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The 7% Supreme Court Justice. President Biden promised that he would pick his VP candidate from a pool of only black women. From that pool, representing 7% of the United States, he chose Kamala Harris. The same thinking that led to Ms. Harris being the Vice President of the United States is going to give us the next lifetime appointee Justice on the Supreme Court. With the 2020 nomination slipping through his grasp after a series of primary defeats, Biden turned to the powerful US Representative, Jim Clyburn, D-SC and the Majority Whip in the House to make a deal; Biden would appoint the black female Justice Clyburn wanted in exchange for Clyburn’s support. The rest is political backroom history.
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Continuing:
The 7% Supreme Court Justice. In the tradition of former Mayor and Chicago political boss, Richard J. Daley, President Biden is paying off a political debt by fulfilling his promise to appoint a black female to the Supreme Court, the highest count in the United States. Richard J. Daley held political office in Illinois for 38 years, including 24 years as the Mayor of Chicago. His son, Richard M. Daley, held office in Illinois for 39 years, including 22 as the Mayor of Chicago. You don’t create a dynasty like that without receiving and paying off many and large political debts.
That’s exactly what then candidate Biden set in motion when he rescued his failing presidential candidacy by promising the powerful Jim Clyburn that he would nominate a black female to the SCOTUS in exchange for Clyburn’s campaign-rescuing political support. Going into the SC primary Biden was trailing Bernie Sanders badly–many pundits had written him off. After making the deal, Clyburn delivered SC to Biden, and the rest is political dealmaking history. More specifically Clyburn wanted US District Judge J. Michelle Childs on the Court. Guess who is on President Biden’s short list for the nomination.
Far beyond just the stench of a deal promising a nomination to SCOTUS in exchange for turning around a failing presidential campaign, is just how deeply wrong Biden is in citing race and gender as his initial and fundamental criteria. Why on earth would the President restrict the pool of candidates to the 7% of the population that is both black and female? Is that how you get the best qualified candidate? No, but that is not what Biden is looking for. He is paying off a political debt while appealing to blacks on the basis of race and not on the basis of making their lives better economically or in any real way. All while pandering to the Affirmative Action set. You know, the people who believe that two evils can make a right. What really happens is that when you create the second evil, it does not erase the first–it simply perpetuates it.
Affirmative Action, and this is by definition an affirmative Action nomination, substitutes “qualified” for “best qualified.” It must make that substitution, or Affirmative Action would be completely impossible for anyone to defend. Listen carefully to those supporting this nomination and other Affirmative Action policies; they always emphasize things like how many qualified candidates that their process surfaces. How many times have we heard, and will keep hearing, “Don’t tell me that you can’t find black women who are qualified to be Supreme Court Justices.”
If you are hiring for Wendy’s where the job is repetitive and applicants are scarce, merely qualified is a reasonable criterion. In most cases, we need to be looking for the best qualified candidate. Here is a short, representative list where merely qualified does not cut it, and best qualified must be the standard:
1. Sport, from highschool to the pros.
2. Leaders in business or government.
3. Engineers designing aircraft or spacecraft.
4. Lawyers defending the innocent.
5. Prosecutors trying the guilty.
6. Cops in tense situations.
7. Surgeons in any operation that is not completely routine.
8. Doctors when you need key advice.
9. Uber drivers in bad weather.
10. EMTs in life-and-death situations.
11. Judges, in anything other than traffic court.
12. Supreme Court Justices.
I am sure that you have some additions. Please leave them in the comments.
Here is a bit of history adding hypocrisy to the wrongness of what Biden is promising with this nomination. Biden voted against Clarence Thomas, only the second black to serve on the Supreme Court. In addition, Biden threatened a filibuster, yes a filibuster, to defeat the nomination of an eminently well qualified candidate for Justice, Janice Rogers Brown, both black and female. “Janice Rogers Brown (born May 11, 1949) is an American jurist. She served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2005 to 2017 and before that she was an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court from 1996 to 2005.”
“During the summer of 2005, a month into Brown’s tenure in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, she was considered as a possible nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court, but Samuel Alito was chosen instead. If chosen, Brown would have been the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. Senator Joe Biden stated that if Bush chose Brown to replace O’Connor, the Democrats would filibuster her nomination, stating that circuit court judges, unlike Supreme Court Justices, ‘don’t get to make new law.’ ” Oh, the irony.
It gets worse. Let’s hear from Biden’s former White House Partner, then in the Senate. Freshman Senator Barack Obama strongly opposed Judge Brown’s nomination in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, characterizing her judicial activism as “social darwinism.” Yet we are told that after 250 years, it is time for a black woman.
Biden is determined to nominate a Justice representing 7% of the population. And this tiny percentage is not made up of applicable categories, like law clerks, successful constitutional lawyers, appellate judges, etc. Just race and gender. Let’s hear directly from the President. “Our process is going to be rigorous. I will select a nominee worthy of Justice Breyer’s legacy of excellence and decency.” At most, his process will yield the best candidate from less than 1/14 of the population.
What would be the next logical step after this Affirmative Action nomination? If the attempt is to make the SCOTUS “look like America”, we’d need this slot to be reserved for black females, another for black males, a slot each for Jews and Christians, other males of color, other females of color. Gays, straights, and if no one fussses, a slot for white males. Add transgenders, and the list could go on and on. We’d need to pack the court to about the size of an antifa street protest. And both groups would look foolish.
We need the best candidate from the pool of all 330M of us. We need a jurist with a deep and abiding respect for the Constitution, and a commitment to interpreting the law, not writing new law. This is a judicial appointment, not an appointment to be a political party boss, or an opportunity to express personal opinions from the bench. And unlike opinion polls and other research, social gatherings or the fair and broad application of laws and social benefits, diversity for the sake of diversity has no place here. I will invite the late Justice Antonin Scalia to underscore this point. “The judge who always likes the results he reaches is a bad judge.” This was Antonin Scalia telling us in a clear and unambiguous way that a Judge (or Justice) must apply the law, the Constitution, and that his personal beliefs have no place in his decisions.
We all have the personal responsibility to want and work for a country where merit and equal opportunity, supported by justice and tempered by mercy, are the mainstays, a core part of our guiding principles and commitment. Speaking of personal responsibility, this principle does not stand alone; the two main and interdependent principles at Revolution 2.0 are:
1. Personal Responsibility; take it, teach it and,
2. Be Your Brother’s Keeper. The answer to the biblical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is a ringing, unequivocal “Yes.” There is no other answer.
Where do you stand? What are you going to do? Remember, it does not matter where you stand if you don’t do anything. You can start by subscribing to these episodes, and encouraging others to subscribe with you.
As always, whatever you do, do it in love. Without love, anything we do is empty. 1 Corinthians 16:1.
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This is Will Luden. We’ll talk again soon.
