Thy Kingdom Come!
Roberts Confirmed--Next Up?
Just watched the fairly anti-climactic but satisfying Senate vote of 78-22 in favor of Judge Roberts. Now we can only pray that he is as solid as many of his conservative supporters believe. Apropos of today's feast, I suppose it would quite appropriate to say the St. Michael prayer for the Supreme Court in the years to come: "Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio..."
Thy Kingdom Come!
Chief Justice John Marshall's Birthday
This Washington Times editorial (found at National Review Online) commemorates the 250th centenary of the birth of this man, who was Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835. One wonders what Justice Marshall (who at one point was vice-president of the American Bible Society) would think of much of his court's recent jurisprudence, and what he would think of what John Roberts has had to put up with to be his successor.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20050923-090549-5492r.htm
Thy Kingdom Come!
Korean Coincidence?
I was intrigued yesterday, after reading all about the recent agreement with North Korea on their supposed abandonment of their nuclear program, to walk over for noon mass and be reminded that it was the memorial of the Korean martyrs: Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang, and their companions!
I don't know what to make of this nuclear agreement, not being a very studious observer of the international scene. Those across the political spectrum have been jumping on it: to the Left, it shows what can be accomplished if we abandon the unilateralist war-mongering that got us into Iraq and stick to multilateral dialogue; to the Right, it shows how effective the example of regime change in Iraq has been for other "rogue nations". And there are plenty to point out that it is far from certain that North Korea is serious about this, in light of past history. The least we can do is ask the Korean martyrs to intercede for their homeland, still suffering today.
The Roberts Vote
Seeing John Roberts in the hearings last week was both reassuring and troubling for me. Reassuring, because he was so confident and calm throughout it all, and avoided saying anything so controversial that the Left could use it to demonize, filibuster, and otherwise "bork" him. Troubling, precisely because he didn't say anything like that, and thus left people like me wondering if he is really what we hoped we were getting.
The trouble is, Roberts in the hearings was at pains to show that he was not an "ideologue." And I really had hoped that he was an ideologue--in the sense of someone with a coherent judicial philosophy based on the Constitution as its framers intended it to be read, and hence including some reference to natural and divine law.
Roberts presented himself as a "modest judge", who would decide based on the law, not on policy preferences, and so far most social conservatives agree: it was judges who weren't really interested in applying the law as written that gave us most of the decisions, from Roe to Lawrence, that have undermined public morality in America. The question is, with the rule of law being the one thing that Judge Roberts seems really passionate about, how does he interpret the law?
Does he, for instance, hold a view of "substantive due process" that allows a right to privacy, including abortion, to be part of the Constitution, even though its framers certainly never intended it? On the one hand, Roberts studiously avoided saying how he would rule on Roe or similar "privacy" cases, which in itself is apparently sufficient for the pro-choice lobby to oppose him. On the other hand, he did seem to endorse the notion of substantive due process and to give some credence to the notion that the rights guaranteed in the Constitution should be construed according to the evolving conditions of society. Whether this means he would accept Roe's logic, we don't know; after all, Clarence Thomas also said he accepted some concept of a right to privacy. But it would be nice to have some assurance that Roberts will be a Thomas, not an O'Connor.
Even more troubling to me was the question of "stare decisis" (Latin for "stand by the things decided"). This is the doctrine of precedent, and was raised especially in reference to Roe. Why? Because Planned Parenthood v. Casey itself recognized that Roe was pretty flawed, but relied on stare decisis to affirm Roe: essentially, they said, too many people have made life decisions based on the availability of abortion, and changing it now would lead to chaos.
Roberts of course wouldn't say how he thought stare decisis applied to Roe, but in general he seemed altogether too willing to let himself, as a "modest judge" be bound by precedents set by judges who were anything but modest; he admitted that overturning precedent would require more than thinking the case was wrongly decided. How could this be? Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that if Roe is bad constitutional law, then it doesn't matter how many previous judicial activists agreed with it: it has to go, and consequences be--well, you get my drift.
Senator Specter, who questioned Roberts on this, referred to Casey's upholding of Roe as making it a "super-precedent", a legal term which did not exist before, to my knowledge. He even went so far as to say that since the Court had passed up 38 chances to overturn Roe, Roe could be considered a "super-duper precedent". You know things are getting ridiculous when U.S. Senators are using non-words like "super-duper". I can only hope that Roberts, when he sits as Chief Justice, as it seems he will, will not be afraid to show true respect for the Constitution, and show that no precedent is so "super-duper" as to justify the abortion holocaust of the last 30 years.
