JUDGING OBAMA

The next president will probably be nominating one and perhaps two new supreme
court judges. John Paul Stevens is 88 and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. Add in the hundreds of potential nominees for the various federal courts and this becomes, in my
opinion, a major issue in the presidential race.

In remarks on the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, Barack Obama
stated that he was voting against the Roberts nomination. As near as I can tell, Obama
thought that Judge Roberts was qualified to sit on the highest court in the land but he was
concerned about the depth and breadth of his empathy and what was in the judges heart.
He felt that Judge Roberts had too often “used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

In a speech given at a Planned Parenthood conference in 2007, Obama expanded on this
saying: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like
to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or
African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going
to be selecting my judges.” Excuse me, but what in the heck does that mean? I imagine that many of you, like me, don’t belong to any of the “special groups” he mentioned. Are
the people in his selected groups always the weak and the rest of us always the strong?

Suppose some poor, African-American, gay guy breaks into my house to steal my stuff.
Then suppose my guard dog attacks and injures him. Then the guy sues me for mental anguish or something. If this case gets in front of an Obama judge, I’m thinking I’m in big trouble. Middle aged, middle class, white guy against a guy with the “special group” trifecta. A judge meeting Obama’s criteria for empathy and heart is going to whack me pretty hard.

Now, a different scenario. Suppose , after going to church on Sunday, I decide to shoot
my guns. (I live in the Midwest, that’s what we do) Because I’m a knucklehead, I shoot
myself in the foot. I decide to sue the gun manufacturer for pain and suffering. Now here the dynamic changes. I’m sure that I would be considered the weak party because
how can a big, bad gun company ever be considered anything but strong in Obamaland?
So, regardless of the merits of my lawsuit, I should be in for a big payday with an empathetic, big hearted judge.

There are innumerable situations that don’t fit Obam’s template. What if an old guy sues
a disabled guy? Or a teenage mom goes after a gay guy? With Obama’s level of hubris,
I’m sure he would be comfortable being the final arbiter in these difficult cases. But that
is not how it’s suppose to work. Obama cannot be allowed to choose which “team” judges play for. Judges aren’t suppose to play at all. They’re job is to umpire and to hold both sides accountable to the same set of rules. We are a nation of laws, not of men.