McCain And Obama Differ On Supreme Court Appointees, Global Warming Innocent Of Hurricanes And Doctors Head To Texas

Three really good stories today. Let's start with McCain vs. Obama on Supreme Court Justices. McCain has promised to appoint strict Constitutionalists in the mold of Justices Alito and Roberts. Obama is promising activist Justices who are more emotional rather than rational.

From the L.A. Times:

Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), in a speech two weeks ago, echoed the views of conservatives who say "judicial activism" is the central problem facing the judiciary. He called it the "common and systematic abuse . . . by an elite group . . . we entrust with judicial power." On Thursday, he criticized the California Supreme Court for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, saying he doesn't "believe judges should be making these decisions." Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) said he was most concerned about a conservative court that tilted to the side of "the powerful against the powerless," and to corporations and the government against individuals. "What's truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves," he said in response to McCain. ... Obama has also praised current Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter. "I want people on the bench who have enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through," Obama said.

Remember, it was "empathy" and "feeling" that brought about the socialist policies that have universally been disasters wherever they have been adopted.

It is not just a theoretical policy debate. Whoever is elected in November will probably have the chance to appoint at least one justice in the next presidential term. The court's two most liberal justices are its oldest: John Paul Stevens turned 88 last month, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. McCain promised that, if elected, he would follow President Bush's model in choosing Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Right now, they way things are going for us Conservatives, John McCain represents our last, best hope for keeping the Judiciary in the hands of Justices who truly respect the Constitution and all of the principles our Founding Fathers wisely wrote into it.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

John McCain And Barack Obama: Two Visions Of The Supreme Court
David Savage
Los Angeles Times
May 19, 2008

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A new study coming out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is showing evidence of what many of us already knew: Global Warming is not responsible for hurricanes, despite Al Gore's screeching claim that the hurricane season of 2006 was going to be twice as bad as 2005. (The truth is that 2006 was notable for it lack of storms.)

According to Fox News:

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them. Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle. What makes this study different is [Tom] Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J. He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming. He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues "against the notion that we've already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming." The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent. The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors — anywhere west of Puerto Rico — will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors. The biggest storms — those with winds of more than 110 mph — would only decrease in frequency by 8 percent. Tropical storms, those with winds between 39 and 73 mph, would decrease by 27 percent.

I know the libs just hate it when they are confronted with real facts and data rather than the emotionalistic rhetoric of a man who is making millions of dollars off of his eco-pandering. (BTW, someone should ask Al Gore how much profit he makes every time he sells a carbon credit. If it is higher than the 6% margin that the oil companies make, someone should investigate Al for price gouging.)

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Study: Hurricane Spike Not Caused By Global Warming
Associated Press via Fox News
May 19, 2008

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And finally, we note that doctors are headed for Texas. Why? Tort reform. It is once again economical in Texas to open new practices withour having to worry about ambulance chasers like John Edwards using you and your insurance company to make themselves rich while at the same time driving health care prices so high that the lower class can no longer afford it.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down. The result is an influx of doctors so great that recently the State Board of Medical Examiners couldn't process all the new medical-license applications quickly enough. The board faced a backlog of 3,000 applications. To handle the extra workload, the legislature rushed through an emergency appropriation last year.

And this is a really good idea, one that might have stopped John Edwards from doing so much damage in North Carolina:

One judge now makes all pretrial discovery and evidence rulings, including the validity of expert doctor reports, for all cases. This creates legal consistency and virtually eliminates "venue shopping" – a process by which trial lawyers file briefs in districts that they know will be friendly to frivolous suits. Trials still occur in plaintiffs' home counties.

I know, I know. The libs will still blame the "greedy" insurance companies in the rest of the U.S. But it is clear that liberal trial lawyers who seek their fortunes at the expense of insurance companies are the true culprits.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Why Doctors Are Heading For Texas
Joseph Nixon
The Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2008

Obama's Class-War Court

Looks like Sen. Obama is pinning a good deal of his campaign on class-warfare. In addition to his Texas ads that severely over-inflate what an executive makes compared to minimum wage earners, here is what we will have to look forward to if Sen. Obama gets to make appointments to the Supreme Court.

Terence Jeffrey writing for TownHall.com notes that Sen. Obama made the case that 95 percent of Supreme Court cases were not controversial and thus Justices Scalia and Ginsburg would arrive at the same vote most of the time.

But:

In the other 5 percent, he argued, the determining factor is not what the law in question says, or what the Constitution says, but the emotional disposition that the justices deciding the case have toward the parties disputing it. "In those difficult cases," Obama said, "the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart." Roberts and Alito were bad judges, he decided, because their hearts weren't in the right place. "The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts' record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak," Obama said in a floor speech on Sept. 22, 2005. "When I examine the philosophy, ideology and record of Samuel Alito, I am deeply troubled," Obama said in another floor speech on Jan. 26, 2006. "There is no indication that he is not a man of fine character. But when you look at his record, when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I found that in almost every case he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless."

Do we really want this man (or the woman he is currently running against) to make appointments to the Supreme Court?

BTW, Sen. McCain voted to confirm both Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama's Class-War Court
Terence Jeffrey
TownHall.com
February 27, 2008

McCain's Promise On Judges And The Dems Make Us Much Less Safe

Here is something John McCain said during his speach at CPAC:

I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people’s elected representatives, judges of the character and quality of Justices Roberts and Alito, judges who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend.

Now, if you've been keeping score of the final three candidates, you have the two Dems promising to nominate justices who will legislate from the bench and one who nominate justices like John Roberts and Sam Alito. Yet there is still that rage and anger against John McCain for some reason. And what is worse is that if you try to confront these angry people by asking, "Can you explain how justices appointed by Hillary or Obama would be better?" they usually fly off onto some irrelevent tangent about McCain's all but guaranteed nomination instead of actually answering the question.

