Legislating from the bench?

Early on, the "conservatives" led most publically by Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl. Judge fired the first salvo. They were OUTRAGED......they just KNEW that any appointment by this President would be "empathetically and emotionally led"! They did this for days without a single name being touted. Sonia Sotomayor was only nominated by President Obama today but the complaints
preceeded her before they even knew who would be nominated!

It will be interesting to see the arguements about her given the fact that her current appointment to the Federal bench was done by the administration of GHW Bush. I guess they learned that nominations by THAT Bush aren't a "slam dunk" for the far right. She would be replacing a Supreme Court justice David Souter seated at the reccomendation of that same President Bush. They didn't like any more than they liked Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor. This same contingency was convinced that Souter would suit their agenda and now
they are convinced that she would ignore it based on the appointing President.
Interesting.....you don't think that these observations are being inspired by.....an AGENDA or EMOTIONS, do you?

It's interesting to note that they have actually stated that their fears are that Sotomayor would vote base on "empathy". They speak of fear that she would
attempt to "legislate from the bench". I don't recall this same hesitation when
Chief Justice John Roberts was appointed or Vincent Scalia either. The same
fearful legislators did not express outrage when Scalia chose to take a hunting
trip funded by then Vice President Dick Cheney while his court was in the middle of the case in which Cheney was being sued to make public the records of the energy panel that established our energy policies. They didn't complain
when he refused to recuse himself from that case even though the defendant
PAID for the trip and when the case was later ruled in his favor these same doubting would be Thomas's (with apologies to Clarence) didn't express any special interest claims either.

You have to also question how serious that they are about their fears of
"legislating from the bench" given the fact that many of these SAME legislators
had no umbridge expressed when CONGRESS chose to legislate the COURTS.
Let us not forget that George W Bush was only so happy to come back from one of his many Crawford ranch vacations and Congress was equally anxious to burn the midnight oils to force the court's hand in the matter of Terri Shaivo. They speak elloquently about the rights of the individual and family values but they certainly had no problem inserting their Congressional seals into a family grief and they were adamant about their Congressional imperative to RULE on the rulings of the COURTS! So much for the system of checks in place.

They talk a lot about this imbalance of our system of checks and balances but they thought that it was no big deal when nine Federal prosecutors were fired. To this day, we have not been allowed to see all the evidence in that matter because people like Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales were allowed to thumb their noses at Congressional supenas to appear to clear up this matter. It would appear that these firings happened in retribution to rulings made that did not suit the needs to play politics by those with a specified agenda. The hypocracy of this protest is amazing. As Shakespeare once stated...."Me thinks thou doth protest too much". INDEED!