New Gingrich is a stinky-face
Newt Gingrich this morning on the NBC Today Show told Katie Couric something along the lines of: Think about what the liberals are getting away with. They’re telling Americans that if you’re a practicing, faithful Roman Catholic, you can’t be on the Supreme Court. If you’re a practicing, faithful evangelical, you can’t be on the Supreme Court.
No, Newt, we’re saying that if you can’t distinguish between your faith and the US Constitution, you shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court. As you, Newt, well know because you are one smart cookie. You’ll just say anything if it spins right.
Katie Couric moved on to the next question. Jon Stewart would not have let him get away with it unchallenged. That’s why Jon Stewart is a better journalist than most of what goes by that name on TV.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
What you miss is that secular faith can be every bit as intolerant as religious faith.
But what Gingrich said on the ‘Today Show’ – not implied, but said straight out – is that liberals believe that people of faith should not be judges. That’s just ridiculous.
Couric is as much a joke as Stewart, so no argument on that score.
Your main point, however, is dead wrong. Notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution expressly forbids religious tests for office, and does not require a supermajority for confirmation, nominees like David Pryor have been denied up-or-down votes explicitly because of their faith and in the absence of any evidence whatsoever that they have any less capacity than other nominees to distinguish their personal views from established law.
Even most supporters of legal abortion concede, when they’re honest, that Roe v. Wade is Exhibit A when it comes to giving personal opinion the force of law. And whatever your position on the abortion issue itself, surely we all can agree that we do not need any more radical, divisive and unfounded judicial pronouncements like Roe. President Bush’s superb nominees, including those denied votes for political reasons, will interpret the Constitution and laws as written, not as hallucinated.
Not just abortion, but infanticide, was accepted by people of faith for centuries (e.g., the “foundling hospitals” of the 17- and 1800’s, which few foundlings survived), and abortion was accepted, advertised and perfectly legal in most of the United States until more or less the end of the 1800’s.
For that matter, “…interpret the Constitution and laws as written,” seems a perfectly circular construction: the written word must be deciphered, a glance at a dictionary shows how many ways a single word, even especially the most common ones, can be so interpreted, and this before the meaning of a word in combination with its neighbors is considered. It’s similar to the mind-boggling injunction on the first page of the law codes of some Napoleonic Code countries, that, “the laws herein shall not be interpreted.”
J.A., if that’s what happened it sounds like Pryor was treated unfairly.
As for what we “surely agree on,” um, nope. I count on the courts to be just when the populace wouldn’t always vote that way. I would like more “radical” and “divisive” decisions such as Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education.
There are a lot of important differences between Brown and Roe, not least the fact that Brown resulted from decades of deliberation, and equally important follows logically from the intent of the Reconstruction amendments on which it is based. Brown was a unanimous decision, was supported or at least accepted in large parts of the country from the start, and ceased to be controversial soon enough. Roe, on the other hand, is a dangerous overreach doomed to be seen forever as illegitimate. Nobody’s liberties are safe when judges have that much power.
I wonder, besides the abolition of civil marriage, what radical and divisive decisions specifically are you pining for at this point?
Marrit, while I do not agree with you I see your point. However, I think your solution is just as bad. As it stand, Bush will most like get to appoint several fairly conservative judges (who will make rulings of “conservative” VALUES, certainly conservative in their effect or influence!). The Supreme court should be divided amongst the many opinions of how the people should be governed, I have grave concerns that this divide will soon fall as evangelicals call for nominations that will at some point have to pass the republican senate.
Define “secular faith” please, somebody?
Is that a contradiction in terms or am I missing something? Is it some kind of a jab insult term for “scientists”? hehe!!! ;)
Not that I’m arguing the statement, because I think that anybody is capable of being intolerant. (Including groups of people undefined. hehe.)
Anyway, I agree with Weinberger & Kirsner, in that Newt’s statements are just silly.
Anyone who’s finished the 8th grade ought to know that “seperation of church & state” doesn’t mean it’s illegal to go to church.
A bigger question: why are we hearing from Newt Gingrich to begin with? The man hasn’t been in office for eight years since he resigned in disgrace. Now he doesn’t represent anyone but himself and yet he still never says anything particularly interesting or insightful. If we have to hear from right-wing blowhards, shouldn’t it at least be the ones with, you know, power?
I am not so worried about Nitwit as I am about britwit–me. Why can’t I iterate the Constitutional basis for an open society to my fellow (and associate) Americans? My guess is that people like me are of two opposing states of mind. On the one hand we believe the tripp generated by Madison Avenue and Beverly Hills drive (after all we are it). On the other hand it suits our pocket books that some American’s are dumber than rocks and will fight and die for democracy while we relax in our comfort zones of corduroy.
There’s an answer in there somewhere. [hey that rhymes]