“I Would Argue That More People Would Support My Catholic Faith Than His Marxist Beliefs”

The appropriate response to the left's disdain for the presence of people of strong faith in the public square.

More here.


UPDATE
Patrick Archbold has more at National Catholic Register with "The Catholic Or The Commie?".

Bigot Attorney Maligns Catholic Judge

Bill Donohue is on the case:

March 3, 2010

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is filing a formal complaint today with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Committee regarding the anti-Catholic comments made by defense attorney Henry Scharg; it is also pursuing other avenues of redress.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why:

In a Wayne County Circuit Court trial concerning a woman charged with smothering her newborn daughter to death, her attorney, Henry Scharg, has sought repeatedly to malign trial judge Dan Ryan, accusing him of allowing his Catholic religion to color his judgment in the case. Not only has Scharg called into question Ryan’s affiliation with Ave Maria Law School, he has sought to remove the judge from the case.

What happened on March 1, however, was much worse. Scharg was angered over the fact that Ryan was taking vacation time to teach at Ave Maria on Mondays (the fact that Ryan rearranged his Monday schedule this past week to accommodate Scharg undercuts his complaint). In any event, on p. 10 of the transcript from Monday’s hearing, Scharg is quoted as saying, “This is the equivalent to an African-American man being on trial and the judge taking Mondays off to attend Klan meetings.”

Scharg has no business representing anyone. To compare an accredited Catholic law school to a racist terrorist organization is more than despicable—it constitutes rank anti-Catholic bigotry. Indeed, this remark is so egregious as to warrant severe punitive sanctions, if not disbarment. We will do what we can to see that justice is done.

Contact Executive Court Administrator Ronald R. Ruffin: Ronald.Ruffin@3rdcc.org

My Comments:
The only person resembling a Klan member in this story is the anti-Catholic bigot attorney who will be fortunate if he isn't slapped with contempt of court and a review by an ethics panel.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time we've seen an attorney argue for a judge's recusal on the basis of the judge's adherence to the Catholic Faith. In fact, this blog has, over the years, documented numerous instances of know-nothing bigots and pro-abort/same-sex marriage zealots calling into question a judge's Catholic faith as a disqualifying factor for sitting on the bench (see the links below from previous Pro Ecclesia posts).

(Hat tip: PewSitter.com)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Supreme Court Justices, Religion, & Anti-Catholicism

Attorney Seeks Judge's Recusal for Being Catholic

Partial-Birth Bigotry: The Know-Nothing Left Blames the Latest Abortion Ruling on Catholicism

Chuck Colson: "The New Anti-Catholic Bigotry"

And Finally ... The New York Times Weighs In

More Supreme Anti-Catholic Bigotry

Church Defenders Take On Anti-Catholic Cartoonist

And the Philadelphia Enquirer [sic] Joins In (With an Anti-Catholic Cartoon)

In Case You Missed It ...

How Long ...

William Pryor Says Faith Helps His Role as Judge

You Go, Nino!

Slate: The Political Advantages Of Catholic Justices

Fidelis Warns Senators on Questioning of Roberts on Religion

Religious Tests - Where Some Dems Want To Go, But Shouldn't

No Religious Test

Is Judge Roberts a "Serious Catholic"?

Christopher Hitchens' Anti-Catholic Screed: "Quit Tiptoeing Around John Roberts' Faith"

New York Post: "Roberts Critics' Agenda of Hate"

Wall Street Journal: "Roberts and Rome"

Skirmish Over a Query About Roberts's Faith

Fidelis on Roberts Nomination: “Hearings Are Ripe For Anti-Religious Bigotry”

John G. Roberts: Some Interesting Facts

Charles Krauthammer on the "Schumer Doctrine"

Up or Down - Religion, Filibusters, & Judges

So, Martha, From What Other Jobs Should Faithful Catholics Be Excluded?

(Hat tip: The American Catholic)

Martha Coakley, the Democrat candidate to fill the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts left vacant by the death of Teddy Kennedy, says that faithful Catholics shouldn't work in hospital emergency rooms:

Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.

Martha Coakley: No we have a seperation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: (…stammering) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.

My Comments:
Once again, we see that famed overt Democrat hostility to religion, especially religion as it is practiced by those who take their faith seriously.

So, then, from what OTHER professional fields and occupations should faithful Catholics be excluded (apart from the obvious ones from which they should exclude themselves, such as pole dancer, hit man, abortionist, etc.)?

We know Chuck Shumer (and others) would include judge among those professions, especially the job of U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

USAToday: Bush's Conservative Legacy Will Be Federal Judiciary

The one area where George W. Bush has lived up to conservative expectations has been in his judicial nominations. USAToday writes:

WASHINGTON — Within weeks of George W. Bush's inauguration, he revealed a systematic, aggressive and tightly controlled approach to making lifetime appointments to the federal bench.

The new president ejected the American Bar Association from the screening process, ending its half-century role of reviewing candidates' credentials before a nomination. Bush turned to lawyers who had been on Ronald Reagan's judicial selection team to help seek out prominent conservative thinkers. All indications were that Bush was trying to emulate Reagan, whose conservative mark on the bench has been deep and enduring.

Now, as Bush enters the last months of his presidency, he has come close to accomplishing his goal. He is likely to end up with fewer total judicial appointments than this two-term predecessors, Reagan (1981-89) and Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Yet Bush has appointed conservatives to lifetime posts with the potential to affect the law in America for decades.

"I think that what he has done on judges is his major triumph," says political science professor Sheldon Goldman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has been tracking judges since the 1960s. "In almost every other area, domestic policy and foreign policy, there have been failures. But with judges, it's a major success story."

***
"President Bush might not get the total number of appointees that Reagan got," says Barbara Perry, a political science professor at Sweet Briar College, "but in a way he one-ups Reagan with Roberts, who could serve as chief justice longer than Rehnquist, and with Alito, who is much more conservative than O'Connor."

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Ignoring the Miers imbroglio, which Bush corrected with one of the finest Supreme Court appointments of my lifetime, the one Bush failure that I can think of with respect to the federal judiciary is that we've basically lost the 4th Circuit, which has traditionally been one of the more conservative federal appeals courts in the nation.

That failure is part-and-parcel with the matter of failing to get votes for nominees that the Democrats successfully bottled up for years in committee procedural nonsense. There are numerous vacancies throughout all the federal circuits and in numerous district courts just waiting for the next President to make his or her mark on the judiciary - not because Bush has failed to nominate people to fill those vacancies, but because of the Democrat Party's concerted efforts to deny such nominees an up-or-down vote and the failure of their Republican counterparts in the Senate to exercise their power to move the nominations forward.

