Supreme Showdown
July 2, 2005 |
Here we go. The fight of the decade is about to get started, and no it has nothing to do with Iraq. Today, Sandra Day O’Connor–the first female appointed to the Supreme Court–announced her retirement after 24 years of service. Shortly there after, the gloves came off.
For a while now both sides of the political isle have been preparing and making threats about what will happen once a vacancy was made in the high court. Now that the time has come, the rhetoric has gotten worse. Seemingly minutes after Justice O’Connor announced her retirement Senate Democrats, led by Ted Kennedy, came out with a statement demanding a moderate nominee. The White House announced no name would be released for at least a week though, a short list is no doubt already in place.
Whoever receives the nomination, however, is no doubt about to face the fight of their lives. Senate approval is required and if you thought the filibuster and so called ‘nuclear option’ talk of a few months ago was bad, just wait–it’s all about to come back. Dems will threaten to filibuster to hold the vote, Republicans will threaten the nuclear option to push the vote. Hopefully this will all be settled before the court begins its next session in October–though it probably won’t.
Whoever comes to replace O’Connor will hopefully bring some common sense back to the court. Lately the rulings handed down from the Supreme Court have been questionable at best. Two opinions referring to displaying the Ten Commandments were rendering practically contradicting each other. In one opinion the Commandments were allowed to be shown in front of a Texas statehouse, in the other it was not allowed to be shown in a Kansas courtroom. Another opinion, which is perhaps the most ludicrous in the past few years, sates that local governments can take private property and give it to another private owner so long as the new owner can build something on the property that generates more tax revenue–i.e. take your house and build a strip mall. Is this fair? No. Does it make sense? No. Has the court lost its mind? It is highly likely.
Part of this has to do with the fact that Supreme Court Justices serve for life. Perhaps term limits are a good idea to bring new blood and fresh ideas to the court. But that will be a debate for another day. For now, Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat is on the table and that is really all that matters.