The Republicans are against it! Whatever it is
Led by Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the GOP is already preparing to oppose President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court as a radical leftist -- whoever he or she is.
By Mike Madden
May 6, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- The person President Obama wants to put on the Supreme Court is "far to the left," says one Senate Republican. A "hard-left judicial activist," a conservative group says. The nominee better remember that judges have to "subordinate themselves to the law," another GOP senator warned Tuesday.
Imagine what they'll say when they actually know who the nominee is.
Just days after Justice David Souter announced plans to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term, the right wing is already gearing up for a battle, no matter whose name Obama sends up to the Senate for confirmation. While the Senate GOP seems to lose power every day, don't tell that to conservatives. To listen to some of the rhetoric coming out of the right, you'd think George W. Bush was still president.
"Nominees can be Democrats," Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who was elected Tuesday afternoon to become the GOP's leader on the Judiciary Committee, said magnanimously not long afterward. "They can be liberals. As long as they have a deep commitment to the law and recognize that when they put on the robe, that they go beyond politics and they're required to subordinate themselves to the law as written."
Sessions, serving in his third term, came to the Senate after a long career as a law-and-order Alabama politician. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has not always expressed the most enlightened views on race over the years, which helped torpedo his own nomination to the federal bench 23 years ago by then-President Ronald Reagan. Even Alabama Sen. Howell Heflin, a Democrat, voted against Sessions after a bruising confirmation battle. (So did Arlen Specter, then a Republican, whose party switch last week gave Sessions the chance to move up on the committee Tuesday.) On issue after issue that's come up before the Judiciary Committee over the last few years -- judges, immigration, you name it -- Sessions has been a right-wing warrior. When Bush was president, Sessions insisted on an up-or-down vote for Justice Samuel Alito, one hard line he may soon disavow.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/06/supreme_court/