TKC
A Long Day of Questions
I spent more time than I'd care to admit today watching the Roberts hearings, though I still didn't even see half of them. (I think there is something about the abstract constitutional concepts discussed in such hearings that draws nerds like myself.) I stand in sincere admiration of anyone who can take nine hours of grilling and retain his poise like that.
Apparently I missed the most interesting exchange of all, between Roberts and Sen. Arlen Specter, the liberal Republican who chairs the judiciary committee. Sen. Specter started right off with Roe v. Wade, Casey, the right to privacy, and the principle of "stare decisis", which basically means upholding precedent even when it might be wrong. Roberts, to the surprise of some, said that he believes there is a constitutional right to privacy, and he expressed respect for the importance of precedent. However, when the question of how to apply either of those principles to a case such as Roe arose, Roberts politely said that he felt that would be too close to expressing an opinion on a matter that he might have to decide on the Court, which he felt was a boundary he shouldn't cross in these hearings.
That became Roberts' refrain throughout the day as Democratic Senator after Democratic Senator tried to pin him down to a view on various controversial topics. After Senators Leahy and Kennedy, it began to be apparent that this would be the pattern, and Senator Biden of Delaware, one of the more flamboyant members of the committee, tried to attack this approach, which Roberts claimed was that of prior nominees like Ginsburg. But it went on, and leaves many of us at the end of the day in admiration of Roberts' clear rhetorical ability and legal brilliance, but still curious about what to expect when and if he is the Chief Justice.
Thy Kingdom Come!
So it begins
I confess that I have been waiting a lot time for these judicial hearings. I don't mean on John Roberts in particular. For most of the time that I have had any political awareness, I have hoped and prayed for the appointment of conservative justices to the Court. However, the last time there was a real opportunity for this was when Clarence Thomas was appointed in 1991; the only two vacancies since then were filled by President Clinton. So this is essentially the first time in a decade and a half that this scene has unfolded, so I guess it is understandable that an immense amount of energy is pent up on both sides.
I made myself stick to only about the last hour of the coverage today; after all, it was just opening remarks by all the senators, each of them getting ten minutes, which added up to about three hours of fairly predictable pontificating from senators of either party. The three that I heard were actually fairly representative of the two camps that are entrenched on this: Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, a typical pro-abortion Catholic Senate Democrat (almost all of the leading Democrats on the judiciary committee are Catholics, ironically), followed by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, a vocal pro-life spokesman, and Senator Coburn of Oklahoma, a medical doctor who seemed equally conservative, though I know little about him.
Mr. Durbin's remarks were a fairly good precis of all that one can expect to hear from the opposition to Roberts: objecting to past writings of Roberts on everything from civil rights to church and state to the right to privacy. Durbin made it clear enough that he would expect to learn what Roberts believed about all these things, and concluded with an inquisitorial warning that was all the more menacing for being couched in the courteous terms required by the occasion: something to the effect that "if we find you resistant, or reluctant to answer, I am afraid the result might not be so positive."
Roberts' own words, after he was sworn in to tell the truth before the committee, showed that he was not a man easily intimidated in front of inquisitors, which isn't surprising considering he has argued thirty-something Supreme Court cases and won 25 of them. His rhetorical abilities were on full display as he delivered his five minutes or so of fairly substantive remarks without notes--in marked contrast to most of the Senators, who had basically read the text in front of them. One could tell that he was fairly nervous, but also that he was a man fully prepared for this situation.
After thanks to the President, the Senate, his family, Chief Justice Rehnquist, etc., he proceeded to speak just a little about what he sees his role as a judge to be. He used his thanks to the various people who had helped him as a smooth segue into his views on the humility that judges should have. He was at pains to emphasize a limited view of the judicial office that seeks above all to respect the rule of law. In a striking illustration of the fact that American politics cannot be understood without knowing the game of baseball, Roberts likened a judge to an umpire, and in a pointed critique of judicial activism, pointed out that no one goes to a ball-game to see the umpire. He promised to stick to "calling the balls and strikes" and not "to pitch or bat."
