Justice Sunday

As many of you know, yesterday was Justice Sunday, designed to build support for what Republicans have dubbed the Nuclear option and then the Constitutional option, and what Josh Marshall is calling the Crybaby Option.

Well conservative columnist John Leo has some questions about Justice Sunday.

The premise is that Senate Democrats, by threatening to filibuster several of President Bush's judicial choices, have attacked religious believers.

"Stop the filibuster against people of faith" is the slogan. The nominees "are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a sponsor of Justice Sunday. Pardon me, but this is clearly untrue. The Democrats would be delighted to approve fervently religious nominees, so long as they endorse Roe v. Wade and the party's general strategy of using the courts as an end run around the legislative process. The obvious is true: The filibuster threat is about abortion politics and left-right polarization, not religion.

Obviously I agree that this issue has little if anything to do with picking on people of faith.

On the other hand I think it's a little sad that it is all about partisanship and abortion. Obviously the judges that President Bush is putting up, people like Priscilla Owens or Janice Rogers Brown are not only going to face all Abortion issues as judges. Far more often, they will face issues involving corporations behaving irresponsibly. And, history has shown, these are the sorts of judges who will always find on behalf of the Corporations, and always find against the rights of working class and middle class Americans.