This week, the Senate votes on President Obama’s nomination of District Court Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit.  Because of Hamilton’s fundraising activities for ACORN, his leadership positions with the Indiana branch of the ACLU, his statements supporting judicial activism, and most importantly, his rulings putting liberal ideology above the rule of law, he is the first and only Obama circuit nominee to draw heated opposition.

There are many examples of Judge Hamilton’s tendency towards liberal judicial activism.  However, the most bizarre and controversial instance is Hamilton’s 2005 ruling prohibiting prayers that mention Jesus Christ in the Indiana House of Representatives, but allowing prayers that mention Allah.  While troubling in any context, the religious double standard in Hamilton’s ruling is particularly deserving of close scrutiny in light of Major Nidal Hasan’s recent shooting rampage at Fort Hood. 

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In April I blogged about Larry Sabato’s statement that, in the wake of the much-vaunted 2008 Obama realignment, “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Sabato was all over the tube last night and today, but I didn’t hear any mea culpas from him about what now seems like a ridiculous prediction.  Nor did I hear any apologies from the many other pundits who made similar predictions.

Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia was the crown jewel of the supposed realignment.  Now it’s a glaring example of how silly virtually every declaration of realignment turns out to be.  As I said in April, such declarations “are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.”

The Supreme Court announced today that it will decide, in McDonald v. Chicago, whether the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun laws. That puts the focus on the Court’s newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, and on President Obama’s future picks for the Court.

Gun owners were alarmed by Sotomayor’s nomination to the Court, because of her “extreme anti-gun philosophy” and record on the Second Circuit, in the words of former NRA president Sandy Froman. At her Senate hearing this summer, Sotomayor defended that record by saying that her hands were tied by old Supreme Court precedent. Now that she’s on the High Court, her hands are no longer tied. She will have a lot of explaining to do if she decides in McDonald that the right to keep and bear arms is the only significant right in the Bill of Rights that doesn’t apply to the states. Such a decision would indicate that she was not serious when she promised the Senate that she would put the rule of law above ideology.

Today’s announcement ensures that gun owners will continue to play a big role in Supreme Court confirmations, just as they did this summer. The Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as an individual right, moved the battle over gun rights from the legislatures to the courts. That set the stage for gun owners to enter the judicial wars. The decision to review McDonald puts the future of gun rights back squarely in the Supreme Court, reinforcing the conviction among gun owners that their fate is now in the hands of judges and that their continued involvement in the judicial confirmation process is vital.

Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision in McDonald, it will further focus the Second Amendment community on the needs for constitutionalist judges. Heller was limited to federal gun laws and the District of Columbia, but most of the laws that worry gun owners are at the state and local level. If the McDonald decision recognizes an individual Second Amendment right at that level, the number of gun rights cases – and thus the importance of the judges issue to gun owners – will explode. Should the Supreme Court rule the other way in McDonald, the anger of gun owners will be a force to reckon with every time there’s a Supreme Court nomination.

Cross-posted at the Committee for Justice blog.

I used to respect Chris Matthews for being a liberal who was interested in both sides of an argument.  Over the last couple of years, as Matthews has become increasingly blinded by his crush on Barack Obama, my respect for the Hardball host has faded.  However, it was not until last night that I sadly realized that Matthews had become unhinged from reality.  I only watched the first ten minutes of Hardball last night, but that was long enough to learn that

1) Matthews believes that right wing hatred of Democratic presidents is so pernicious that it’s even responsible for John F. Kennedy’s assassination by avowed Communist Lee Harvey Oswald:

What is it about the zeitgeist, the atmosphere in the air, in that case, very virulently right- wing hatred of Jack Kennedy, that may have sprung or triggered even a left- winger like Oswald to do what he did? … A communist sympathizer like Lee Harvey Oswald … kills in the atmosphere of a right-wing hatred of a lefty.