I hope Republicans will follow suit with delay and deny tactics of their own should we be cursed with a President Moloch from among the Democrat contenders. But I won't hold my breath.


UPDATE
Case-in-point: Patrick Leahy’s continued obstruction of President Bush’s judicial appointments

(Hat tip: Feddie)

Rick Garnett: "Our Real National Pastime - Religion & Politics"

(Hat tip: Mirror of Justice)

Notre Dame Law Professor Rick Garnett writes in USAToday about our "Real National Pastime":

The relationship between religion and politics has evolved over the past 25 years, but there’s still nothing un-American about believers engaging the political process.

By Richard W. Garnett

With all due respect to baseball, America's real national pastime is, and has long been, arguing about the place of religion in politics. In the USA, religious faith has always played a role in shaping policy and inspiring citizens, and those same citizens have always wondered, and sometimes worried, about this influence.

From the outset, we have believed that church and state are and should be distinct and also have known that faith and public policy are not and cannot be entirely separate. Finding and maintaining the right balance — avoiding both a reduction of religion to politics and an elevation of politics to religion — has been and remains a challenge.

One of the most important political stories of the past 25 years — one in which this challenge has been at center stage — is the emergence, energy and electoral success of the so-called Religious Right. This development unsettled what had become the comfortable consensus among many modern sociologists and suggested that their predictions of religion's decline, like reports of Mark Twain's death, were greatly exaggerated.

In the early 1980s, after the formation by Rev. Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority and the election of President Reagan, many worried that the return of conservative Christians to the rough-and-tumble of party platforms, campaigns and elections threatened to unsettle the foundations of Thomas Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" between church and state. In 1984, Richard John Neuhaus responded to these concerns in an important and influential book, The Naked Public Square. Neuhaus insisted, correctly, that there was nothing un-American — and, indeed, nothing particularly new — about religious believers, ideals, claims and commitments in public life.

***
Today, our national pastime is thriving. We continue to wrestle with, and to disagree about, faith and politics, church and state. The debate is both alive and lively, and informs policy topics from global warming and suburban sprawl to school choice and human cloning. It will not — and, in a free and diverse society, should not — end anytime soon. That said, and notwithstanding the popularity in some quarters of overheated and unfair diatribes about "Christian fascism" and "American theocracy," it is worth noting, and celebrating, the progress we've made toward clarity and consensus.

Far from a theocracy

For starters, scholars and commentators across the ideological spectrum increasingly agree that religious believers are entirely free to participate, as whole persons, in public life and in the civic arena. This freedom is the mark of an open, generous democracy, not a step toward "theocracy."

Nothing in the text, history or structure of our Constitution requires Americans to accept disintegration as the price of admission to the life of active, engaged citizenship. Even a government such as ours (especially a government such as ours), which is appropriately "separate" from religious authorities and institutions, need not and should not discriminate against religiously motivated expression and action.

During William Rehnquist's tenure as Chief Justice of the United States (1986-2005), the Supreme Court, for the most part, came to appreciate that the goal of our First Amendment — which protects religion's exercise in part by prohibiting its "establishment" — is not to push religious faith to the margins, in the hope that it will wither, but to protect religion from manipulation and distortion by governments, in the confidence that it will flourish.

[More]

My Comments:
A good op/ed by Professor Garnett. Do read the whole thing.

A Strange Way to Woo Religious Voters

Michael Gerson writes in The Washington Post:

The Democratic Party has undertaken an ostentatious outreach to religious voters, creating a Faith Advisory Council and cultivating clergy around the country. But these efforts might be more credible if Democrats were not simultaneously trying to incite conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Louisiana -- and managing to offend both groups in the process.

According to a recent television ad run by the Louisiana Democratic Party, the leading Republican candidate for governor, Bobby Jindal, has "insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants" by describing their beliefs as "scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical." Jindal, the attack goes on, "doubts the morals and questions the beliefs of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Pentecostals and other Protestant religions."

The ad is theologically ignorant -- Methodism and the others are not "religions," they are denominations. The main problem, however, is that the ad stretches the truth so phyllo-thin it can only be called a smear.

Jindal -- a convert to Christianity from a Hindu background -- has none of the politician's typical reticence on religion. "I'm proud of my faith," he told me in a phone interview. "I believe in God, that Jesus died and rose. I can't divide my public and private conscience. I can't stop being a Christian, and wouldn't want to for a moment of the day."

And Jindal's chosen tradition is a muscular Roman Catholicism. In an article published in the 1990s, he argued, "The same Catholic Church which infallibly determined the canon of the Bible must be trusted to interpret her handiwork; the alternative is to trust individual Christians, burdened with, as Calvin termed it, their 'utterly depraved' minds, to overcome their tendency to rationalize, their selfish desires, and other effects of original sin." And elsewhere: "The choice is between Catholicism's authoritative Magisterium and subjective interpretation which leads to anarchy and heresy."

This is the whole basis for the Democratic attack -- that Jindal holds an orthodox view of his own faith and rejects the Protestant Reformation. He has asserted, in short, that Roman Catholicism is correct -- and that other religious traditions, by implication, are prone to error...

***
This Democratic ad is not merely a tin-eared political blunder; it reveals a secular, liberal attitude: that strong religious beliefs are themselves a kind of scandal; that a vigorous defense of Roman Catholicism is somehow a gaffe.

***
On the evidence of the Louisiana ad, Democrats have learned little about the religious and political trends of the last few decades. For all its faults, the religious right built strong ties between conservative Catholics and conservative Protestants on issues such as abortion and family values, after centuries of mutual suspicion. Evangelicals gained a deep affection for Pope John Paul II and respect for Catholic conservatives such as Justice Antonin Scalia. And conservative Protestants recognize that secularist attacks on Catholic convictions are really attacks on all religious convictions and could easily be turned their way.

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Let me repeat that in case you didn't catch it the first time:

This Democratic ad is not merely a tin-eared political blunder; it reveals a secular, liberal attitude: that strong religious beliefs are themselves a kind of scandal; that a vigorous defense of Roman Catholicism is somehow a gaffe.

Yes, we all know what liberals in general and the Democrats in particular think of "deeply held religious beliefs".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Louisiana Democrat "Know-Nothings" Attack Jindal

Dems Go After Jindal's Catholicism & Ethnicity

Will the Supreme Court be THE Issue in 2008?

