Damn this is scary!

Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution
The courts are poised for a takeover by the judicial left
By STEVEN G. CALABRESI
In the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal

Consider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.

Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.

The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.

The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts.
Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.

On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.

These numbers ought to raise serious concern because of Mr. Obama's extreme left-wing views about the role of judges. He believes -- and he is quite open about this -- that judges ought to decide cases in light of the empathy they ought to feel for the little guy in any lawsuit.

Do you like the idea of having the courts being controlled by the left? Especially when the House, Senate and even the White House may also be leaning that way? Where’s the checks and balances then?

Mr. Calabresi speaks of possible future:

If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a
federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants; ruinous shareholder suits against corporate officers and directors; and approval of huge punitive damage awards, like those imposed against tobacco companies, against many legitimate businesses such as those selling fattening food.

Sounds impossible until you remember, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

Many of Roosevelt’s early plans met with resistance from the Supreme Court. That’s why he tried to increase its size so he could stack the votes in his favor.

The big government growth under Johnson spawned many government programs that just won’t go away, destroyed the fabric of the poor family in much of the country, and which have created an sink hole from which many poor either cannot escape or do not want to escape.

Jimmy Carter? His intrusive actions in the world of business (price controls, etc.) created double digit inflation that saw the workers lose value of their income while they were ostensively getting raises in their paycheck.