The Court of Last Resort

Commentary by Greg Lewis / TheRant.US
February 25, 2005

Since 1994, the Democrat Party has managed to lose control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. In the face of their obviously diminishing power and influence, Democrats have become a party whose activities and pronouncements betray a growing desperation. As they founder, casting about broadly, seeking remedies to reverse their diminishing influence, it is no surprise that their attention has come to rest on the courts. It can be argued that Democrats see their only remaining hope for holding onto political power in mounting a strenuous resistance to President Bush's federal judicial nominees.

The court system, overpopulated as it seems to be by judges with left/liberal leanings, has been one of the Democrats' primary means of influence for the past three decades. From bypassing the Legislative branch of government to legalize abortion through the Roe v. Wade decision to ostensibly legitimizing gay marriage by flouting legislative precedent in the recent Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case, a judiciary sympathetic to left/liberal political positions has tampered, not only with the U.S. Constitution, but with the fundamental rights of American citizens to have their wishes represented by the federal and state legislators they elect.

By acting in an arrogant and presumptive manner with regard to legal and constitutional precedent, liberal judges (and the political interests they serve) have steered our nation on a course that was laid out by communist apologists more than 70 years ago. Indeed, activist judges are promulgating a vision of the law as a tool for the perpetuation of a "correct" political agenda that was articulated in William Z. Foster's book, Toward Soviet America, in 1932, and affirmed by John Hart Ely in his 1981 book Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. While Ely's book has been influential in the rather more rarefied air surrounding legal theorists, Foster's work directly and unapologetically laid out in layman's terms international communism's intentions with regard to the takeover of our country.

The legal system in a communist America would, as Foster envisioned it, "be free of the pest of lawyers." The purpose of the courts would be to come to "speedy" and "correct" decisions, decisions which reflected the fact that they were handed down by "class-courts, definitely warring against the class enemies of the workers." In other words, the American Soviet legal system as envisioned by Foster would have been a tool for the imposition of Marxist rule on the American people. Such a court system would be at the service of a Marxist agenda; it would eschew entirely any attempt at impartial justice.

Seen in this light, the motivation for Democrats' current desperate resistance to President Bush's judicial nominees becomes quite clear. Unless they can continue to subvert Robert's Rules of Order to their own nefarious purposes by implementing a strategy that includes filibustering Bush's judicial nominees, Democrats face defeat in the third and final arena of political influence, the judiciary. Having lost control of the executive and legislative branches of government, they are making a last stand to hold onto the judicial branch.

Given Democrats' continuing resistance to allowing many of Bush's judicial appointees even so much as an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, the choice facing the GOP seems to hinge on whether Bill Frist will invoke the so-called "nuclear" option (which Republicans prefer to call the "constitutional" option). This would involve Republicans' applying to the presiding officer of the Senate, in this case Dick Cheney, for an interpretation on the constitutionality of the use of the filibuster against judicial nominees. If Cheney determines that the filibuster is unconstitutional in this case, Democrats would not be able to employ the tactic. The upshot would be that the President's judicial nominees could not be blocked by filibuster. They would need only a simple majority, 51 votes, to be approved, and not the 60 votes currently needed to override a Democratic filibuster.

It has been speculated that Republicans' invoking the "nuclear" or "constitutional" option would cause Democrats to escalate their recalcitrance in working with Republicans to craft bi-partisan legislation. In this event, however, what might hold them back from even further increasing their use of obstructionist tactics is the knowledge that being perceived as an obstructionist was what got Tom Daschle dis-elected last fall. Although they might not be willing to admit publicly that Bush's 51% majority was a borderline landslide given the existing political climate, you have to think that, in the backs of their minds, many Democrats are saying, "It might be wise to exercise a little restraint here, not to go overboard in torpedoing the agenda of a popular President."

Indeed, it is because the left wing of the Democrat Party — as represented by Howard Dean, Teddy Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, to name a few — has effectively commandeered the political spotlight to emerge as the public voice of the party that we're even having this discussion. Rather than seeking to represent the interests of their constituency through legitimate legislative means, Democratic leadership continues to look for ways to impose on all Americans a leftist agenda that the majority of U.S. citizens resoundingly rejects.

Maintaining a stranglehold on the judiciary by denying President Bush's appointees an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor is but one more tactic by which Democrats are revealing their intentions. Those intentions, as William Z. Foster articulated them many years ago, remain to render through the courts "speedy" and "correct" decisions that reflect, not the will and values of the American people nor the upholding of the U.S. Constitution, but the imposition of a leftist political agenda on the citizens of the United States.