Ravenwood - 05/01/03 03:00 PM
It is no secret that the Democrats are playing partisan politics when it comes to approving Judicial nominations. As Owen Courreges pointed out on Tuesday, Bush has had a mere 53% of his initial nominations approved, compared with 86% of Bill Clinton's. When Dems controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bushs' nominees weren't even getting hearings. On top of all this obstructionism, now, as Fox News reports, Chuck Schumer wants the Senate to take control of the nomination process altogether. Notice the last paragraph:
Schumer suggested setting up bipartisan nomination commissions in each state that would recommend a judicial candidate to the president for each empty judgeship. "It's our best hope for breaking the vicious cycle," Schumer said.So Schumer thinks that the President shouldn't make any nominations, and that the entire process should be controlled by the Senate. He and the Senate Democrats are filibustering nominees in an attempt to hijack the entire process. Talk about rewriting the Constitution. Schumer wants to cross out "advice and consent" and pencil in the word "permission".
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
The Supreme Court decision in Helvering v. Davis in 1937 is proving to be a disastrous one. Combined with another 1937 decision in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., the SCOTUS essentially vacated the 10th Amendment and rewrote the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses of Article I, Section 8. The 10th Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This means that any powers not delegated to the three branches of the federal government were reserved to the states. The SCOTUS and 'New Deal' politics negated Amendment 10, and gave sweeping powers to the federal government. This power has ultimately led to a 'litmus test' and 60 vote requirement for federal judgeships.
As of this week, there are still 50 vacant judgeships, down from a high of about 109 in late 2001 and early 2002.(src, src)
Category: Left-wing Conspiracy
Comments (1) top link me
Welcome to the world of big government.... the Constitution and Amendment 10 be damned, the federal government has taken the power AWAY from the states and into the centralized federal government which is expressly NOT what the Constitution (and it's writers and signatories) wanted to accomplish.
On one hand, they are giving away a power that was reserved for Congress (war powers act) and on the other hand, they are trying to take executive power..... when are they going to get it straight and practice the checks and balances that are incorporated into the Constitution??
Besides, relocating the powers expressly given in the Constitution SHOULD take an amendment to that particular document, which the states HAVE to ratify if I remember right, shouldn't it??
Posted by: Jim S at May 1, 2003 5:16 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
