Reid v. Angle, Part 5

10/25/10

Okay the next question and it goes to Senator Reid and this has to do with the Supreme Court.


One of the most important duties given to a U.S. Senator by the Constitution is the approval of an individual to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we can get a sense on how you would vote, name a current or former Supreme Court Justice you admire, and why, and name a current or former Supreme Court justice who should never have been approved by the Senate.

I'm going to pick a little at a small bone here - the job of the Senate is to give ''advice and consent'' which isn't the same as ''approve''.

Reid:

This may surprise everyone, and I got a little criticism for doing this, I don't agree with Scalia's opinions lots of times, but he is a masterful, masterful mind. He does good things. So Scalia, he has done a job - I don't agree with his opinions, but he's really an example to anyone who appreciates the law.

Whizzer White - I liked him because of his opinions but also because he was an all-American football player.

Reid used the rest of his time to return to the issue of health care.

In a sense, Reid is making the same point I made above - that it's not the job of the Senate to agree with the judicial philosophy or the decisions made by Supreme Court appointees but to ensure that they are qualified to hold the position. Sometimes that means supporting the appointment of someone you do not approve of. His example of Scalia is a good one - as a liberal I rarely find myself on the same side as Justice Scalia, but he is clearly qualified to do the job. It's also another place where Senator Reid has hitched himself to a popular conservative. I'm far less impressed with Reid's criteria for liking Byron White, and I'm disappointed that he declined to name a judge he felt should have been passed over.

Angle:

The Supreme Court.. I admire Clarence Thomas because he understands his, uh, constitutional boundaries as a judge in the Supreme Court, and that's what we need. We need justices that will sit on the Supreme Court and do their duty constitutionally, not legislate from the bench.

I would not have confirmed Elena Kagan or Sonia Sotomayor, and that reason is because neither one of them understand the Constitution and have said that they would vote against things like our Second Amendment rights. Those are things that are dear to us as Americans. We know that our founding fathers wanted Supreme Court judges who would stand up for our Constitution - a Constitution that was created for we the people to be free.

Angle gets points for actually answering the question. I think it's a gross mischaracterization to say that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor don't understand the Constitution, however. If constitutional interpretation were black and white, we wouldn't need a Supreme Court. Different people will interpret the language and the intent differently, and if Supreme Court nominees are rejected for their judicial philosophies instead of their fitness for office, the judiciary ceases to be an independent institution.

Reid:

I think we should stop running down the Supreme Court. I don't agree with all the opinions. Take for example Gore vs. Bush. That was an opinion I disagreed with, 5-to-4 opinion, that had the hanging chad and all that stuff. But I believe in our country, I believe in our Constitution which I have in my pocket here.

That decision said a lot. Even though I disagreed with the opinion, when they ruled, immediately George Bush became my president. There were no windows broken , no riots, that's what our country's all about, our rule of law - and we should leave the Supreme Court alone and pick the best lawyers we can find to go into court.

With all of the contentious decision handed down in recent years, I thought at first that this was a strange one for Reid to bring up. Having thought about it, I think Reid was actually nodding toward a Sharron Angle quote about the second amendment in which she implied that armed revolution may be the solution to America's problems and another where she suggested that if she doesn't win at the ballot box, there might be an armed revolt.

Okay, we're gonna talk about Don't Ask, Don't Tell - and you get the first question Mrs. Angle.

A federal judge's order to halt enforcement of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was hailed by gay activists as a landmark ruling in the struggle to expand their rights. Don't you think it's time to end discrimination of gays and lesbians in our military, first question? Second question: how do you feel about such Republicans as Dick Cheney, and Laura Bush, coming out in favor gay rights?

Angle:

The, um, policies within the military, especially this one, are under review. Right now - and we should be waiting for the review of our military to make those decisions, not jumping ahead and making those decisions as Senator Reid tried to do when he put that provision in the defense bill. We, here in Nevada have been very careful to define the marriage as between a man and a woman. Through two general elections, over 70 percent of our population has voted to, uh, define marriage as between a man and a woman. I support what Nevada has done, and I will represent our constituents on that basis.

The question was about DADT, not about gay marriage, and the half second she spent answering that question was disingenuous. The amendment to the defense bill offered by Senate Democrats was contingent on the military review of DADT currently under way.

Reid:

Mitch, I respectfully suggest to my opponent that she simply doesn't understand what went on in Washington. The bill that came up to do away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell said that it could only be done away with if the Secretary of Defense signed off on it, and the President of the United States and both of them certified that it would not hurt our defense. And they could only do that after the report was issued by the Pentagon as to whether or not it was good for the military. So it was the right thing to do.

The legislation on the Senator floor didn't say we're going to get rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it said that a Republican Secretary of Defense, appointed by President Bush, along with President Obama, would have to certify that it would do no harm to our troops only after the report by the Pentagon came down.

Although Reid rebutted Angle's attack, he didn't say what liberal activists would have liked to have heard - Don't ask, don't tell is discriminatory and should be abolished.

That concludes our look at the debate between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle. The full transcript of the debate, which includes several more questions on issues ranging from Yucca Mountain to the Bush tax cuts, can be found here.

As a resident of Las Vegas, I can tell you that we are absolutely inundated with political advertising right now. In addition to the massive ad war being fought on TV, radio and the internet, I've been visited four times in the last two weeks by get out the vote teams. It seems unlikely that a debate that wasn't widely watched will have much impact at this point on this campaign, so the question of who won or lost the debate is mostly moot. That said, I think Sharron Angle did a better job of articulating her position than Senator Reid and Senator Reid was ineffective at painting her as being too far out of the mainstream to govern.