Impartial Judiciary Dead, GOP Proudly Promises Activist Conservative Justices!

The thirst for power and a one party authority is unmistakable, and apparently knows no limits. 

What is antithetical to the intent of the founding fathers, and to the idea of having a nonpartisan independent judicial branch of government, is the Republican plan to replacement Antonin Scalia with a originalist conservative. And they'll block any attempt to supposedly poison the Supreme Court with a "liberal," a judge not on the same page as the Republican Party. Heck, they even got another chance to discredit Obama, by condescendingly telling him to wait for the next president. If this were President Romney, think they would wait till after the election?

Here's a clip that starts with Hillary Clinton's comments about the GOP's scheme to politicize the judicial branch, followed by Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer.



But its always been about political philosophy.

Scalia even bragged that he was an "originalist," a form of political conservatism that "believes" the Constitution's language is fixed to the time it was enactment. But that would require interpreting what the founders meant, which leaves it up to the imagination of the ruling party. Crazy?

Originalism, in all its various forms, is predicated on a specific view of what the Constitution is. Justice Scalia accepted this problem: "It's not always easy to figure out what the provision meant when it was adopted…I do not say [originalism] is perfect. I just say it's better than anything else". 

The Constitution contains no waiting period, no election year ban, no set "standard practice" to uphold, like the one Sen. Chuck Grassley claimed has been in place for the last 80 years. Real "originalists" huh? Here's Scalia on Fox News trying to make sense of his own philosophy:



Check out the discussion here between Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer. You be the judge. Which form of constitutional reading sounds right?

Wikipedia: Any originalist or even a strict constructionist might apply the canon of construction, which presumes that when an author includes one example he intends to exclude others ... 

Contrast this with a "living constitutional" interpretation (liberal), which might find that, although the text itself only prohibits certain methods, those methods are examples of particularly unpleasant methods of execution; therefore, the text invites modern readers to extend its principle to those forms of punishment we now find particularly unpleasant.

I'm going with the living constitution, and here's the logical reason why:

Justice Breyer has) that constitutions are meant to endure over time, and in order to do so, their interpretation must therefore be more flexible and responsive to changing circumstances than the amendment process.

The Ninth Amendment is the exception in that it does establish a rule of constitutional interpretation ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."). When interpreted using original intent or original meaning, it clearly protects rights which the founders had not thought to list explicitly—this could be interpreted as a direct rebuke to all Textualist or Formalist legal schools including originalism.