Looks like it could shape up that way. Take a look at a couple of stories from yesterday. First, from LifeNews.com:

Supreme Court Control on Abortion Will be Key 2008 Election Issue

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With the Supreme Court perhaps just one vote away from having a majority of justices willing to reverse the Roe v. Wade decision, the 2008 elections could be the deciding factor in determining if legalized abortion will be stopped or continue for decades. Both sides of the abortion debate are already preparing for battle.

Although the high court upheld a ban on partial-birth abortions this April, most observers believe the court is, at best, split along a 5-4 line in favor of upholding Roe.

President Bush has appointed two judges in Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito whom pro-life advocates believe would join Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in reversing the landmark decision.

However, it appears the president will not likely get another chance to appoint a Supreme Court justice unless someone passes away.

As a result, the next president will likely shape the future of the court on abortion -- a fact not lost on both sides of the abortion divide.

Ralph Neas, president of the pro-abortion activist group People for the American Way, told the news web site Politico on Monday that abortion advocacy organizations like his are focusing on both the presidential campaign and top Senate races.

He wants control not only of the White House but of the Senate and the confirmation process on its Judiciary Committee, which pro-abortion Democrats currently control by a one vote margin.

[More]

And here's the story from The Politico referred to in the LifeNews story above:

Roberts and Alito: An '08 issue?

Two 50-something men who wear black robes, rarely speak in public and remain unrecognizable to most Americans are turning up in campaign playbooks from Oregon to Maine.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito may well become the bogeymen of 2008.

Their decisions in the last term on abortion, school desegregation and pay equity angered pillars of the Democratic constituency, already prompting Senate campaigns and issue advocates to invoke the Supreme Court in fundraising pitches and attacks on Republican incumbents.

“When you are dealing with hypotheticals, when you talk about civil rights, privacy, Roe v. Wade, many people didn’t take it seriously,” said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. “Now, it is no longer a hypothetical, but it is real. That makes a big difference.”

Five of the nine justices will be at least 70 by Election Day 2008, including three of the court’s most liberal members.

Neither side disputes the prize: The next president could continue President Bush’s efforts to solidify a conservative majority, or reverse it altogether.

“At stake in the 2008 election is what the law of the land will be for the next three or four decades,” Neas said.

A column last month on Townhall.com, a conservative website, made the same point. At a time when Republicans are beleaguered and history is against them (the column’s opening line: “We are in big trouble”), social conservatives must make the 2008 election all about the Supreme Court, argued John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council.

“We might have a chance to elect a conservative who could produce historical pro-life and pro-family victories in battles many of us have been fighting all of our lives,” Stemberger wrote.

[More]

My Comments:
Oh please, Democrats, please DON'T make the 2008 elections about the Supreme Court.

You can talk about Iraq, deficits, scandals and corruption, tax cuts for the wealthy, the gap between the rich and the poor, health care reform, etc., etc. Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please.

Only please, Democrats, whatever you do, please DON'T turn the 2008 elections into a referendum on the direction of the Supreme Court.




UPDATE
Ralph Neas of People for the UnAmerican Way is guest blogging at Time Magazine this week. Here's his wishful thinking of an entry on the Supreme Court and the '08 election: "Roberts and Alito Will Hurt GOP in '08". Be sure to drop by and leave a comment.

Attorney Seeks Judge's Recusal for Being Catholic

Mirror of Justice reports:

An attorney in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida has filed a motion for recusal of U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch from an employment case for bias, based on his "deep religious beliefs." Law.com reports that:

In a 110-page motion for recusal filed last month, Spolter cited Zloch's hiring of several law clerks from Ave Maria Law School, a donation to the Roman Catholic school and his attendance at several junkets for judges sponsored by conservative organizations.

The motion itself is offensive on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin, but most salient perhaps is the fact that supportive statements from lawyers who have appeared before him representing clients like abortion clinics and strippers all claim that he is scrupulously fair. As "evidence" of bias, the attorney charges that:

Zloch has employed more law clerks from Ave Maria -- three in all -- than any other judge in the nation. Currently, two of his three clerks are Ave Maria graduates.

The school lists Zloch as one of its advocates, featuring him among its "honor roll of donors" for contributing $100 to $500 in 2004.

"Having faculty with strong beliefs favoring one end of the political spectrum would not be troublesome in and of itself," according to Spolter's motion. "It does, however, become problematic when a judge rewards and endorses a law school -- through monetary contributions and by aggressively hiring its graduates as law clerks -- when the faculty is comprised solely of those advocating a certain limited range of political and religious beliefs."

My Comments:
There go those "deeply held beliefs" again. Any chance this lawyer seeking the judge's recusal has the last name "Schumer"?


UPDATE (17 August)
The Catholic League weighs in:

CATHOLIC JUDGE BASHED BY DUI LAWYER

August 16, 2007

Florida attorney Loring Spolter has formally petitioned the U.S. District Court seeking the recusal of U.S. District Judge William Zloch on the grounds that the judge exercises religious bias.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue took Zloch’s side today:

“If anyone wants to see anti-Catholicism in action, keep an eye on Loring Spolter—the man is still at large. Ironically, Spolter’s affidavit not only fails to detail a single instance of religious bias on the part of Judge Zloch, it offers concrete proof of his own bigotry.

“Spolter is angry that Zloch has a close association with Ave Maria Law School, a Catholic law school in Michigan (it will move to Florida in 2009). Specifically, he is upset that two of the judge’s three clerks are Ave Maria graduates and that Zloch contributes to the law school.

“Spolter thinks he has a slam dunk case by citing the following—to him indictable—information: Ave Maria adheres to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter ‘Fides et Ratio’ (Faith and Reason), and it promises a ‘distinctive legal education’ that is ‘characterized by the harmony of faith and reason.’ Worse, Spolter argues, Ave Maria addresses ‘moral truths’ and even has the audacity to emphasize ‘the inherent dignity of every human being stemming from our creation in the image and likeness of God and raised to a new level of our redemption in Jesus Christ.’

“When Joe McCarthy played his infamous guilt-by-association card, he at least got it right when he identified communist cells as evil. By contrast, Spolter’s attempt to demonize Ave Maria—and by extension Judge Zloch—is laughable. In any event, it would be instructive to know if Spolter, who unlike McCarthy is Jewish, thinks it’s kosher for Jewish judges to hire clerks from Yeshiva University and to make contributions to the school.

"Spolter needs to take a more sober approach to his work and go back to doing what he does best—defending drunken drivers from their accusers."

