Ahab Has A Blog.

There has been much blather about "activist" judges in recent years - that word being the theocratic Right's secret word for "liberal". Conservatives would have you believe that the role of the judiciary is strictly limited. Never mind that judges are the *executors* of the law - they put people in jail.

But now that the crowning moment has come for social conservatives, now that "their" President has put one man on the Supreme Court and is poised to make another score for thier side, they are ripping him to shreds for not choosing someone to their liking. For not choosing someone, in other words, who will advance their agenda. For not choosing someone so outrageous that Democrats feel compelled to invoke a nuclear showdown in the Senate.

But isn't that the very definition of the "activist judge"? Isn't that the very thing conservatives have been decrying ever since the Brown v. Board of Education - that desired social policies are acheived through rulings by judges? That a judge will be chosen to advance a social policy rather than the rule of law? How can that be?

Oh, now I remember, it's because they are total frigging hypocrites. When they mean that the judiciary shouldn't promote a social agenda, they mean it should only promote *their* social agenda.

Odd, isn't it, that the rallying point is the enforcement of the Constitution's promise of equality. Odder still that they cite the Dredd Scott decision in opposition to Roe v Wade. It's impossible not to see a very latent and nasty racism in the conservative position. Every now and then some knucklehead like Bennett lets escape a jaw-dropper - like that the crime rate would go down if we killed all the Black babies - and then it's not so latent.

Nativist, extreme social conservativism, disdain for equal rights, burning hatred for desegregation, hatred of women's rights, an ongoing belief in eugenics - how can they, with a straight face, call themselves Americans? Even harder to believe - how can the feckless Democrats keep letting them get away with it?