What, if anything, can be gleaned from such remarks? They would seem to be fairly standard stuff for a prospective judge, simply upholding good old-fashioned standards of judicial impartiality. Yet compared to the way Democrats such as Senator Durbin had led off, it was fairly clear that Roberts was at least implicitly demurring from their views on what the Court was about. Sen. Durbin finished off his questions asking if Roberts would continue to promote and expand freedom (favorably citing cases such as Griswold vs. Connecticut, which invented the right to privacy), or restrict it. Well, no one is going to proclaim himself against freedom, but conservatives have long recognized that the judicial office is not the place to try to push society in the desired direction, free or otherwise. The whole purpose of having a Constitution is that the freedoms of Americans aren't determined by the policy preferences of judges, and Roberts' words about being an umpire, not a player, showed that he understands that. The view of the Court put forward by Sen. Durbin and others is not one of the rule of law at all; it's the rule of the evolving societal standards most fashionable on the left.
Roberts spoke a little about the value of an "independent judiciary." This is a phrase that liberals tend to love; it was a judiciary a little too proud of it's independence that gave us things like Roe v. Wade. However, even these remarks were put in a fairly conservative context: Roberts mentioned how President Reagan used to tell him that it was precisely the lack of an independent judiciary which would adhere to the rule of law that made the Soviet Constitution, with its various stated freedoms, a dead letter.
Roberts' opening words, on the whole, seemed to have the same effect as his nomination: to express a commitment to a fundamentally conservative view of the judicial office, while somehow managing to avoid making a controversial statement that would utterly alienate the "moderates." It is unlikely that confrontation can be avoided in the next few days, but Mr. Roberts, top lawyer that he is, seems well-prepared (baseball, again!) to hit any curves the Senators might throw at him.
TKC
Free Hagia Sofia!
I was intrigued by the article linked below about recent demands that Turkey return the great church of Hagia Sofia (Holy Wisdom) to the Eastern Orthodox Church as a condition of joining the EU. The fact that this church, long considered the jewel of Christendom, spent 500 years as a mosque and is now a museum in a secular Muslim country is quite sad; just imagine if a few centuries from now, Italy was ruled by Muslims who used St. Peter's purely as a museum!
I hope that Pope Benedict will weigh in on this one; in his previous life as Ratzinger he was sometimes quite frank about the problems with Turkey being considered for EU membership, and to stick up for the Orthodox on this could be a great ecumenical opportunity.
http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/international_story.php?id=16571
Adveniat Regnum Tuum!
Thoughts on Pro-Life Legislation
I read with interest yesterday of the pro-life bill passed in special session by the Missouri State Senate on Thursday. The special session was called specifically to deal with this bill, which had earlier fallen casualty to battles between legislators and Governor Blunt over embryonic stem-cell research, which the governor unfortunately has continued to support. Under pressure from the pro-life movement, which was largely responsible for Blunt's election and which was quite disappointed with the failure of an ostensibly pro-life governor and legislature to pass a simple parental consent law, this session aimed to pass the bill, which had stalled earlier.
The bill most significantly aims to make it illegal for adults to transport minors out of the state to obtain abortions in violation of Missouri's parental consent laws. That specifically would refer to taking teenage girls to the so-called Hope Clinic in Granite City, Illinois, which attracts people from several states due to Illinois' lack of parental consent laws. A further provision requires abortion providers to have hospital privileges within thirty miles of where they practice, which would apparently shut down an abortion clinic near Springfield, MO.
With a supportive governor, there is little doubt this bill will pass. There is also little doubt it will meet challenges in court. This is above all thanks to the test which the Casey decision imposed regarding abortion restrictions: the state can make them as long they are simply regulating the practice but do not impose an "undue burden" on the right to have an abortion. Well, the argument will run, laws which forbid teens from going out of state when their parents won't allow an abortion clearly aim at the end result of making abortion impossible in some cases, which the courts will likely read as an "undue burden."
That is hard to argue against, because in fact it's true. Those of us in Missouri who support this bill are largely against abortion as a whole, and we as a state would probably have banned it long ago if it weren't for the Roe regime. Failing that, we will seek to make every restriction we possibly can on the practice, and if that means making it virtually unobtainable, so much the better.