2) Matthews considers what Rep. Joe Wilson did – or standing outside a town hall meeting with a gun or anti-Obama sign – akin to assassinating the president:

What is it that triggers? Is it the sense that the whole atmosphere is, this guy is not legitimate, the guy I’m about to shoot or the guy I’m about to humiliate with carrying a gun or with a sign or yelling out, “You lie.”

3) Matthews has no memory of the left-wing protest signs and cartoons that portrayed George W. Bush as a chimpanzee and compared him to Hitler and the Nazis:

You can go to a rally and hold up a sign talking about the man in the White House being some kind of animal, that he’s a Hitler guy, the fact that somebody would know they can get away with carrying a sign like that without being shunned, pushed aside, even beaten up, tells me there’s a license out there. … You wouldn’t hold up a sign like that a few months ago.

Recent admissions of extramarital affairs by Mark Sanford and John Ensign resulted in heavy media coverage and constant generalizations about Republicans’ hypocrisy concerning family values.  The mainstream media’s fascination with GOP affairs is likely fueled, not by a desire to “get” Republicans, but by a worldview that makes it difficult to view those who preach conservative social values as sincere. That said, it’s fair for the media to highlight hypocrisy.  I just wish the MSM applied a more bipartisan standard to hypocrisy, such as when sensitivity-preaching Democrats make racially insensitive remarks (e.g., Joe Biden), pro-labor liberals shaft their workers (e.g., Al Franken), or self-righteous greens contribute far more than their share to mankind’s carbon footprint (e.g., Al Gore).  Instead, the opposite rule seems to apply: a politician’s history of liberal rhetoric is taken as evidence that no harm was intended by what would otherwise be viewed as hypocritical behavior.

Cross-posted at Politico.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted yesterday that he doesn’t have the 60 votes necessary to confirm Dawn Johnsen as head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, because at least a few Democrats will vote against her. That should give President Obama pause as he considers his first Supreme Court nomination – all the more so because a President’s selection of judicial nominees is given less deference by the Senate than his choice of Executive Branch nominees like Johnsen.  Dawn Johnsen’s troubled nomination is emblematic of at least three obstacles that Obama’s High Court nominee will encounter if she is as unabashedly supportive of judicial activism and liberal causes as Johnsen.

First, the key to confirmation of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees – now and in the future – is red and purple state Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is “very concerned” about Johnsen’s nomination.  Having 59 or 60 Democrats in the Senate does not mean Obama has a free hand in choosing the next High Court Justice.

Second, the surest way for Obama to lose the vote of a red or purple state Democrat is to nominate someone whose values are decidedly to the left of those of the senator’s constituents.  For example, Ben Nelson has pointed to Johnsen’s work as a pro-abortion activist.  A Supreme Court nominee who believes that partial birth abortion and gay marriage are constitutional rights, but that individual gun ownership and freedom from discrimination regardless of race aren’t, is unlikely to survive the confirmation process.

Third, senators who oppose the President’s High Court nominee can succeed merely by ensuring that the nominee gets a thorough and thoughtful examination, rather than being rushed through the Senate before the August recess.  Once the nominee’s record and views are fully aired, each and every Democratic senator will decide if they can defend the nominee before the folks back home.  If Sen. Reid still has the votes for confirmation after the senators face their constituents in August, no one can complain that the process wasn’t fair.

Cross-posted at CFJ’s Blog.

Since November, I’ve become accustomed to predictions that the Republican Party is on its way to irrelevance.  Nonetheless, I was disappointed to hear that sentiment voiced by University of Virginia professor and pundit Larry Sabato, who generally tries to provide a relatively objective analysis.  On MSNBC’s Hardball today, Sabato opined that “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Here’s Sabato’s analysis followed by my thoughts on why such predictions are silly.

Essentially, it boils down to this. Minorities are going to be the majority by 2042. It could even be by the 2030s. Young people 18 to 29, they voted more than two to one for Obama, and their turnout is going to go up with each additional year as they age. The same with people with graduate degrees, who used to vote Republican on fiscal issues. Now they’re so turned off to Republicans because of [conservative rhetoric] and the social issues, they turned Democratic. Hey, you can`t just win with white male voters in the South, and that’s what the Republicans have left.

