Alito Will Get an Up or Down Vote

The votes are in; Judge Samuel Alito will have his chance to take a seat on the Supreme Court. It was basically party line with a few crossovers, 57-38. Well, in spite of the fact that Ginsberg ended up with 98 votes, this is about what we’ve come to expect from Democrats. The concept that elections have consequences seems quite beyond them. Perhaps the ballot box drubbing they’ll recieve this year will finally hammer the point home. I am quite disappointed, because we probably will not have another chance to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate (as it has been discontinued in the House) for a long time.

After the vote, some Senators took the opportunity to do what they do best. Bloviate. Senator Max Baucus (D) is now on C-SPAN 2, and I had to laugh. He is upset that Alito will end up on SCOTUS, of course, and one reason he specified is that Alito is apparently in favor of the signing orders Bush has been adding to bills that cross his desk, where he interprets the bill. Senator Baucus says that usurps Congressional power, because only Congress has the right to write laws. Coming from a member of the party who has spent thirty years enabling and encouraging a liberal, activist judiciary to write laws that fly in the face of what their constituents want (gay marriage, abortion are two examples), this hypocrisy is breathtaking. And further proof that Democrats just don’t get it.

The reason many of us voted for Bush is not because we especially like Bush. It’s because one of the promises he made was to get us a conservative court who will stop making up the laws as they go and stop referring to other countries’ laws, but will instead interpret the law according to our Constitution. That is why we went ballistic over Harriet Miers. We feel that Roberts was not conservative enough for the top job, but was for the most part acceptable. He would have been suitable for the O’Connor “swing vote” seat. The fact that Bush nominated a moderate for the Rehnquist seat and someone unqualified to replace O’Conner was very frustrating for most conservatives. We are tired of everybody but Congress writing our laws. We’re tired of the courts doing it, and we’re getting tired of lobbyists doing it. There isn’t enough time left of Bush’s term to build up a big backlash against him for doing it, but woe betide his successor if he or she keeps it up.

We want Congress, quite simply, to do their job. To write the laws and to take responsibility for doing so, so that if we don’t like it, we can vote them out. And the more they continue to play these partisan games and allow the moonbat wing of their party to yank them further left, the worse they look. I hope they keep it up; it’s rather like the way the Palestinians just elected Hamas. The mask is off, and we can see clearly just what principles the Democrats hold most dear.