(Hat tip: Custos Fidei)

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Partial-Birth Bigotry: The Know-Nothing Left Blames the Latest Abortion Ruling on Catholicism

William Pryor Says Faith Helps His Role as Judge

Slate: The Political Advantages Of Catholic Justices

Fidelis Warns Senators on Questioning of Roberts on Religion

Religious Tests - Where Some Dems Want To Go, But Shouldn't

No Religious Test

Is Judge Roberts a "Serious Catholic"?

New York Post: "Roberts Critics' Agenda of Hate"

Fidelis on Roberts Nomination: “Hearings Are Ripe For Anti-Religious Bigotry”

Launch of New Catholic Conservative Org: Fidelis

Charles Krauthammer on the "Schumer Doctrine"

Up or Down - Religion, Filibusters, & Judges

A Change in Tactics for Judicial Leftists?

From RedState.com:

Mr. (Justice) Breyer, Lobbyist

With Senators Leahy, Durbin and Schumer already promising new levels of obstruction of President Bush's judicial nominees up to and including a promise to block - sight unseen - anyone the President nominates to the Supreme Court, and left-leaning "scholars" and activists calling for a new Court-packing plan along the lines of FDR's famous debacle, Senator Arlen Specter is providing covering fire for these partisan Democrats by announcing his intention to "review" the judicial opinions of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito to see if they have "complied with" promises he believes they gave in their Senate testimony as to how they would rule on the bench.

***
Senators dragging statements out of judicial nominees and then threatening hearings on whether they kept their promises on the bench should alarm anybody who (unlike Senator Specter) actually gives a hoot about judicial independence or principled application of the law. It's enough to make you rethink why we let nominees testify at all. But that's not the most disturbing aspect of this spectacle. What's even more alarming is that Specter has apparently been lobbied to join in this partisan attack on judicial independence by none other than former Ted Kennedy aide (and now associate Justice) Stephen Breyer:

The idea for a review came to Specter when he said he ran into Justice Stephen G. Breyer at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado .

Breyer, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, drew attention last month for suggesting that Roberts and the conservative majority were flouting stare decisis, the legal doctrine that, for the sake of stability, courts should generally leave past decisions undisturbed.

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Breyer said, reading his dissent from the bench to a 5-4 ruling that overturned school desegregation policies in two cities.

Roberts has defended his rulings as applications of "existing precedent."

Specter, however, said Breyer's statement was "an especially forceful criticism of the Roberts court."

"I only noticed it in a couple of cases," Specter said of the court overturning or undermining precedents. But Breyer, in their Aspen conversation, said "there were eight."

As the Wall Street Journal put it:

We hope Justice Breyer isn't kibbitzing the Senate to inquire into why his views haven't prevailed with a majority of his colleagues on the Court. We'll wait for more explanation from Mr. Specter, but he's wading into questionable separation-of-powers territory here.

(Pro-life Blogs calls it an "overt attempt to undermine Roberts and also influence the political process in judicial selections, altogether compromising the separation of powers.")

To say the least.

***
In his desire to control the Court's direction, Justice Breyer has invited a level of interference in his Branch that he would fight to the death were it coming at, say, Justice Scalia's behest. We note too that the mainstream media would be squawking itself hoarse were Justice Breyer replaced by the name "Justice Clarence Thomas."

Justice Breyer has apparently overlooked a new-fangled method of dispute resolution between Justices on the High Court: Talking to his colleagues to discover why they rule as they do, and trying to persuade them to adopt his view. One would almost be inclined to believe that Breyer feels like he's suddenly lost control of the situation, and is now reaching out to the Legislature to help him reassert control. In other words, Justice Breyer is inviting a constitutional crisis to achieve his own political ends.

[More]

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
My, my. This is certainly a change in the usual way leftists go about doing things. Generally, it's leftists losing at the legislative branch who seek out redress from the judicial branch.

Here, however, we have a judicial leftist in Justice Breyer who, now that he has lost control of the debate in the judicial branch, is seeking to have his wounds salved by the legislative branch.

But then, leftists don't really care how much or what part of the Constitution they tread underfoot, or which branch of government aids them in their treading, just so long as they get the result they desire.


UPDATE
I have a feeling that what this fuss is really all about is merely political posturing aimed at Justice Kennedy. Everybody knows that Kennedy is politically malleable - he proved as much with his flip-flop in Casey. What those calling for Congressional "reviews" of recent Court decisions, Senate obstruction of future Bush nominees, and Court-packing plans are really trying to do is convince Kennedy to pull another "switch-in-time-to-save-nine".

We'll know how successful this strategy is in the next Supreme Court session or two, when Kennedy will either swing right or left depending on which way the political wind is blowing.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Schumer to Fight Any New Bush High Court Pick

Breyer Advocates Outcome-Based Jurisprudence

"Schumer Doctrine" Back in Play

Justice Breyer Should Be Impeached

Charles Krauthammer on the "Schumer Doctrine"

Up or Down - Religion, Filibusters, & Judges

Schumer to Fight Any New Bush High Court Pick

Now that the Dems are back in control of the Senate, the Schumer Doctrine is back in play:

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Schumer’s assertion comes as Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court with Bush’s nominees – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito – has moved quicker than expected to overturn legal precedents.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Schumer's comments show "a tremendous disrespect for the Constitution" by suggesting that the Senate not confirm nominees.

"This is the kind of blind obstruction that people have come to expect from Sen. Schumer," Perino said. "He has an alarming habit of attacking people whose character and position make them unwilling or unable to respond. That is the sign of a bully. If the past is any indication, I would bet that we would see a Democratic senatorial fundraising appeal in the next few days."

Schumer voted against confirming Roberts and Alito. In Friday’s speech, he said his “greatest regret” in the last Congress was not doing more to scuttle Alito.

“Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed,” Schumer said. “I should have done a better job. My colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.”

While no retirements appear imminent, Bush still could have the opportunity to fill another vacancy on the court. Yet the two oldest members – Justice John Paul Stevens, 87, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 74 – are part of the court's liberal bloc and could hold off retirement until Bush leaves office in January, 2009.

Earlier this week, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, said he was persuaded by a conversation with Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who spoke with Specter at the Aspen Institute gathering in Colorado this month, to study the decisions of the Roberts Court. The term that ended in June was notable for several rulings that reversed or chipped away at several long-standing decisions, delighting conservatives but enraging liberals.

Breyer has publicly raised concerns that conservative justices were violating stare decisis, the legal doctrine that, for the sake of stability, courts should generally leave precedents undisturbed.

