns us so regularly.
Nice try, Mario, but unfortunately—and predictably—you’re the pot, calling the kettle black.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
2 Responses to “Cuomo Weighs in on the SCOTUS (Wrong, as Usual…)”
Byron-
I know you are a big advocate of not legislating from the bench and for non-advocate judges so when I saw this I thought of you.
How would you respond to Mark Graber’s blog that asserts that the Rehnquist Court is the most activist in US history. Maybe a nice post on this.
Expat Teacher ~ Jul 22, 2005 at 7:32 pm
X,
Good question, but the answer is pretty easy, I think, and some of the replies to the post in question make the point that I would make, namely, in a nutshell, that Mr. Graber is pulling a bait-and-switch, employing the term “activist”, but supplying his own meaning to it, a meaning foreign than what would be meant, not only by little ole me, but by those with vastly superior understanding of the issue. It isn’t “activist” to overturn poorly-decided precedent; it is undoing an activist mistake, such as overturning Roe would be. An overturn of Roe (using this as one example) would be bringing us back to a place where the states would handle the issue (as provided for in the Constitution), and would undo the so-called “right of privacy”, a peculiar invention used to “justify” Roe. To say that it is “activist” to overturn Roe is to misunderstand completely, then, the very meaning of the term. I don’t know whether Mr. Graber is ignorant or deceitful, but regardless, he is playing fast-and-loose with his terminology.
Byron ~ Jul 23, 2005 at 10:52 pm