Thinking about what such legislation as this means in practice shows very well both the strengths and the limitations of pro-life legislative efforts. Making out-of-state abortion impossible for minors whose parents won't consent means, in practice, that those girls cannot obtain an abortion legally. From the standpoint of the state's obligation to defend innocent life, that's just as it should be. And yet it's clear how far that leaves us from the culture of life we want. As Msgr. Philip Reilly says, prior to every physical abortion there is a spiritual abortion. The teenage mother frustrated in her attempt to get an abortion legally will end up bearing a child whom she wanted to be dead--a frightening thought. Now extend that across the board in a hypothetical post-Roe society. We constantly hear from the Left that if abortion is illegal, women will seek it out in back-alleys, etc. None of that, even if it were all true, is a good reason for leaving innocent life without legal protection. But we do need to consider that the end of legal abortion would not mean the end of the abortion debate in America: it would mean merely the igniting of passionate anger on the pro-abortion side even beyond anything we've seen yet.
Practically, how will we deal with the situation? Overnight, the women whom my friends and I see walking into Planned Parenthood, whom we try to pray for and counsel, would be subject to criminal prosecution. Would this be just? Yes, objectively speaking, and yet most pro-lifers would agree that we want only to see these women holding their children with love, not standing behind bars. Without a true change of hearts, all we will have is women frustrated at being punished by the state for what they think are their rights.
Which brings us to several things that are a must if the legal eradication of abortion is to have any effect. First, adoption and all kinds of help that can be given to pregnant women will have to become a high priority, both for the government and for all of us. So many of the women who are seeking abortion truly feel that it's the only reasonable choice. As a society, we must not simply say a firm "no" to that choice, but help them to give a resounding "yes" to life-affirming choices. If we can do this, then chances are most women will eventually be grateful that they were offered something better than legal abortion.
But behind all this is the toughest cultural problem of all: the fact that abortion stems from the sexual revolution and all that it entails, especially contraception. The pill promised what fallen humanity has always desired: unlimited sexual license without fear of consequences. Thanks to the contraceptive mentality, unrestrained sexual activity could finally be regarded by society at large as completely acceptable. And when sex-without-consequences became the common understanding, then it could only seem unjust and immoral to refuse women the "safety net" of legal abortion if something should go wrong. The fault isn't that of women alone; men can act just as irresponsible, even more so. Unfortunately, it is on the shoulders of women that the irresponsibility of modern sexual behavior comes home to roost: in a culture that seeks to free sexual behavior of any necessary connection with the procreation of children, women alone are left to try to resist the pressure to do away with the child itself. And when every other cultural influence tells them that they can do what they want with her bodies, it's not surprising that women will take it to this final extreme. To truly do away not only with the availability of abortion but with the demand for it will require a true culture of chastity to take root, which is willing to admit that sexual behavior belongs only within the marriage covenant, and that it expresses a commitment to the other and to new life that is truly lifelong. If we continue to shortchange sexual love through the contraceptive mentality, the temptation to shortchange innocent life will continue.
None of this should be taken to mean that we shouldn't seek to make abortion illegal ASAP. It is only to make us realize that this is a long-haul struggle which we can't rely on the government alone to win. When Roe v. Wade is overturned, as I'm confident it will be, our work for life and love will just have begun.
Adveniat Regnum Tuum!
Final Busch Stadium experience
Last night I had the privilege of attending a baseball game in what is to be the last Cardinals-Cubs series ever played in the old Busch Stadium. I was there with many other seminarians as part of the Serra Club's annual outing to the game. Usually in conjunction with that, there is some Catholic prelate throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. This time, it was our seminary rector, the ever-energetic Msgr. Ted Wojcicki, who I am told threw a good strike on the inside corner, although I didn't arrive at the park till a little later.
Going to a Cards-Cubs game is always fun; it is even more so with the seminary, because we usually have at least a few seminarians from out of town who are, in fact, Cubs fans. It is usually quite enjoyable to heckle them--although it was somewhat difficult last night due to the fact that the Cubs beat us soundly. They began with a two-run first inning, and with help from home runs by Derrek Lee and Corey Patterson, they eventually amassed five runs. The Cardinals, on the other hand, were once again stymied by an otherwise unremarkable left-hander. The Cubs' starter Glendon Rusch was 4-6 and had not been having a great season--and then he went out against us and threw six perfect innings before allowing his first hit of the night! The Cardinals eventually got two runs in the 8th, and then had two men on base with Jim Edmonds as the tying run at the plate--only to ground out on the first pitch. This left us Cardinal fans with little to boast of for the night; we did, however, have the consolation of looking at the fact that we led Chicago by 20 games in the standings and that the Cubs were once again, in the popular St. Louis acronym, "Completely Useless By September."
