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Amanda Carpenter: Obama on Judges
Townhall.com Blog's TownHall Blog —
"Privacy" is at the top of Barack Obama's SCOTUS litmus test and judges who "only believe in the strict letter of the Constitution" need not apply to Obama's court. OBAMA: My criteria, for example, would be -- if a Justice tells me that they only believe the strict letter of the Constitution -- that means that they possibly don't mean -- believe in -- a right to privacy that may not be perfectly enumerated in the Constitution but, you know, that I think is there. I mean, the right to marry who you please isn't in the Constitution. But I think all of us assume that if a state decided to pass a law saying, 'Brian, you can't marry the woman you love,' that you'd think ...
Professor Obama on judges
Ben Smith's Blog —
The GOP jumps on a portion of an interview in which Obama articulates what's actually the Democratic mainstream on the courts: That judges should believe that there are some rights, like privacy, that aren't enumerated in the Constitution.
He puts it, though, in language that at first matches up with GOP talking points:
OBAMA: What you can ask a judge is about their judicial philosophy. And as somebody who taught constitutional law for ten years, who actually knows a lot of the potential candidates for Supreme Court on the right as well as on the left 'cause I've taught with them or interacted with them in some way -- I ...
The 99 Percent Solution
Matthew Yglesias —
Barack Obama says that frequently differences in judicial philosophy aren’t going to matter because in “ninety-nine percent of cases [because] the Constitution is actually going to be clear. Ninety-nine percent of the cases, a statute or congressional intent is going to be clear. But there are going to be one percent, less than one percent, of real hard cases” where differences in judicial philosophy do matter. See this:
Ed Whelan deems this absurd:
What an idiotic statement. If Sarah Palin said something so stupid, she’d be ...
Bill Dyer: Obama is at least badly misleading in minimizing the number of SCOTUS "hard cases" in which judicial philosophy is determinative
Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog —
(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar ) Over at NRO's The Corner, Ed Whelan argues that in a televised interview yesterday with NBC News' Brian Williams, Sen. Barack Obama was "deliberately lying" when he claimed that differing judicial philosophies would only matter "less than one percent of real hard cases." I've listened very carefully to the video clip â preparing my own transcription from it, which I reproduce just below, but you can also compare the Chicago Tribune's version if you'd like â and I can anticipate how the Obama campaign would respond to Ed's charge. I'm less certain than Ed that Obama was deliberately lying, ...
Judicial Philosophy Matters
TalkLeft —
Matt Yglesias takes Ed Whelan to task for taking Barack Obama to task for his statements on the importance of judicial philosophy: While his language is over the top, I think Whelan makes a good point - Obama is clearly avoiding the issue (and 4 days from an election, probably a smart thing.) Obama clearly does intend to discount the importance of judicial philosophy in this interview, and he is wrong when he does so. More. The President's choice of Supreme Court justices is, in my view, the second most important power he has (after the de facto power to use military power). I ...
