Judging the judiciary

Two great columns on the upcoming judicial battle. David Limbaugh writes:

[D]o not dismiss the magnitude of the deception [the liberals] are orchestrating here. They are hoping to convince the people that any nominee who is reputed to be an originalist is an extremist -- "outside the broad mainstream." Because they view the Court as a co-equal policy-making branch of government, they are treating the confirmation process as another national election.
...
The maddening thing about this is that these liberals are the ones so outside the political mainstream. Their ideology has been soundly rejected in successive national elections. President Bush campaigned on a clearly articulated promise to appoint appellate judges in the mold of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and it is reasonable to infer the public, in re-electing him, had no major objections to his promise. Thus, any nomination he makes in fulfillment of it, by definition should not be regarded as outside the mainstream.
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The dirty little secret is that the liberals are the extremists in this whole process. They are the ones who deny popular sovereignty by using the unelected courts to thwart the will of the people. They refuse to allow state legislatures to set policy when it is not consistent with their superior enlightened vision and they refuse to allow the Senate majority to perform its advice and consent role by their unprecedented partisan filibustering of judicial nominees. They won't even admit their liberalism, which is quite curious if they truly believe their ideas are mainstream.

And then Charles Krauthammer's finishes off his column thus:

Democrats are demanding that O'Connor be the model for the next Supreme Court appointment. "I urge the president and the Senate,'' says Sen. Barbara Boxer, "to ensure that her replacement reflects Justice O'Connor's judicial philosophy -- mainstream, pro-choice, and independent.''

But that's not a judicial philosophy. That's political positioning embedded in a social agenda. What we need is a nominee who has a judicial philosophy -- grounded in constitutional principles that provide legal guidelines that politicians and citizens can understand and live by. I happen to prefer conservative ("originalist'') to liberal constitutional principles. But either is preferable to none.

I can't wait to finish the book I started yesterday: Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America.