This remark reveals a philosophy of jurisprudence that is very problematic. The judge’s role, according to Sotomayor, is not merely to apply the law to a given case but to make public policy. Perhaps she didn’t mean to imply that this is the way things should be, but just the way that things are. I expect that we’ll be seeing debate over this remark in the coming days during the confirmation hearing.
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Obama Selects Sotomayor for Supreme Court
According to the New York Times, President Obama will select Sonia Sotomayor to fill Souter’s vacancy on the Supreme Court. “President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White House. “If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, Judge Sotomayor, 54, would replace Justice David H. Souter to become the second woman on the court and only the third female justice in the history of the Supreme Court. She also would be the first Hispanic justice to serve on the Supreme Court.”
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The National Security Debate We Should Have Heard Last Fall
President Barack Obama and former Vice-President Dick Cheney squared-off on Thursday in a pair of dueling press conferences. Cheney and Obama advanced national security opinions that are diametrically opposed to one another. It was close, hand-to-hand, political combat. It was a good, clean fight and exactly the kind of debate that we should have heard last Fall during the general election but didn’t. In case you missed the speeches, I’m posting audio, video, and transcript links below. President Obama (audio), (transcript) [audio:http://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/2009/May/20090521_Protecting_Our_Security.mp3] Vice-President Cheney (audio), (transcript) [audio:http://static2.capitalreach.com/aei/media/10762.mp3]
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Talking about Talking about Abortion
R. Albert Mohler has written a response to President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame. Mohler also discussed the speech on the Monday edition of his radio program (listen below or download here). [audio:http://www.sbts.edu/media/audio/totl/2009/AMP_05_18_2009.mp3] Here’s an excerpt from Mohler’s essay, and the analysis is spot-on:
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Obama’s Hypocritical Strategy on Abortion
In last Friday’s The New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg described President Obama’s approach to the abortion issue: “In nearly four months in office, President Obama has pursued a careful two-pronged strategy on abortion, enacting policies that secure a woman’s right to the procedure while vowing to move beyond the culture wars that have divided the nation on the issue for more than three decades.” This description is astonishingly candid, and it is no compliment to the President. Notice that Obama’s strategy has two parts: enacting and vowing. Essentially, she is saying that President Obama supports policies that are substantively pro-abortion, while adopting rhetoric that makes it sound as if…
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Blomberg and Wright’s Straw Man
New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg has posted a favorable review of N. T. Wright’s book Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. In it he characterizes Christ’s active obedience as “his obedience to the law” and Christ’s passive obedience as his vicarious death on the cross. Justin Taylor has pointed out that Blomberg’s definition is in fact incorrect and that Blomberg has reiterated a common caricature of the Reformed view. Taylor writes,
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Obama Fails To Transcend Abortion Debate
I watched President Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame with some interest this afternoon (see video and transcript below). I was curious (along with everyone else in the country) about how he would address the protests surrounding his appearance at a Roman Catholic (and ostensibly pro-life) university. The buzz leading-up to the speech was that the President would address the issue head-on while attempting to transcend the old “culture war” debates about abortion.
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Americans More Pro-Life Than Ever?
For the first time since Gallup began tracking this issue in 1995, more Americans now identify themselves as pro-life (51%) than those who identify themselves as pro-choice (42%). Gallup says that the “bottom line” of their survey is this: ‘With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation’s policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans — and, in particular, Republicans — seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates…
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Notre Dame Students Respond
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Violence at Notre Dame
James Kushiner of Touchstone magazine talks about the violence that we can expect to see during the protests of President Obama’s commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday. He writes, ‘When it comes to whatever number of people protesting at Notre Dame, the right image is not that of Vietnam War protesters or those people that show up at the various global economy “summits”, and certainly not the PETA people. It’s not there won’t be violence–there will be violence, but it won’t be on the part of protesters, though they will be accused of angry hatred. The violence will be seen in the pictures some of them…