Checks But No Balances
By Michael R. Bowen (06/03/03)
James L. Holmes is the latest nominee to join Miguel Estrada, Charles Pickering, and Priscilla Owen in the special limbo reserved for President Bush's judicial nominees. Mr. Holmes, an experienced and competent lawyer, is judged "Well Qualified" by the American Bar Association and has the support of both the Right and Left in his home state of Arkansas; but, as with the stellar qualifications of the other candidates, all this counts as nothing to Senators Schumer, Feinstein, and Durbin. Not only is Mr. Holmes not a cheerleader for abortion; not only does he fail to worship at the altar of feminism; the Democrats have also convicted him of an even more serious sin: he has religious convictions, and he takes them seriously.
Democrats claim to hold sacrosanct the separation of Church and State, but a more honest appraisal would be to say that they demand the separation of Church and Life. One can subscribe to just about any religious belief, so long as no one can really tell. To allow one's faith to be a guide in everyday life is to be a loony—even a dangerous—fanatic. This is why the abortion lobby can even conceive of demanding that Roman Catholic hospitals provide abortion training to physicians. This is why the ACLU, legal arm of the American Left, requires a denial of religious belief in all public functions. Perhaps because they are believers in the "Living Constitution", the only fixed belief in their universe being that the definition of Right and Wrong needs constant adjusting to stay in step with the times, they are horrified at the thought of granting any official power to a person who believes in any kind of eternal, immutable law.
This pathologic aversion to religious faith is pathetic enough, but the Democratic Party's behavior in the case of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees is beyond pathetic: it is a direct attempt to subvert the Constitution itself. Not just a tweaking, not just the conjuring of new "rights" out of thin air, not just another example of the relentless expansion of government so beloved to the Left; Mr. Schumer and his allies are in fact attempting to overthrow constitutional government in this country. For they are insisting that there is only one type of person who may be appointed to the federal bench: a person acceptable to the Democratic party—which is to say a person acceptable to the American Left. Americans may elect a Republican president, and they may return a majority of Republican Senators and Congressman at the mid-term elections, but the Democrats in Congress will not permit the expressed wishes of the American people to be translated into action. They have thus made themselves into an elite class, an oligarchy with the power to overthrow the decisions of the ballot box whenever they wish. They have arrogated unto themselves the ultimate check, and will permit no balances.
The Democratic party has succeeded in corrupting the Judicial Branch of our government through its use of litigation to override the will of the people. It is now completing its corruption of the Legislative Branch. It nearly scored a double-header in 2000, using a corrupt judiciary to select the head of the Executive Branch. Nothing less than a coup is being attempted, and the defeat of that attempt is Mr. Bush's most important mission. For if it succeeds, constitutional government will be doomed. And our nation will be in the hands of a group of people with "living" principles, which is to say no principles whatever.
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