It was kind of a surreal morning. I'd managed to fall asleep at around 4:30 am or so, and damned if I didn't wake up to the old windbag, John McCain trying to drum up support by becoming a constitutional professor. So I'm listening on McCain going over the basics. Three branches? Check. Checks and balances? Check. He then starts talking about how smart the framers were and how the few times checks and balances went out of balances between branches there have been disastrous without naming any specific instances at first. Then he messes up. I hear the sentence, "and the purpose of the Supreme Court is to apply the law. I wasn't yawning, but my mouth was wide open after hearing this upon waking. McCain is pretty close on the job of the supreme court. I guess you have to give McCain a little slack as he's not a lawyer like most other lawmakers are. And you can't expect him to remember his U.S. history class circa 1952 or so, but if the sole purpose of the United States Supreme Court was to simply apply the law, we could install a computer and be done with it. If that's too extreme we could pay a number of people, hand them a copy of the Constituion and give them each a notepad with a bunch of small slips with a box for "In the Constitution" and "Not in the Constitution". John McCain's crucial and I believe deliberate attempt to misstate the purpose of the judicial branch to appear more macho and conservative so he appeals more to those people that want stuff like abortion to be illegal and blame a wacky, overly-liberal judiciary for the situation. Truth is, the judicial branch interprets the Constitution. It is a check on the powers of the legislature to enact laws that run afoul of the Constitution, maybe not in a strict construction reading of the document, but go against the spirit/intent of the document and documents written by some of the framers around the same time like the declaration of independence, yada yada. I'd hope the framers would be proud that their sentiment about desiring a more perfect union may be what prompted the courts to strike down as unconstitutional laws that discriminates against gender and race. Just because the justices strike down a law doesn't mean they're making law from the bench, it mostly means that the legislature needs to write their laws with better wording and without so many darn, probably intentional, loopholes.
This speech was grandstanding for extreme right wingers and evangelicals that have wanted their own judicial activism, just in the opposite direction, for years. Watch out ladies, the husband, boyfriend, random stranger that impregnates you may end up owning half your womb. Alright that was extreme hyperbole, but it wasn't too far off from the crazy constitutional class McCain held this morning.
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