“It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Breyer said, reading his dissent from the bench in June to a 5-4 ruling that overturned school desegregation policies in two cities.

Schumer said there were four lessons to be learned from Alito and Roberts: Confirmation hearings are meaningless, a nominee’s record should be weighed more heavily than rhetoric, “ideology matters” and “take the president at his word.”

“When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of [Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas,” Schumer said, “believe him.”

From Fidelis:

Obstructionism Against Judges Must Be Stopped

CHICAGO — Promising to oppose any new nominee to the Supreme Court, New York Senator Charles Schumer delivered startling speech Friday to the American Constitutional Society declaring that he is prepared to block any new nominee should a vacancy occur on the Court. Schumer’s statements also signaled a willingness to cater to radical left wing groups who are urging Democratic members of the judiciary committee to block all of the Presidents judicial nominees, many of them now awaiting a hearing or a vote.

During the speech, Schumer said the confirmation of Justice Alito was one of his “greatest failings” as a Senator. Schumer also warned, "We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance…Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.”

Late last week Fidelis President Brian Burch appeared in an important press conference in Washington D.C. featuring Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), to call upon the Senate Judiciary Committee to stop holding up the nominations of well-qualified judges to the federal bench.

“In February 2000, Senator Leahy scolded the Republican-led Senate for their slow progress on confirming President Clinton’s judicial nominees saying, ‘The Senate is back to a pace of confirming one judge a month. That is not acceptable, does not serve the interests of justice and does not fulfill our constitutional responsibilities.’ We agree that a pace of one confirmation per month is not acceptable and we call upon the Senate to move forward with votes on pending judicial nominations,” said Brian Burch, President of Fidelis.

“Republicans in the Senate went on to confirm 15 of President Clinton’s nominees. In contrast, the Democrat controlled Senate has only confirmed three of President Bush’s nominees in the first six months of this year. This is barely half the speed of which Senator Leahy considered ‘not acceptable’ seven years ago. Chairman Leahy is perfectly positioned to rectify the injustice of denying qualified nominees an up or down vote,” said Burch.

Burch said it was clear that special-interest groups with a left-wing agenda have slowed down the confirmation process. “Long-standing vacancies in our federal courts are a major hindrance to justice. Senators have an obligation under the United States Constitution to provide ‘advice and consent’ not ‘admonish and impede,’” said Burch.

Democrats could prove their good will, said Burch, by moving forward with a vote on Judge Leslie Southwick for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Southwick, an Iraqi War veteran and a Catholic, has been the subject of baseless personal attacks. Fabricated accusations of insensitivity to blacks and homosexuals have been used to hold up his nomination. Some have even fought his nomination because he is not African-American.

Fidelis has also joined 59 other organizations in a letter delivered to individual members of the Senate Judiciary Committee objecting to the special interest driven attacks on Judge Southwick, and demanding that the Committee act on qualified nominees in a timely manner.

“Americans are already frustrated with this Congress. Senators refusing to give qualified nominees the courtesy of a vote are putting their political fortunes at risk, especially when they stand on the side of smear campaigns and obstruction,” said Burch.

Click HERE to support Fidelis and help stop the obstruction of qualified judges!

My Comments:
You just know that, deep down, Sen. Chucky is wishing that Chief Justice Roberts' recent health-related issues were more serious.

Fair enough. Deep down, I was probably wishing that, if some Justice had to have a seizure yesterday, it had been one of the more liberal ones.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
"Schumer Doctrine" Back in Play

Charles Krauthammer on the "Schumer Doctrine"

Up or Down - Religion, Filibusters, & Judges

The Next Supreme Court Vacancy

Ed Whelan writes at National Review Online that "there’s plenty of room to confirm another strong justice":

If a Supreme Court vacancy unexpectedly develops this summer, the conventional wisdom is that President Bush will find it extremely difficult or impossible to get a strong proponent of judicial restraint confirmed by the Senate. Now that Senate Democrats are in the majority, the thinking goes, they can easily defeat any judicial conservative, especially if the nominee is replacing one of the five justices who are consistent (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer) or frequent (Kennedy) votes for liberal judicial activism. Look, after all, at how they’re now able to block the President’s lower-court nominees whenever they want to.

This conventional wisdom is unsound. Briefly put: Under long-established Senate practice, every Supreme Court nominee is afforded an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. A departure from that practice would threaten to impose severe political costs on Senate Democrats. In a competently run confirmation campaign, a strong proponent of judicial restraint will win majority approval in the Senate, with votes to spare.

***
...Democrats won their majority position in the Senate by running unconventional candidates like pro-lifer Bob Casey in Pennsylvania. But the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tilt heavily to the far left ideological base of the party, and no nominee worthy of a Supreme Court spot has any realistic prospect of winning a single Democratic vote in committee. (When their votes didn’t matter and when they were positioning to defeat the next nominee, three Democrats voted for Chief Justice Roberts in committee; none voted for Alito.) Neither Democrats generally nor the dozen or more individual Democrats presenting themselves to their constituencies as moderates can afford to let the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Chuck Schumer decide the fate of a Supreme Court nominee.

***
...The Democrats have the narrowest of margins in the Senate — 51 to 49 — and a quality nominee should hold all or nearly all Republicans. It’s also easy to identify plenty of possible Democratic votes. Start, for example, with the four Democrats who voted for Alito — Byrd (West Virginia), Conrad (North Dakota), Johnson (South Dakota), and Ben Nelson (Nebraska). Look to other Democrats in “red” states, especially those who are running for reelection in 2008 — two, Landrieu (Louisiana) and Pryor (Arkansas), are prime targets. And add in newly elected moderate (or moderate-posing) senators like Casey (Pennsylvania) and Tester (Montana). There’s simply no reason to think that a strong proponent of judicial restraint won’t earn the votes to be confirmed.

***
President Bush’s appointments of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are perhaps his greatest domestic achievements. If another vacancy develops, President Bush can enrich his legacy with another outstanding appointment or jeopardize it by an inferior selection. The choice will be his, and no one should mistakenly believe that the bare Democratic majority in the Senate prevents him from selecting another strong proponent of judicial restraint.

[More]

My Comments:
While I think Whelan is exactly right on the substance (especially were Bush to nominate a minority female with a compelling life story, like Janice Rogers Brown), all this speculation about another Supeme Court vacancy is just wishful thinking. The liberal justices all know that Bush and the Republicans are on the ropes, and none of them will step down until they know the White House is "safely" in Democrat hands.

