Ann Coulter, on the new Supreme Court nominee, (not the entire article)

Congress, as the people’s elected representatives, is supposed to “get things done.” If they don’t, that usually means the people don’t want those things done. It’s not the court’s job to say: “Hey, Congress, you forgot to enact this! Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.”

But liberals see the Supreme Court as their backup legislature, giving them all the laws Democrats can’t pass themselves because they’d be voted out of office if they did.

Can’t get Americans to approve of abortion? Get the Supreme Court to do it! Can’t get Americans to ban the death penalty? Get the Supreme Court to do it! Can’t get Americans to release criminals? Get the Supreme Court to do it!

Usually Democrats denounce the idea that they want an activist judiciary as a vicious, right-wing lie. But now they’re complaining that the court’s not activist enough — and they need Kagan up there to “get some things done”!

Despite the herculean efforts of liberals to redefine “judicial activism” as “overturning laws,” the two acts are completely unrelated.

We know that laws restricting speech and the right to bear arms violate the Constitution because it says so. The very first two items in the Bill of Rights prohibit the government from infringing on — I quote — “the freedom of speech” and “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” You can look it up yourself.

If Congress passed a law banning books critical of the Supreme Court and the court refused to strike down that law, that would be “judicial activism.”

Historically, judicial activists have preferred to strike down laws that are perfectly acceptable under the Constitution than to let unconstitutional laws stand. Constitutionally permissible laws include laws against abortion and laws providing for the death penalty.

We know that laws prohibiting abortion do not violate the Constitution because neither abortion, nor its synonyms, nor anything vaguely resembling abortion, is mentioned — much less granted protected status — by the Constitution.

And we know that laws providing for the death penalty are permitted by the Constitution because it goes on and on about capital crimes. The Fifth Amendment, for example, says:

– “No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury”;

– “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb”;

– “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
States are free to ban the death penalty on their own, but the Constitution requires only three things for the imposition of a death sentence: a grand jury indictment, no double jeopardy, and a hearing. The End. Love, the Founding Fathers.

And yet, the Supreme Court banned the death penalty — even with those three safeguards — as “unconstitutional” from 1972-1976.

Several justices — including Kagan’s mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall — continually voted to ban the death penalty, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly, repeatedly, unquestionably provides for capital punishment.

That’s how liberals “get some things done.” That’s judicial activism.

This turns my stomach. Hope I can sleep tonight. :-(

Here's another Ann Coulter article called JUDICIAL FOOTNOTES

by Ann Coulter

Democrats act as if the right to run across the border when you’re 8 1/2 months pregnant, give birth in a U.S. hospital and then immediately start collecting welfare was exactly what our forebears had in mind, a sacred constitutional right, as old as the 14th Amendment itself.

The louder liberals talk about some ancient constitutional right, the surer you should be that it was invented in the last few decades.

In fact, this alleged right derives only from a footnote slyly slipped into a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982. You might say it snuck in when no one was looking, and now we have to let it stay.

The 14th Amendment was added after the Civil War in order to overrule the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which had held that black slaves were not citizens of the United States. The precise purpose of the amendment was to stop sleazy Southern states from denying citizenship rights to newly freed slaves — many of whom had roots in this country longer than a lot of white people.

The amendment guaranteed that freed slaves would have all the privileges of citizenship by providing: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The drafters of the 14th amendment had no intention of conferring citizenship on the children of aliens who happened to be born in the U.S. (For my younger readers, back in those days, people cleaned their own houses and raised their own kids.)

Inasmuch as America was not the massive welfare state operating as a magnet for malingerers, frauds and cheats that it is today, it’s amazing the drafters even considered the amendment’s effect on the children of aliens.

But they did.

The very author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, expressly said: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”

In the 1884 case Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not even confer citizenship on Indians — because they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.

For a hundred years, that was how it stood, with only one case adding the caveat that children born to LEGAL permanent residents of the U.S., gainfully employed, and who were not employed by a foreign government would also be deemed citizens under the 14th Amendment. (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898.)

And then, out of the blue in 1982, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into his 5-4 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, asserting that “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” (Other than the part about one being lawful and the other not.)

Brennan’s authority for this lunatic statement was that it appeared in a 1912 book written by Clement L. Bouve. (Yes, THE Clement L. Bouve — the one you’ve heard so much about over the years.) Bouve was not a senator, not an elected official, certainly not a judge — just some guy who wrote a book.

So on one hand we have the history, the objective, the author’s intent and 100 years of history of the 14th Amendment, which says that the 14th Amendment does not confer citizenship on children born to illegal immigrants.

On the other hand, we have a random outburst by some guy named Clement — who, I’m guessing, was too cheap to hire an American housekeeper.

Any half-wit, including Clement L. Bouve, could conjure up a raft of such “plausible distinction(s)” before breakfast. Among them: Legal immigrants have been checked for subversive ties, contagious diseases, and have some qualification to be here other than “lives within walking distance.”

But most important, Americans have a right to decide, as the people of other countries do, who becomes a citizen.

Combine Justice Brennan’s footnote with America’s ludicrously generous welfare policies, and you end up with a bankrupt country.

Consider the story of one family of illegal immigrants described in the Spring 2005 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:

“Cristobal Silverio came illegally from Oxtotilan, Mexico, in 1997 and brought his wife Felipa, plus three children aged 19, 12 and 8. Felipa … gave birth to a new daughter, her anchor baby, named Flor. Flor was premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator, and cost San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, (Felipa’s 19-year-old daughter) Lourdes plus her illegal alien husband produced their own anchor baby, Esmeralda. Grandma Felipa created a second anchor baby, Cristian. … The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding. Flor gets $600 per month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. Cristobal and Felipa last year earned $18,000 picking fruit. Flor and Cristian were paid $12,000 for being anchor babies.”

In the Silverios’ munificent new hometown of Stockton, Calif., 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in 2003 in the San Joaquin General Hospital were anchor babies. As of this month, Stockton is $23 million in the hole.

It’s bad enough to be governed by 5-4 decisions written by liberal judicial activists. In the case of “anchor babies,” America is being governed by Brennan’s 1982 footnote.


Suz

"(Yes, THE Clement L. Bouve — the one you’ve heard so much about over the years.)" I've never heard of him. Where has he been mentioned that I should of heard of him? All I could find on the web concerned him being an agent who deported from the Philippines a Chinese national. Also a book and a lecture a a legal society. Never heard of him until today.

I can't answer your question. I only copied the article. I think the point of mention was that Clement was pretty much a nobody and his word was taken as authoritative by Justice Brennan.

Suz