My Time to Waste

There is a very old Peanuts strip that I am reminded of lately.  In the strip, Lucy is walking with Linus and explaining to him the origin of telephone poles.  She says something along the lines of “The telephone pole is actually a tree specially developed by the phone company to grow without branches.”

Charlie Brown over hears this lecture, drops his head against one of the phone poles and says “I can’t stand it.”

President Obama plans to deliver an address to the nation’s school children that “will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

Conservatives are up in arms that the President wants to indoctrinate the nation’s school children with his “socialist agenda.”

So working hard, setting educational goals, and taking responsibility now constitutes a socialist agenda?

I can’t stand it.

I had a chance to actually watch a lot of Tuesday’s hearings for confirmation of Sotomayor.  The hearings should probably be called posturing hearings.  It does seem that much of what is said by the senators has as much or more to do with shaping their own image as it does with trying to learn about the nominee.

The Republicans, understanding that Sotomayor’s confirmation is a forgone conclusion, have their only hope of preventing her confirmation by catching her in an error.  They return to the same subjects over and over waiting for Sotomayor to make a mistake.  Sotomayor has handled all the questions with aplomb.

Sotomayor was correct to walk away from her “wise Latina woman” comment, but she walked too far away.  It is not true that a wise Latina woman will make a better decision than a white male.  It is true that a wise Latina woman might make a different decision that is just as good as the white males.  And it somehow never gets mentioned that for 180 years all of the Supreme Court Justices were white males and in the next forty years all but four Justices have been white males.

To watch the hearings is to enter a fantasy world where white males are the standard for objectivity.  Where white males are never influenced by their life experience as a white male.  But, of course, a Latina woman is going to always be influenced by her life experience as a Latina woman (even though she has a lengthy record of not favoring minorites).

The truth is that any justice is going to be influenced by his or her life experience.  That’s the way it is, the way it has always been, and the way it will always be.

It is also the way it should be.

It is also that case that every judge should be able to empathize with the people who will be affected by decisions.  This repeated mantra of “fidelity to the law” is not meaningless.  Fidelity to the law should be the guiding principle, but the law is not complete.  If it were, there would be no need for judges.  Conservatives are happy to have empathetic judges, just as long as the judge is a conservative.  Google “Alito empathy”.

Finally, an “activist judge” is a judge with whom the speaker does not agree.

Confirmation hearings should turn on one question only:  Is the nominee qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.  This is determined by asking the nominee about various issues that the Court has dealt with and likely will deal with.  If the nominee can intelligently discuss the subtleties of the various issues, then the nominee is qualified.

Sotomayor is clearly qualified.

Over many years I’ve heard conservatives mock liberals with the line about beware the person who says “I’m from the government, I’m here to help.”

But in recent foreign affairs it would seem that this is exactly what the conservatives want the President to say to the Iranians.

Not that anyone thinks there would actually be any help.