Writing for the PajamasMedia, Professor Stephen Bainbridge has the following to say about this:

To be sure, Presidents all too often break campaign promises. Remember George Bush 41’s “read my lips” pledge on taxes? In the new media environment, however, it’s getting easier to hold a President’s feet to the fire. Remember George Bush 43’s aborted nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Those of us who waged war against Miers succeeded in part because in the 2000 campaign Bush had explicitly promised to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. We demanded that Bush keep that promise and, as it became clear that Miers was made from a different mold, we kept up a steady drum beat of criticism. In the end, we won. Miers was forced to withdraw and Samuel Alito became the newest member of the Supreme Court.

Yes, I remember that. I don't doubt that we, the people, especially those of us who are politically active either in the real world or in cyberspace, will have a big say in such appointments, bigger than we would have if Hillary or Obama were sitting in the Oval Office.

Professor Bainbridge goes on:

All of which suggests that threats by conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to take their ball and go home if McCain is the nominee make no sense (and I say this as someone who has made similar rumblings in the past). The next President likely will nominate 3-4 Supreme Court justices and 200 to 400 lower court judges. Given the astonishing longevity of Supreme Court justices, moreover, the next President’s Supreme Court picks easily could serve for two or more decades. To consider the full implications of this prospect, consider just one of the names that appears on most short lists of prospective Democratic Supreme Court nominees: Harold Koh, dean of the Yale Law School. (YLS professor Kenji Yoshino reportedly quipped that he was hedged for 2008, because “either the Democrats will lose and Yale will keep Harold, or the Democrats will win and Yale will loan him to the country.”) What would a Justice Koh’s jurisprudence look like? Jeffrey Rosen notes that Koh “has supported the idea that U.S. courts should expansively apply international legal precedents without the authorization of the president and Congress.” John McGinnis likewise observes that: “Harold Koh in fact would like to cabin American exceptionalism through the use of transnational materials to assure that American principles would cohere more with the rest of the world.” The increasing use of such precedents by the left wing of the Supreme Court, of course, has been a major irritant to conservatives. Andrew McCarthy and Doug Kmiec have both raised concerns that a Justice Koh would handcuff the police and intelligence community by judicial fiat. A Law Blog reader quipped that, “other than that he’d be a sure vote for declaring Gitmo detainees have a constitutional right to Social Security benefits, I do not see the appeal.”

So, there you have your choice. Justices like Harold Koh from the Democrats, or a promise of more like Sam Alito and John Roberts from the GOP nominee.

I choose the hopefulness of John McCain's promise.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

McCain Makes A Promise About Judges
Professor Stephen Bainbridge
PajamasMedia.com
February 10, 2008

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And have you heard that the FISA Law has been allowed to die? That means that we have lost one of our mosr effective tools against the terrorists.

Who allowed it to die? The Dems.

House Minority Leader John Boehner had this to say about it:

On Thursday, House Democratic leaders left Washington for a 12-day break after failing to pass critical legislation designed to ensure that our intelligence officials are able to monitor foreign communications of suspected terrorists overseas, such as Osama Bin Laden and other key al-Qaeda leaders, while also adding critical liability protections for third parties who helped us defend our country. This measure had received strong bipartisan support in the Senate, and was on the verge of passing by a wide bipartisan margin in the House until Democratic leaders blocked it from coming to the floor for a vote. Because of the Democrats’ inaction, the Protect America Act expired last night at midnight, forcing our intelligence officials to revert to the same terror surveillance laws that failed to protect America from the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on 9/11. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are still plotting against the United States and our allies, but now our intelligence officials don’t have all the tools they need to protect us. These laws didn’t safeguard America in 2001, so why would House Democrat leaders place our nation at risk by putting them back into effect now? Some members of the House Majority believe there is no sense of urgency to address this crisis. But the New York Post recently reported a heartbreaking story about U.S. forces in Iraq having to wait 10 hours last May before they could begin searching for three American soldiers taken hostage by al Qaeda because lawyers here in the United States were hammering out the proper documents to get emergency permission for wiretaps. One of our soldiers was found dead, two others remain missing.

This lapse in judgement the Dems have experienced is deep and its effects will be far reaching. More:

The liability protections included in the bipartisan Senate bill are intended to ensure that patriotic third parties are not subject to frivolous lawsuits when they cooperate with our intelligence officials to help track terrorists. But already some trial lawyers are seeking millions of dollars, and now some third parties who have cooperated to help defend our country have indicated they can no longer do so voluntarily. This is wrong and we must fix it. Much has been said about the U.S. Senate being the world’s most deliberative body, but in this case our colleagues proved that they can work quickly to pass good legislation that will keep America safe. The consequences of inaction in the House and the failure to send a bill to the President are real. U.S. intelligence officials will not be able to begin new terrorist surveillance without needless and dangerous delays. If a previously unknown group were to attack or kidnap American soldiers tomorrow, U.S. forces would have to wait – again – for the lawyers to get permission before a search could begin. The families of the three soldiers abducted in May by al Qaeda can attest to how devastating waiting can be. ... Refusing to give our intelligence officials all the tools they need to keep America safe is unacceptable. Refusing to extend protection from frivolous lawsuits to third parties that cooperate with the government to protect American lives and then leaving town for 12 days is also unacceptable. The question now for House Democratic leaders is, how much longer are they prepared to protect their trial lawyer allies at the expense of our national security?

Which is one of the many reasons why I voted Republican in my local Congressional races.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Democrats’ Inaction On FISA Harms America’s National Security
Rep. John Boehner
TownHall.com
February 17, 2008