Moon reminds us that there are some things going on in the world besides Katrina (though if you haven’t made a donation to the charity of your choice, please do so now before reading any further, go on do it now). 

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SCOTUS:

The media pundits are all over the fact that a second Supreme Court position is already open.  A lot of people have questioned how many times in the past one President has gotten the opportunity to name more than one person to the Supreme Court in the same year but few have bothered to research the answer. Fortunately, Moon did. The answer was honestly quite surprising.  Here are the years more than one Supreme Court Judge has been appointed: ;

The fact of the matter is, it is not the least bit unusual for a President to nominate more than one Supreme Court Justice in the same year.  Franklin Roosevelt  and Andrew Jackson did it twice, Washington did it three times.  Think about that the next time you hear someone talking about George Bush's "unprecedented" power.

But how will Bush use this power? His first nomination is already known, but how will he play his second card? One thing for certain, we know that he'll be under intense media pressure to avoid appointing a conservative Supreme Court justice to replace O'Connor. This brings up the question on  why conservative Presidents face pressure to appoint moderates when liberal presidents do not face similar pressure. Jay Bryant (Townhall) noted that since 1960...

... the four Democratic presidents have appointed six Associate Justices: Byron "Whizzer" White; Arthur Goldberg; Abe Fortas; Thurgood Marshall; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and Stephen Breyer. Of these, only White, appointed by President Kennedy in April of 1962 can reasonably be considered even a moderate. Goldberg was a left-wing labor lawyer. Fortas was a Democrat Party hack who represented liberal causes when in private practice in the 1950's and resigned after it was revealed he'd been on the take. Marshall's biography describes him as "an unrepentant liberal"; he once said he did not find "the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers [of the US Constitution] particularly profound." Ginsburg was a feminist lawyer and together with Breyer (a former staff assistant to Ted Kennedy) forms the base of the liberal wing of the current court.

If you thought media Bush bashing was big during Katrina, just wait...

technorati: scotus roberts

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 2:27 pm by Insider and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.