This sort of analysis sounds quite logical but is reminiscent of what the pundits said following the re-election of both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.  After the 1984 election, expert after expert explained why the shift of population and thus electoral votes to the Sun Belt had given the Republicans a “lock on the Electoral College.”  Despite my youthful eagerness for a GOP presidential monopoly, this electoral analysis struck me as too sweeping and simplistic to be correct.  Unfortunately, I was right.

Following the 2004 election, the message from the experts was the same, though the explanation had changed.  Now the Democrats had little chance of winning presidential elections because they were only competing in states that accounted for barely half of the 538 electoral votes.  It was a seductive argument, but again it was too simplistic and backward-looking to be true.

Predictions of electoral locks are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless, if only because the news headlines and candidates that await us are unknowable  Although it’s much less fun and won’t get you a guest appearance on MSNBC or FOX, the only honest analysis is admitting that you haven’t got a clue about what’s going to happen in future elections.

Conservatives pundits and media have been sounding alarm bells about President Obama’s nomination of transnationalism-touting Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top legal adviser. But even Newsweek’s balanced piece on the Koh nomination (April 27 issue), which concludes that he should be confirmed, enumerates plenty of reasons to be alarmed.  Consider the following excerpts:

Koh argues that American law should reflect “transnational” legal values.

Were his writings to become policy, judges might have the power to use debatable interpretations of treaties and “customary international law” to override a wide array of federal and state laws.

[T]aken to their logical extreme [Koh’s views] could erode American democracy and sovereignty.

Koh has campaigned to expand some rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution—and perhaps shrink some others, including the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech—to better conform to the laws of other nations.

He has campaigned to write into U.S. law the United Nations “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,” …  A U.N. committee supervising the treaty’s implementation has called for the “decriminalizing of prostitution” in China, the legalization of abortion in Colombia, and the abolition of Mother’s Day in Belarus (for “encouraging woman’s traditional roles”).

Adoption of his ideas could expose U.S. companies to multibillion-dollar liabilities merely for doing business in countries run by human-rights violators … [and could mean] extraditing American officials to be tried as war criminals.

In 2004, Koh asserted that President Bush (by invading Iraq and flouting the Geneva accords) had put the United States into an “axis of disobedience” to international law along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Koh and the other “transnationalists” are using their legal theories to advance a political agenda. The international legal norms they wish to inject into American law by and large reflect the values of Social Democratic Europe and liberal American academics. Koh is not suggesting, for instance, that American judges adapt Islamic law that discriminates against women.

In his speech at Georgetown today (video here), President Obama relied on a superficially appealing but misleading analogy to defend his plan to tackle health care, energy and education reform while the nation is still mired in recession. Obama analogized critics’ arguments that the nation can’t afford to do everything at once to a parent’s decision about whether their children should attend college – i.e., invest in the future – or work in a fast food restaurant – i.e., worry about paying the bills – during bad economic times.

Obama’s analogy fails because it assumes rather than demonstrating that energy, education and health care reform are time-sensitive initiatives.  The college versus paying the bills decision is a relatively easy one – at least if your family is affluent – because going to college is time-sensitive. If you don’t go to college soon after graduating high school, chances are you’ll never go. The analogous argument – that we’ll probably never do health care, education, and energy reform if we don’t it now – is only valid if the reforms are such a bad idea that their passage depend on Obama’s honeymoon popularity and the distraction of many political battles at once. Somehow, I don’t think that is what Obama was arguing.

Another bit of rhetoric in today’s speech that caught my attention was Obama’s remark that, from now on, the nation’s best and brightest should favor careers that involves “making things” rather than careers in finance.  I doubt Obama noticed the tension between that statement and his defense, minutes before, of the bank bailout, in which he emphasized that the banks and free-flowing credit are the lifeblood of the economy.  I’m just thinking it might be a good idea to have many of the best and brightest attending to the nation’s lifeblood.