I confess it was a little difficult to get into the game, at first; being away from the avid Cardinal fan who is my younger sister, I hadn't heard too many games this summer. In recent weeks, our trip to Germany and most recently the disasters in the South had distracted me significantly from being fixated on baseball. The knowledge that so many of our compatriots are suffering in the ruins of New Orleans and Mississippi, or scattered to various corners of the nation without knowledge of where their family members are, put a significant damper on the enjoyment of the national pastime that can easily become life for Americans in the summer.
A less serious but still mournful note was struck for me by the fact that this was the last time I would probably ever be in Busch Stadium. For about the last twenty years, ever since I had any awareness of the outside world, the Cardinals have been a constant in my universe, and their home stadium has been an integral part of how I think of our city. To see a place with so much history to it, where the Cardinals had played in six World Series, where Mark McGwire had broken the home run record (however questionable it might now seem), where many of the more exciting moments of my childhood had occurred, knowing that it would be a heap of rubble in a few months made me somewhat melancholy.
Less than a stone's throw from the southern part of the current stadium, one can see the new one arising. It is always rather awesome to watch something that huge being built, and I can't deny it will exciting to attend a Cardinals game in a new venue next year. But the loss of the old stadium makes me feel, with regret, that we are going the way of all baseball teams: big new stadiums with no more seats but more expensive ticket prices, catering to the luxury box crowd and making it ever more difficult for the average fan. (At least we're keeping the same name, and won't have to suffer with something as crassly commercial as Petco, Bank One, or Minute Maid Park. Busch, while a corporate name, is at least the name of an individual.)
Perhaps I am just nostalgic, but I don't understand how one could bring himself to demolish something, such as Busch Stadium, which is so much a part of the Cardinals culture. It's not as if it has serious structural problems or is lacking in facilities; it is only forty years old, after all. I've always felt that places like Boston and Chicago have the right idea, sticking to their century-old parks with all their oddities. Such teams are ever more a rarity; we now hear that even Yankee Stadium is going to be replaced. I guess it just goes to show that for some people, baseball is a cultural icon of almost religious status; for others, it's a business like any other, where bigger, newer, and more expensive is better. And that's the way it's always been.
My sorrows at the loss of Busch Stadium are probably overblown, especially right now; at least our city is intact and not reduced like New Orleans to a primitive state. Baseball will go on, despite all the money problems, steroid problems, and loss of historic stadiums. I only hope that before they take it down, the old Busch Stadium can see one more World Championship for St. Louis.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Catching Up
I interrupt my increasingly belated reflections on World Youth Day to throw in my two cents regarding the chaos of the last week. When I heard on Monday morning about the oncoming hurricane, I can't say that I had any clue what we were in for. Hurricanes are, after all, a regular feature of the news in the summertime, although they certainly drew an unusual amount of attention last year, with about four hurricanes going through Florida in the course of about a month. Nonetheless, those of us in the hurricane-safe part of the country can sometimes become oblivious to the real terror and devastation that even a typical hurricane can cause--at least I know I do.
Then on Tuesday, after having seen in the paper that New Orleans had been spared by the storm, I was not sure what to make of it when my mother asked me shortly before noon if I had heard the news about New Orleans. Yes, I thought, I heard that it wasn't as bad as was feared. Au contraire. Only slowly, as I saw the images of the city filling up with water, did it begin to dawn on me that not only was this worse than we had thought that morning, it was worse than just about anything we had ever experienced, including September 11, 2001. Overnight, an entire U.S. city essentially no longer existed. And as so many people gathered at places like the Superdome, it never occurred to me that it would take so long to evacuate them, that thousands would remain trapped in the city while chaos broke loose. As I saw New Orleans sink into a primitive state, it became hard to believe that this was happening in America. Wholesale destructions of cities by floods, thousands of people starving and living in filth and in fear of their lives--these are things I associate with the third world, but would like to think we are beyond.
What is the upshot of it all? Of course, fingers of blame have pointed at the President all week; anyone who reads the NY Times editorial page for a while will quickly realize that President Bush is responsible for every bad thing that happens in America! Beyond the ridiculous claim that such hurricanes are increasing (they aren't) because of global warming which could have prevented by the Kyoto treaty, there are the more reasonable complaints about the cutting of funding for levee improvements, and the painfully obvious fact that the evacuation and relief efforts seem to have moven awfully slowly, at least compared to what we would have hoped for. I don't think the war is to be blamed; there are still plenty of National Guard troops around, once they are mobilized. And I don't think that the President deliberately dragged his feet on these efforts, despite the often-heard assertion that he didn't care because most of the victims were poor and black.