I'm afraid Bush won't get a 3rd bite at the Supreme Court apple. But I'd sure love to be wrong about that.

A Price Too High: How Democrats and Leftist Interest Groups Destroy Reputations to Keep the Courts Liberal

From City Journal:

Mention the name Charles Pickering to anyone but the most committed news junkie, and you’re apt to get a blank look or, at best, one of dim recognition. In the era of the 24-hour news cycle aimed at the ever-shortening attention span, the bitter Senate battles over the federal judiciary in which Pickering played so dramatic a part a few years back can seem like ancient history.

But with the publication of A Price Too High, Pickering’s insider account of the nearly four years he spent in limbo as a nominee to the federal bench, as Democrats and their press enablers trashed his record and reputation, we’re reminded of how extraordinarily much is at stake in the ongoing battle for control of the nation’s courts; and how far one side, at least, is willing to go to win the battle. Liberals are no longer even coy about using the courts to achieve social engineering ends that they cannot get through democratic means. “Environmentalists, prison reformers and consumer advocates have learned that what can’t be won in the legislature or executive may be achievable in a federal district court where a sympathetic judge sits,” liberal Wise Man Joe Califano wrote in a 2001 Washington Post editorial. Nan Aron, president of the liberal activist group Alliance for Justice, put it even more baldly during a debate at the Federalist Society, noting: “We have to look to the courts to create new rights we won’t be able to get from the legislature.”

***
... If ever there was a poster boy for the kind of judge that Senate Democrats and their left-of-center, activist allies will fight to the political death to keep off the bench—the better to install judges who share their social agenda—it comes in the unlikely person of this gracious grandfather of 21. More dramatically than any confirmation battle in memory, the Pickering case demonstrates that liberals will seemingly say anything—and tarnish even the most sterling character—to keep control of the nation’s courts.

Of course, cynics see this as merely part of the game. Politics, they’ll say, ain’t beanbag, and weren’t many Clinton nominees to the federal bench similarly done in by Republicans? No, not really—never with the same degree of ruthlessness. Indeed, evidence of the campaign of character assassination perpetrated against Charles Pickering is just a click away: search the terms “Pickering” and “racist” in Nexis and you get more than 600 hits. Under any circumstances, a false racism charge, made for obviously political reasons, would be unacceptable. In Pickering’s case, it was worse than that. For in civil rights–era Mississippi, when courage among whites was at a premium, he was nothing short of heroic: the sort of person whom, were he not on the wrong side of the political spectrum, liberals would embrace as a moral exemplar.

***
A genial man, with the mellifluous speech and courtly manner that many of us in the North know more from movies than from real life, Pickering hardens slightly when he speaks of some of his senatorial inquisitors. “They just depersonalize you,” he says. “They look at you and don’t even see a human being.” He pauses. “I must tell you, some of these people have basically the same attitude that the Klan used to have—that their ends are so important that any means are justified to accomplish them.”

... Among the main villains is Senator Charles Schumer, who, after initially pledging to support the nomination, became one of its most aggressive foes, playing the race card with what often seemed like relish. But the book’s true bad guys are the activists from the leading left-liberal special-interest groups, who called the shots while prominent Democrats did their bidding with almost comic alacrity. Of these, Ralph Neas of People for the American Way (PFAW) proved the most damaging. “People for the American Way gave the marching orders,” says Pickering. “They wrote the script and everyone else followed.”

[More]

(emphasis added)

Washington Post Asks: "Did Justices' Catholicism Play Part in Abortion Ruling?"

From The Washington Post:

Is it significant that the five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold the federal ban on a controversial abortion procedure also happen to be the court's Roman Catholics?

It is to Tony Auth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He drew Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. wearing bishop's miters, and labeled his cartoon "Church and State."

Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters hashed out the issue on "The View," with O'Donnell noting that a majority of the court is Catholic and wondering about "separation of church and state." Walters counseled that "we cannot assume that they did it because they're Catholic."

And the chatter continues, on talk radio and in the blogosphere. In the latter category, no one has stirred it up quite like Geoffrey R. Stone, former dean and now provost of the University of Chicago's law school.

[More]

My Comments:
Washington Post staff writer: "We're not saying the Justices' Catholicism played a role in this ruling, we're just covering those who say that it did."

Similar "coverage of the controversy" stories have popped up on the pages of major newspapers across the country, with The Washington Post being only the latest (see also the story in The New York Times that I covered last week).

This is how major media outlets maintain plausible deniability when they want to call into question things like the religious makeup of the Carhart majority without being cast as anti-Catholic bigots themselves.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Partial-Birth Bigotry: The Know-Nothing Left Blames the Latest Abortion Ruling on Catholicism

Carhart, Casey, and the Supreme Court's Catholics

Chuck Colson: "The New Anti-Catholic Bigotry"

And Finally ... The New York Times Weighs In

More Supreme Anti-Catholic Bigotry

Church Defenders Take On Anti-Catholic Cartoonist

And the Philadelphia Enquirer [sic] Joins In (With an Anti-Catholic Cartoon)

In Case You Missed It ...

How Long ...

Carhart, Casey, and the Supreme Court's Catholics

Catholic legal scholar Professor Rick Garnett writes that for a judge to credit the legislature's conclusion that human fetuses are moral subjects whose lives have value is not to impose "religious" beliefs:

Fifteen years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy co-authored an opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey which proclaimed that “liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt” and re-affirmed a woman’s “right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages.” On April 18, however, Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion for a five-Justice majority in Gonzales v. Carhart which rejected a “broad, facial attack” on the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. What happened?

***
... the attacks on the majority’s ruling are coming fast and furious. According to New York Times, this decision was “atrocious” and “comes at a real cost to the court’s credibility, its integrity and the rule of law.” In some quarters, the Court’s decision not to nullify a bipartisan and popular act of Congress is seen – oddly enough – as an instance of the very “judicial activism” that conservatives purport to oppose. Still others detect in the ruling – in the words of one blogger – a “chill wind blowing from Rome.”

The five Justices in the majority, remember, are Roman Catholics.

There were no Catholic Justices on the Court until 1836, when Roger Taney succeeded John Marshall. And it would be more than another half-century – fifty-eight years – until the elevation of the second, Edward White. Looking back, the fact that only one of our first 54 Justices was Catholic should come as no surprise. From the Puritans to the Framers and beyond, anti-“popery” was long thick the cultural air of America. Well into the twentieth century, it was regularly charged and widely believed that there is something un-American about Catholic clergy, teachings, and adherents. And so, it is not surprising that, over the years, politicians and commentators alike have demanded assurances that Catholic judicial nominees would not be “Catholic” justices. President Roosevelt, for example, was promised that Frank Murphy would “not let religion stand in his way,” and Murphy himself made it clear that his faith and his judicial vocation were kept “in air-tight compartments.”

