Thursday, June 27, 2013

Republi-CON 'It's Not Judicial Activism, It's Judicial Engagement' Hypocrisy

UPDATE:  Recent Supreme Court give full display to judicial activism philosophy-hypocrisy. 

"So [on June 25, 2013], according to the court's conservatives, Congress had no business approving a law meant to keep states and localities from disenfranchising voters. [On June 26, 2013], though, all due deference should be given to Congress' awful attempt to render gay marriages nonexistent under federal law. Evidently, to those four justices, Congress' wishes only matter when they line up with the conservative worldview. "

Read U.S. News & World Report, A Congress of Convenience for Supreme Court Conservatives.

When the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit declared unconstitutional the individual insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, the Court "used the phrase [judicial engagement] on page 104 of the majority opinion, evidently for the first time in any judicial opinion. When Congress oversteps its limits, the appeals court said, 'the Constitution requires judicial engagement, not judicial abdication.'" Read The New York Time, Actively Engaged, which noted that:

"During the Kagan confirmation hearings in 2010, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee, having denounced judicial activism days or even hours earlier in their press releases, worked hard to impress its virtues on the nominee when she appeared before them in person. 'The American people are concerned about their courts,' Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama lectured Ms. Kagan. 'They’re concerned about a growing expansive government that seems to be beyond anything they’ve ever seen before. And they’d like to know what their judges might like to do about it.'

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma spent nearly an entire question period trying to get the nominee to agree with him that if Congress passed a law requiring Americans to 'eat three vegetables and three fruits every day,' the court should strike it down.

'Sounds like a dumb law,' said Ms. Kagan, who understood precisely what game was afoot. 'But I think that the question of whether it’s a dumb law is different from the question of whether it’s constitutional, and I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless.'"

Sounds like what I said during the debate with Mike on the health care law.