Why does congress have hearings for people who are paraded through their judiciary committee- noise for examination as to their qualifications. Quality of what? Those jobs, for example the Supreme Court Justices, certainly only require little more than a reasonably educated person. And the people examining these people seemingly requires virtually no intelligence at all. It is a monstrous show with lights, cameras, bureaucratic senators and something called Democrats who are at best– no as supreme– a gang of silly high school backsliders. The Republicans are simply there to demonstrate that no hearings matter. They believe that if they can find the right legal scholar the original constitution with its original intent will live in the hearts of all men (and women, of course). The right judge will be righteous. The absence of knowledge by all present is astounding.
The constitution is only a few thousand words (the Ten Commandments far fewer). But the show goes on searching for expertise. We are led to believe that only a select few are capable of: understanding, fawning, extolling and of course interpreting this greatest of all documents—the Constitution. The very one that the wiser Anti-Federalists Papers (relegated to obscurity) objected to. And, in fact, the very convention, where it was to be drawn up (in Philadelphia) and passed under less than the unanimous consent required by agreement (under The Articles of Confederation), having been rejected by Patrick Henry because: “I smell a rat.”
Sadly, for a variety of reasons, the more national (rather than federal) concept, the Federalist Papers and their authors, gave us what we have: a government with checks and balances on itself and not checked by the people. At least that has been the outcome, absolutely, starting with the 14th Amendment (forged as a result of a bloodletting erroneously called a civil war), though only struggling before.
Ostensible “legal scholars” whose opinions are sought as to whom the president might consider as a justice have no more understanding of the Constitution than the prominent gems of the legal profession who are finally selected to sit on the court of final (supposedly federal) appeal.
In any event, these “scholars” interviewed by the committee indicate less than an average education when interviewed, and perhaps less so for the interviewer. Though often both sides are referred to as the “best and brightest.”
Senator Sasse, a Republican, who supposedly has a PhD in history, on questioning Judge Brett Kavanaugh as nominee for a seat on The “highest court” in the land tried to revive the old faux- saw about George Washington and the people’s desire to make him a king (the story is myth but so is most of the historical- political blather these days—Rush Limbaugh history). Judge Kavanaugh spun away from Sasse’s point (without contradicting the king story—the assumption would be he didn’t know) and dove into his own lack of historical foundation on something of a separate issue.
Judge Kavanaugh claimed every “significant” war has had congressional authorization. He hopped and skipped through a few wars that supposedly had “authorization” (mere authorization is not a Constitutional standard-by the way, Judge): The war of 1812, the 20th and 21th century Mideast wars –he did mention the Korean War (at least he did not forget it) but skipped its illegal commencement as well as The War Between the States, aka The war to prevent Southern Secession (naturally no one would ask him about this little constitutional bugaboo that left 600,000 dead—Lincoln, the god, cannot be demeaned) and of course the corporate Banana Wars that two time Medal of Honor awardee, General Smedley Butler, mightily complained about and wrote a book about in stark opposition.
I don’t believe Judge Kavanaugh specified what an insignificant war was. And Senator Sasse offered no help with his PhD boatload of knowledge. Though he did appreciate being called a “nerd,” he said.
But then Judge Kavanaugh was being quizzed on his abilities as a legal scholar not as a student of basic history. He stumbled with the war business but then most “scholars” do so whether legal, historical or of any of the broadly accepted disciplines that such scholars as Patrick Henry might have studied.
The good judge of course was being questioned on his qualifications as a potential judge for a seat on (a generic quote by many) the “highest court in the land.” This is rubbish, of course, as the supreme court is actually the lowest court in the land –wherever this land is. It is first, simply an appellate court therefore it doesn’t review any facts only those of law. Secondly it hears relatively few cases. It gets the highest court… label due to the would-be Blackstone buffoons not understanding the meaning of appellate courts nor the federal system in the first place.
This stumbling block is a result of Marbury vs Madison. The bottom line was that William Marbury took his case directly to the SC in opposition to James Madison (Secretary of State at the time) who refused Marbury the credentials that former President John Adams had issued as an appointment prior to Adams’s leaving office as president. The SC ruled that they were in fact an appellate court and Marbury had no standing in their court, in any event, in spite of The Judiciary Act of 1798. The important concept taken from whole cloth was that the SC became the final word in law that ever came out of the newly founded federal (though through Hamilton et. al. it was headed to nationalization) constitution. This logic has befuddled true federalists ever since.
If the law is so complex, erudite and perfected in understanding by only a limited few, why did it ever allow for juries to be selected from the basic flotsam of humanity (and that would be, constitutionally, an impartial jury not a peerage one).
Jurors spend most of their time working, paying taxes and caring for their families (and someone else’s after their taxes are rifled from them).
What must they think when suddenly they are called for jury duty, and placed (for 10 or 20 dollars a day) before “legal scholars” who are paid a few hundred dollars an hour and judges who are the “finest legal minds?” That after all these jurors’ groveling in court before their betters, even then their misapplication of the law as impartial souls is brought to some other, or even the “highest court in the land.” Only then is the world told of our noble judicial check that gives balance to the greatest bureaucratic government in the world. The people be damned. The jurors are just window dressing. The government governs itself. But Senator Sasse and Judge Kavanaugh certainly know about kings and wars.
Hours and hours and dollars and dollars are spent on politicians preening while interviewing the concomitant apolitical judges required by the Constitution, and neither the judge nor the politician are historically enlightened. Even worse, the interviewers are even less knowledgeable not to mention their impolitic and juvenile interrogations. And the hoax goes on and on.
And Lois Learner gets a stay-out-of-jail pension without “the best and brightest” saying a damn thing!