These familiar questions were raised again – if more artfully and cautiously – after the nominations of Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts. Indeed, the rarely reticent Christopher Hitchens challenged his colleagues in the press to “quit tiptoeing around John Roberts’ faith.” After all, he observed, the Catholic Church is a “foreign state” and “claims the right to legislate on morals[.]” Hitchens was hardly alone in being alarmed by the prospect of a majority-Catholic Court. Many worried that the Catholic Justices might be tempted to substitute their own personal religious convictions, or the moral teachings of their Church, for the Constitution’s requirements, particularly in cases involving divisive and difficult “social issues.”

According to one of the legal academy’s most distinguished constitutional law scholars, Carhart suggests that these worries were well founded. In a widely noted blog post, my colleague Professor Geoffrey Stone characterized and criticized the majority in Carhart as “faith-based justices” who “failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality. To be sure,” he wrote, “this can be an elusive distinction, but in a society that values the separation of church and state, it is fundamental.”

The distinction is, indeed, “elusive.” And, in any event, the charge is misplaced. It is true that the majority included “moral concerns” – like the public interest in promoting “respect for life” – among the “legitimate government interests” that could justify the federal ban. It is not clear, though, why we should regard these concerns, or the view that human fetuses are moral subjects whose lives have value, as any more “religious”, and therefore suspect, than our nation’s fundamental commitment to the view that all human beings are moral equals, regardless of race, and should be treated as such in law. For a judge to identify such concerns as a permissible basis for legislating – given the fact that, in the Court’s view, the law did not impose an “undue burden” on the abortion right – is not to attack church-state separation or to substitute revelation for the will of We the People.

It is, of course, hardly a secret that a Catholic justice is taught by his or her Church, and should believe, that abortion is a grave moral evil. However, all judges – Catholic or not – come to the bench with views, commitments, and experiences that shape their decision-making and reasoning. We can, and should, ask of every judge that she work conscientiously in every case to identify not her own preferred or “faith-based” outcome but the answer that is given by the relevant legal texts, rules, and precedents. As it happens, the Catholic understanding of vocation, and of justice under law, extends to Catholic judges the same invitation.

[More]

Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
And Finally ... The New York Times Weighs In

More Supreme Anti-Catholic Bigotry

Church Defenders Take On Anti-Catholic Cartoonist

And the Philadelphia Enquirer [sic] Joins In (With an Anti-Catholic Cartoon)

In Case You Missed It ...

How Long ...

How Long ...

... before some mainstream media outlet makes hay out of the fact that all 5 of the Supreme Court votes to uphold the PBA ban came from Catholic justices?


UPDATE
The Politico and Bill Donohue (writing at Human Events) wonder the same thing. Definitely read both.


UPDATE #2
And we have our answer (it was almost a given that it would be on "The View"):

... Rosie expressed horror that there are five Catholics on the Supreme Court and Catholics on the Court apparently violate the "separation of church and state"

O’DONNELL: You know what concerns me? How many Supreme Court judges are Catholic, Barbara?

WALTERS: Five.

O’DONNELL: Five. How about separation of church and state in America?

WALTERS: Every one of them, when they were going through their Senate confirmation hearings said the fact of my religion does not mean that I will vote a particular way because of my religion. So we cannot say that they did it because they’re Catholic. It is interesting that they’re Catholic...

No doubt Bill Donohue will be weighing in on this segment soon, since he's so fond of Rosie and The View gals.


UPDATE #3
And right on cue, here's Bill's response:

This is O’Donnell’s eighth attack on Catholics since September. She has said there is no difference between radical Christians and radical Muslims (9-12-06); she has ridiculed the Eucharist (9-28-06); she has falsely claimed that the pope was in charge of policing miscreant priests since the 1980s and did nothing about them (10-2-06); she repeated the lie about the pope again (10-27-06); she has mocked priestly celibacy (2-7-07); she ridiculed the Eucharist again (2-27-07); she mocked Catholic teaching on the Bible and the Virgin Birth (3-26-07); and now she is complaining about too many Catholics on the high court.

"Aarrrrgh! I hates Catholics!"

Catholics in Public Life: Judges, Legislators, and Voters

From Fidelis:

Greg Kalscheur, SJ, has wrtten an excellent paper entitled "Catholics in Public Life: Judges, Legislators, and Voters."

The essay focuses on how a judge who is a faithful Catholic can function in a a constitutional system where cases before the judge contain issues which the Church addresses through its teachings in the Magisterium.

Click here to access the document and then click on "Download Document" in the upper left hand side of the website you access.

William Pryor Says Faith Helps His Role as Judge

(Hat tip: Steve Dillard at Southern Appeal)

From the University of Alabama's The Crimson White:

Bill Pryor doesn't think his deeply held Catholic beliefs have come into conflict with his role as an impartial judge.

His faith makes him a better judge on the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeal, the former Alabama attorney general said at the first Symposium on the Role of Religion in Public Life on Friday.

The conference, sponsored by the UA law group Harmonies of Liberty Society, sought to start public debates on campus about the role of religion in public life, communications committee co-chairwoman Jamie Hill said.

Pryor was nominated to the federal court in February 2004, but his confirmation was caught in a Senate filibuster until June 2005. Some Senate Democrats worried about whether Pryor's religious convictions would affect his ability to rule fairly on issues of abortion and gay rights.

Pryor said his faith gives him a moral duty to obey the law because he swore an oath before God to protect the Constitution. He considers his job "a form of prayer" because he "honors the Creator's gifts" with his work.

"Catholic judges are friends of the Constitution," he said.

[More]

My Comments:
Praying for the day Judge Pryor sits on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Slate: The Political Advantages Of Catholic Justices

William Saletan writing for Slate asks (and attempts a feeble answer to) the question "Why Catholics?" when it comes to Republican judicial nominations:

Three hours after President Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, a conservative "Catholic-based advocacy organization" fired a warning shot at liberals. "Given the likelihood of a vigorous debate, we remain steadfast in our insistence upon a fair and dignified process free of any attack on Judge Alito's Catholic faith and personal beliefs," said the group's president. "Early attacks by left wing interest groups are particularly worrisome."