The fact is simply that no one, especially the state and local officials who are most responsible, seems to have adequately anticipated this, and so once it happened, it quickly got unmanageable. After all, it takes a few days to get units of troops mobilized, and that was plenty of time for the situation in a stranded city to become hellish, which in turn led to such problems as the thugs ruling the streets firing on the troops coming to the rescue. Had all of the relief efforts been in place before the storm hit, the situation could perhaps have quickly been stabilized, but here, as with September 11, no one seriously considered until afterwards what the worst case scenario could be--and here we're dealing with a lot more people over a much broader area than Sept. 11.
Of course, I can't help wondering how we are to understand all this, theologically. People will generally decry as fundamentalist any suggestion that disasters are punishments for sin, or any such thing, and yet Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is clear that events like the Flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the destruction of Jerusalem (both by Babylon and Rome) are indeed part of God's plan, and are often his way of calling us back from our sins. I don't in any way mean to suggest that the victims of Katrina are all personally guilty, or that we shouldn't do all we can to help them; indeed, Abraham begged for Sodom to be spared even after God announced his intent to destroy it, and Our Lord still wept over the doomed city where he would be crucified. Our brothers and sisters are in need, and it shouldn't matter to us, sinners that we are, what they might have done to deserve it: as Jesus said of those killed by various disasters in his time, "you will all come to the same end unless you repent."
Nonetheless, I don't think we can afford to ignore the message that these disasters send to us who are so comfortable living in a land where we can usually take proserity, and law and order, for granted. There is nothing inherently indestructibe about society in a great American city, and that is a salutary thing to remember. All of us will one day stand before God without all the material comforts we have come to depend on, and events like this should at least remind us of the peril of placing our hope in material things. As a nation, we would do well to be reminded of the fact that our prosperity is fragile, and that while we should take steps to protect ourselves against such catastrophes as this, we would be fools as a society if we didn't learn to seek first God's kingdom, knowing that only it will last when this world has vanished. And many are right to point out that it reflects poorly on us indeed that the poorest of our citizens were the ones who were generally left in the city to bear the brunt of this. Scripture and the Church's tradition are pretty clear that God himself is on the side of the poor, and we had best be so too, at least to the point of being able to deliver them from a city that is falling apart. Certainly no one wanted to leave them stranded this time, but there is no excuse if federal, state and local governments, who must plan for such things, aren't ready next time. We realize now that it can happen to us, after all.
And then the Court, again
"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,/ but in battalions." (Hamlet, Act IV, ii)
Shakespeare's words must have been running through the President's mind this past weekend. Having Roberts about to go up for hearings would be enough to worry about, usually. Add to that worries about the Iraqi constitution, the war, etc. Then add Katrina and the unjustified perception that the President is somehow personally responsible for all the suffering we're seeing. Then, out of the blue, when most of us had almost forgotten about the Supreme Court, Justice Rehnquist up and dies. "Stop the world, I want to get off," the poor man must be thinking.
It sounds terribly cynical and partisan to worry about what the hurricane situation will do to the president's political standing. Nonetheless, I do worry about it, because some of the tasks he has yet to accomplish are worthy ones, and it would be a shame if outrage over Katrina were allowed to thwart his efforts. I don't care much about overhauling social security, much less about the estate tax, which is unlikely to ever affect me much, anyway, but filling court vacancies is a task which the President must be allowed to get right, and yet we are already hearing the suggestions that because of Katrina, Bush should compromise and choose a liberal or moderate justice.
The President is smarter than that; he's generally always done what he thought right whether the polls liked it or not; it is such men who tend to leave a lasting impact on the country, which is just what Bush has the chance to do now. Today we heard that John Roberts, his first S.C. nominee, would be nominated as Chief Justice, a position he will likely have till I am in my '50s, when even Hurricane Katrina will be a distant memory. I have every confidence that the next nominee will be just as conservative, and who knows, Bush may yet get the chance to appoint a full third of the Court, though I suspect Justice Stevens would like to hang on in hopes of a Democratic president in '08.
I'm afraid I, like many Americans, have spent far too much time watching, talking, and yes, blogging in the last few days, and not nearly enough time working and praying. Let us pray hard for our nation, that we may cooperate wtih the plans of God, which are truly plans for welfare and not for woe, if only we turn to him.
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