RUSH: Now, continuing with a theme that came up last week, Senator Specter suggested that we needed to go back and review the confirmation hearing testimony of John Roberts and Samuel Alito because they may have misrepresented themselves to the committee members in order to get confirmed. In other words, he wants to go back and see if the committee was lied to by Alito and Roberts. So, last Friday, this was picked up by Senator Schemer — Schumer. He spoke to the American Constitution Society convention. Here is a portion of Senator Schemer — Schumer’s — remarks.
SCHUMER: Were we duped? Were we hoodwinked? Were we too easily impressed with the charm of the nominee Roberts and the erudition of nominee Alito? In case after case, our most recently confirmed justices have appeared to jettison decisions recently authored by their immediate predecessors. Although Roberts and Alito both expressed their profound respect for stare decisis at their confirmation hearings, many of their decisions have flouted precedent.
RUSH: What are you going to do about it? I thought we weren’t supposed to criticize judiciary! I thought we weren’t supposed attack the judiciary. I thought they were off limits, Senator Schumer. I thought this is outrageous. This is a power grab. The libs are threatened. They feel worried. The Supreme Court, folks, is how they insulate themselves from election losses. It’s how they get people, activists, on the court instituting their own personal policy preferences regarding the law. Liberalism shall run free and uninhibited on the Supreme Court! Now they think they may have been lied to. Were we hoodwinked? Do you realize how stupid you are making yourselves sound with that line of questioning, about yourselves? Here’s another portion of Senator Schemer — Schumer’s — remarks.
SCHUMER: So every day I feel more comfortable with my vote against Chief Justice Roberts, and every day I’m pained that I didn’t do more to try and block Justice Alito. I was one who felt we ought to filibuster, but my colleagues convinced me we just didn’t have the votes. We should have done everything we could to have blocked Alito. Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed. We should have done our job better. Take the president at his word. When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, believe him. The burden always lies with the nominee to show that he or she is within the mainstream, and that burden cannot be met, as we’ve seen, by mouthing pleasant platitudes with modesty and stability at a confirmation hearing.
RUSH: Boy, last I remember, it was Justice Alito’s poor wife that was fleeing the hearing room in tears over the way her husband was being treated by the Democrats on the committee! I think it was Senator Leahy, was it not? (sigh) ‘We should have done everything we could to have blocked Alito. He shouldn’t have been confirmed.’ Schemer is consistent here, talking about finding judges that are ‘within the mainstream.’ That’s a political characterization. The court’s not supposed to be that. Mainstream to him is liberalism. Liberalism is not mainstream America. It is not. Here, look, Washington Post. I’ve got one more Schemer bite. Washington Post, Drew Westen. The new George Lakoff (rhymes with), is back again, writing another advice column in the Post on Sunday to the Democrats: ‘Dems, you gotta have heart.’ Lakoff’s replacement here issues another call for more passion, less facts from you Democrats. Page three of this piece, he says, ‘Voters disagreed with 75% of what Reagan had on issues, but they liked him and that’s why they elected him,’ and they can’t get themselves beyond that. They do not understand that Reagan was elected on issues of substance. It wasn’t marketing and packaging. Yeah, he was a likable guy and that helped, but you don’t win 49-state landslides on pure likability. You know, by the way, we’ve had passionate Hillary, and I don’t think that plays very well, that screaming and shouting out there. So the Democrats, the only reason that this column was written, is they can’t dare be honest about who they are because they aren’t mainstream. Liberalism isn’t mainstream. That’s why to come up with all this compassion and emotion. ‘You gotta have heart. You got appeal to people’s feelings. You can’t get caught up on the facts! Facts are too hard. Facts are too cold.’ Plus the facts go against the libs. All right, one more Schumer bite. Final portion of his remarks. This is the pièce de résistance.
SCHUMER: For the rest of this president’s term, and if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria, let me say this. We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. (smattering of applause) We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito. I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances. They must prove by actions, not words, that they are in the mainstream, rather than we have to approve that they are not. There’s no doubt we were hoodwinked.
RUSH: What does that say about you, that you were hoodwinked? You were outsmarted. These guys, both of them, ran intellectual rings around every one of those pompous windbag senators on that committee, Republican and Democrat members alike. That’s why they couldn’t vote ’em down. They ran rings around them. You got hoodwinked. You’re just pompous and arrogant. You don’t allow yourselves the understanding that a lot of people smarter than you that show up for these jobs, but now you’re going to shut down, shut down the whole confirmation process. This is libs. This is the Stalinism of the libs, just total control. They don’t get their way? Shut down the process.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to this last bite with Senator Schumer. He said on the next nominee, they’re not going to get hoodwinked. ‘The next nominee must prove by actions, not words, that they are in the mainstream.’ Now, tell me: how does a nominee sitting before this pompous bunch of windbags, demonstrate action that pleases them? First of all, it’s a flawed concept because they don’t know the cases that are going to come before them, so the senators make ’em up based on their political leanings and so forth. What’s the next nominee supposed to do? Demonstrate his actions by going up and kissing Senator Schemer’s rear end? What kind of action are we talking about here? You know, Schemer is worried about ‘precedent,’ all this precedent being overturned. As we’ve said many times here: a judge’s job is to follow the Constitution, not ‘precedent,’ unless the precedent follows the Constitution. If the precedent follows the Constitution, fine, if the precedent does it, then you over turn it. It’s what strict constructionists do. If you take this out to the local conclusion, if Schumer had his way, Dred Scott would still be the law of the land, Plessy Ferguson would still be the law of the land. Dred Scott upheld slavery. That was a precedent that we had to overturn. Well, for the purpose of this discussion, that’s accurate. Plessy-Ferguson upheld segregation. We would still have segregation if you can’t overturn precedent, if you can’t reverse precedent. Schumer’s the idiot here, the one being inconsistent, purely political.