As evidence of the early attacks on Alito's faith, the group pointed to ... nothing. The only basis for alleging an anti-Catholic inquisition was the uproar over Alito's defense of abortion restrictions. This is the GOP's new victim shtick: Nominate pro-lifers to the courts; brag that they're simply upholding abortion laws favored by a majority of voters; and when liberals complain, accuse them of attacking a religious minority.

***
Two years ago, Republicans found a new way to play victim. They were trying to get Bill Pryor, the attorney general of Alabama, confirmed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor had called Roe v. Wade an "abomination" that had led to "slaughter." Such rhetoric, according to Democrats, suggested that Pryor was incapable of subordinating his moral convictions to constitutional law. A well-connected conservative lobby, the Committee for Justice, fired back with ads depicting a warning on a courthouse door: "Catholics need not apply." The ads accused senators of attacking Pryor's " 'deeply held' Catholic beliefs."

In truth, no opposing senator had mentioned Pryor's Catholicism. The inference was drawn purely from questions about his sharp moral rhetoric. Republican senators took the campaign further, suggesting that criticism of judges who supported abortion restrictions was inherently anti-Catholic. Unlike the old charge of anti-Christian bigotry, anti-Catholic bigotry sounded plausible. For one thing, less than one-fourth of the U.S. adult population was Catholic. For another, Catholics have historically been excluded from high office in this country. Of the first 54 U.S. Supreme Court justices, only one was Catholic. Not until the 1890s did others arrive, and not until 1960 did we elect the first Catholic president. Twenty years ago, only one justice was Catholic. The rest were Protestants.

In 1986, all that began to change. President Reagan appointed Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy to the court. The first President Bush appointed Clarence Thomas along with David Souter, an Episcopalian. President Clinton appointed two Jews: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. The second President Bush appointed John Roberts and nominated Alito. If Alito is confirmed, Catholics will hold five of the court's seats, and the Protestant contingent will have dwindled from eight to two. The notion that bigotry is keeping Catholics off the court is becoming numerically preposterous. Politically, that's no accident. Catholic voters have become the top target of Republican courtship.

[More]

My Comments:
Pure B.S. Of course, Saletan is full of it when he claims that "no opposing senator had mentioned [judicial nominee William] Pryor's Catholicism" and implies that the Republicans somehow imagined that Democrat senators were attacking Pryor's " 'deeply held' Catholic beliefs." And he's just flat-out untruthful when he states that "Republican senators took the campaign further, suggesting that criticism of judges who supported abortion restrictions was inherently anti-Catholic."

It was the Democrats, led by Sen. Chuckie Schumer, who questioned whether Pryor's "deeply held religious beliefs" made him incapable of being an impartial jurist. And just what were those "deeply held religious beliefs"? Why, Pryor had the audacity to actually believe the teachings of his Roman Catholic Faith. It was the Democrats who raised questions regarding whether Pryor's fidelity to the Church's doctrine on abortion made him unfit to serve on the Federal Judiciary.

The Republicans weren't "playing victim" as Saletan suggests. Rather, they were responding to the outrageous Schumer Doctrine, which would exclude otherwise qualified conservative nominees from the bench simply because they have "deeply held religious beliefs."

Religious Tests - Where Some Dems Want To Go, But Shouldn't

From National Review Online:

Religious Tests
Where some Dems want to go, but shouldn’t.

By Stephen B. Presser & Charles E. Rice

In recent memory there have rarely been nominees to the Supreme Court with credentials as distinguished as John Roberts.

***
There are rumblings, though, that Roberts's religion — he's Catholic — could be raised against him, and there are dark intimations coming from some quarters of the Senate and some liberal advocacy groups that a practicing Catholic who takes church teachings seriously cannot be trusted to assume a position on the Court.

The idea seems to be that since the Church is firmly opposed to abortion, the death penalty, and homosexual marriage, Roberts could not, consistently with his deeply-held religious beliefs, even-handedly administer justice in these areas.

Perhaps it is a mark of the desperation of Roberts's opponents that his religion is now being raised against him, but those of us who believe in the Constitution and in the objective interpretation of that document need to cut off the head of this argument and drive a stake through its heart before it does further damage.

[More]

My Comments
This is one area where I think the Right, as well as Catholic groups like The Catholic League and Fidelis, have done an effective job. Now that the issue of religious bigotry has been brought to light through efforts like "Justice Sunday", the Dems seem a little snakebit right now about invoking the Schumer Doctrine.

Is Judge Roberts a "Serious Catholic"?

Hat tip: Professor Bainbridge

Blogger David Giacalone thinks that

...we should be asking John Roberts if he considers himself a "Serious Catholic." More specifically, does he subscribe to the principles laid out in the "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics," that was widely read and followed by the most devout of the Faithful during the 2004 Election. (prior post) If he does, we need to ask Judge Roberts whether he believes those principles and requirements to be applicable to the actions of a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. If he won't answer or answers in the negative, the rest of us -- as lawyers and citizens -- are surely allowed to draw our own analogies and conclusions.

Professor Bainbridge responds:

I think these are legitimate questions deserving a fair answer. (More precisely, I think David's question is not the right one but is in the neighborhood of the right question.)

***
I'm also inclined to believe that the Senate's advise and consent function goes beyond a nominee's bare qualifications to include evaluation of the nominee's judicial philosophy. Certainly, if I were a Senator, I would want some assurance that the nominee is an originalist and strict constructionist!

As David Giaclone correctly observes, the Roman Catholic Church does instruct its members on their role in the public square. The relevant document is not the Voter's Guide to which David relies, of course, but rather the Vatican's Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life, which is the most recent authoritative Church statement on these issues. It states in pertinent part:

When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person.

Note the italicized phrase - political activity. This is a significant qualification, because the Church distinguishes between formal and material cooperation with evil.

***
I said earlier that David's question was not the right one but was in the neighborhood of the right question... If I were a Senator, I would ask Judge Roberts the following questions:

1. Do you believe that a judge should recuse himself if his participation in a particular case would constitute formal cooperation with evil?

2. Would you recuse yourself under such circumstances?

I'm inclined to think that one should not ask Judge Roberts whether he believes reviewing death penalty cases would constitute formal cooperation with evil (or the dame re abortion etc.). Even hot button constitutional issues are often highly fact specific. It would be unfair and unworkable to ask a judge to prejudge every possible variant of every issue that might come up in a long career.

My Comments:
Professor Bainbridge's suggestion sounds like a reasonable line of questioning to me, especially in light of the fact that it would not specifically reference Judge Roberts' Roman Catholicism or his "deeply held religious beliefs".