The American Spectator

Special Report

The Supreme Court in the Balance

By Peter Ferrara on 9.10.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

In law school, as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama could have easily been a Supreme Court clerk, and then gone to work for any major law firm he chose, making millions. But he was so committed to his left-wing ideology that he went to Chicago to work for those who were carrying on the heritage of the legendary far left community organizer Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's slogan was: "Change," which was his code word for the socialism he sought to achieve in America. Among those Obama worked with there was the far left extremist organization ACORN, known for its tactics of violent intimidation and voter fraud.

Obama also worked in Chicago with far left folk heroes Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who led the notorious Weather Underground. That group pioneered terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s with at least 30 bombings of government facilities in America, including the Pentagon. To this day, Ayers openly confesses and romanticizes these bombings. He was quoted in the New York Times ironically on 9/11 as saying his only regret is that they did not pull off more bombings.

Ayers started a foundation in 1995 to bring "change" to the public schools, and hired Obama to be chairman of the board. Obama and Ayers also served together on the board of another left-wing foundation, the Woods Fund, leading its fight for "change." Obama started his political career with a fundraiser sponsored by Ayers and his wife Dohrn at their home, where they introduced him to their friends in the trendy, lefty Hyde Park political community. At conferences and similar events, Obama has joined Ayers as a speaker.

Naturally, Obama also joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago's South Side, famed for its institutional commitment to radical black liberation theology, long faithfully professed by its previous leader the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Black liberation theology teaches that Jesus was a black man, whose doctrine means that African-Americans must achieve liberation by revolting against the oppression of white imperialist America, with its history of enslaving black people and colonizing them in urban poverty. James Cone, a leading black liberation theologian, writes, "In more sophisticated terms, this may be called a theology of revolution." Cone also wrote, "One cannot help but think that most whites 'loved' Martin Luther King, Jr. not because of his attempt to free his people, but because his approach was the least threatening to the white power structure."

This was the explicit, professed doctrine of the church that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle remained members of for 20 years, where they were married by the Rev. Wright, where their children were baptized, and where Obama contributed over $20,000 in his own funds over the years.

WITH THIS BACKGROUND, it was no surprise that when Obama showed up in 2006 in Kenya, his father's country of origin, he supported and even openly campaigned for presidential candidate Raila Odinga. Educated in the 1960s in communist East Germany, Odinga is a radical leftist who headed the socialist party in challenging the pro-American incumbent president of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki. Odinga named his first-born son Fidel after hearing what he thought was an inspiring lecture from the Cuban dictator. Odinga's motto: "Real Change for Africa".

Obama here was following in the footsteps of his father, who was known as a radical socialist economist in Kenya, arguing against private property and for the communal ownership of land. His father once wrote, "Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 percent of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."

Again, is Barack Obama the man we want determining the future of our Supreme Court, and appointing hundreds of judges to dominate the federal bench?

We should note what is meant by the political terms conservative and liberal when applied to judges. When we say conservative judges, we do not mean judges that will rule for conservative results. We mean judges who will do what Chief Justice Roberts explained during his confirmation hearings. They will act as umpires who will impartially apply the rules as written, not seek to participate in the game and change the results.

In other words, conservative judges are strict constructionists who will apply the law and the Constitution objectively as written, regardless of whether they approve of the outcome that results in any particular case. Liberal judges, by contrast, are judicial activists who feel free to make up new law from the bench to get the outcome in a particular case that they want, regardless of what the written law or Constitution actually says.

Barack Obama, who has taught constitutional law, has said quite explicitly that he believes in the liberal philosophy of judging, that judges need to look primarily at the social impact of their rulings, rather than the law as written. John McCain has said just the opposite, that he believes that judges must be strict constructionists, applying the law and Constitution as written, not judicial activists making up the law as they desire.

YEARS OF REAGAN AND BUSH judicial appointments have had a big impact on the courts, and the rulings they produce. Conservatives just won a huge victory this year in the case of Heller v. D.C., where the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment really does protect an individual right to keep and bear arms like it says. To the shock of liberals everywhere, the Court struck down the District of Columbia's gun control laws as unconstitutional, because they effectively prohibited the use of handguns in self-defense. As another example, the Supreme Court also has recently upheld the congressional ban on partial birth abortion, after prior decisions had held such bans unconstitutional.

Yet, the decisions in these cases were 5-4, with Ginsburg and Souter in particular voting the wrong way. Ginsburg and Souter were also in a 5-4 minority in the Indiana Voter ID case, arguing lamely that requiring picture IDs such as a driver's license was an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. But Ginsburg is so far to the left that she dissented even from a majority opinion by the ultraliberal Justice Stevens holding that it was not an unconstitutional search and seizure for drug sniffing dogs to identify the possession of illegal drugs during a traffic stop.

So who is appointed to the Supreme Court in the future, and the other federal courts, will make an enormous difference in the future of our country. And that depends critically on who is elect president this year.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Africa, Socialism