Day: April 12, 2010

Who To Choose?

It is official!   President Obama’s search for a successor to Justice John Paul Stevens, who announced his retirement Friday, picks up where Obama left off last year.

Who will it be?  Who gets the nod?  Who?  Who?  Who?  It is time to change the complexion of the Court…and I am NOT talking about skin color….

USA Today is reporting on the leaders in this race for the seat:

Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacancy created when Justice David Souter retired. Three other candidates he interviewed for that vacancy remain possibilities: U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Chicago-based U.S. Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood.Among other legal figures likely in the mix, based on their credentials and backgrounds, are Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland, Attorney General Eric Holder and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who worked as an assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration.

All would most likely be good selection, but why do we need another judge?  Why not let someone who actually interprets the Constitution on a regular basis have a go?

My vote (for what it is worth) would be Jonathan Turley…..why?

He is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. He lives in D.C. with his wife Leslie. He served as the consultant to the Florida House of Representatives on constitutional issues and also served as the consultant to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives on the impeachment of Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá. Professor Turley is also a nationally recognized legal commentator. Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner. Turley was found to be the second most cited law professor in the country. He was also ranked among the nation’s top 500 lawyers in 2008. (He was previously ranked in the top ten military lawyers as well as one of the forty top lawyers under the age of forty).

His articles on legal and policy issues appear regularly in national publications with over 500 articles in such newspapers as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. He is on the Board of Contributors of USA Today. In 2005, Turley was given the Columnist of the Year award for Single-Issue Advocacy for his columns on civil liberties by the Aspen Institute and the Week Magazine. Professor Turley also appears regularly as a legal expert on all of the major television networks. Since the 1990s, he has worked under contract as the on-air Legal Analyst for NBC News and CBS News to cover stories that ranged from the Clinton impeachment to the presidential elections. Professor Turley is often a guest on Sunday talk shows with over two-dozen appearances on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox Sunday.

(Thanx to wiki for the bio on Turley)

I think he would be the perfect addition to the Court because he is intelligent and has experience in constitutional law…that would be a first for the Court….a person who actually works with constitutional law and understands it well enough to teach it to our future leaders……plus he is well known to Congress for his numerous times testifying and he is known by academia as a well versed teacher and interpreter of the Constitution……

Obama could do a lot worse, but he could do NO better than nominating Jonathan Turley to SCOTUS…..it is time to nominate for experience and not for connections…..

The “Constitutive Will” Of The People

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  American History/Political Theory

Paper #9

There is lots of talk these on blogs and discussion forums about the American people being sheep…..it is not a Right/Left thing….both sides feel that Americans are incapable of making a valid decision on their own….that they need the media and politicians and the rest to make the decisions for them…are they, the American voter, lazy, ignorant or just stupid?  Another question…is it true?  Are the American people sheep?

Well……thinking…..YES they ARE sheep!  But when did it happen?  When did Americans give up their reason and free choice?  An excellent question…..and deserves an answer….

Back in the days of Grad school I took a course entitled, “American Political Thought” and that was a battle from the get go between myself and the professor….we did not agree on much and the debate pretty much took the whole class up….anyway…I digress….the course was about the political thought that went into the making of the USA….especially the Constitution….it covered the many players or should I call them Founders?  Now this brings us to the title……the course was where I was introduced to “constitutive will” of the people…..

“Constitutive Will” of the people…….to have the power to institute, establish or enact……which implies that the people of the Colonies wanted establish a representative democracy when the Constitution was being debated…..now this is where my problem begins…

You know during my research I could find NO papers that showed that the people of the Colonies were ever consulted or asked what they wanted from a new government…..so when I see historians say stuff like the founders were deliberating as a people with the end of producing a new constitution that would embody their “constitutive will”……I ask where and who consulted the people?

Let us stop writing b*llshit about our beginnings!  The Constitution was argued, debated and written by wealthy landowners and merchants….the people were not consulted…..their, the Founders, only concern was to protect the rights of the wealthy and to give the rest of the Colonists the illusion that if it somehow benefited the rich then the rest of the people were in good shape……in other words the Founders decided what was best for the rest of America and it has been that way ever sense…..

And that brings us to day…..our election process is just a continuation of the first batch of guys deciding what is best for the rest of us…..nothing about the process reflects what is truly the will of the people…..issues are decided on by the parties and then taken on the road and sold to the people as in their best interests.

The “Constitutive Will” of the people is a MYTH!  The people have NEVER been the focus of government!