The Weekly Enlightenment

Well, I've been without internet and on vacation for a total of two weeks now. Sorry I haven't sent anything out, I thought we were getting disconnected one day, and it appeared to be a day early. Anyways, I don't have many stories, and even if I did, they would be slightly outdated.

So here is what has been bugging me the last couple weeks...

President Obama and Vice President Biden keep insisting they have been misreading the economy. How exactly do we know they aren't misreading Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, etc.? Their "misreading" doesn't exactly give me confidence about them.

Great point by Rush Limbaugh that the bad economy is a backdoor to universal health care. For some reason, health care is tied to your employer. Besides hampering small businesses with this added cost (which likely reduces your salary that you could use to purchase your own insurance), if businesses are doing bad, that means more and more businesses will close or lay off people. Then that affects their health coverage. So the higher unemployment, the more people will be clamoring for universal care.

Democrat senator Pat Leahy said don't rush to judgement on Sotomayor. Yet it was fine to do that to Roberts, Alito, Clarence Thomas, or even Robert Bork. In Bork's case, Ted Kennedy went to the floor of the Senate to oppose him less than an hour after Bork was nominated. Nothing like rushing to judgement. For the transcript of Kennedy's speech see this. Back-alley abortions, segregated lunch counters, yes, no rush to judgement there.

Why is it so important to have a woman on the court? I want the best people on the court. If it was all white men, or black men, or all women, or all Hispanics, what difference does it make? I'm not saying the current crop by any means is the best and brightest, but I am against making their gender or race the sole reason for their hiring.

The big talk in any Supreme Court nominee hearing is stare decisis, which means respecting precedent. Where was the love for stare decisis before abortion, criminal rights (Miranda, warrants, confessions, lawyers), campaign finance, property rights, etc. It just means respecting laws liberals like.

Another great point from Rush: Sotomayor says O'Connor can't mean what she said when O'Connor said a wise old man and a wise old woman will reach the same conclusion...what prevents Sotomayor from saying the Constitution doesn't mean what it says?

If Obama had been a Republican, would the media have been celebrating the first black President? We can see if Palin gets the nomination, we'll see if the media is celebratory about the first woman President. Democrats think all black people should think alike and support Obama because Obama is black like them. Will they do the same with women if Palin is the nominee?

Finally, a great suggestion from Ed Morrissey. If there is a right to health care, isn't there a right to legal care? Of course Democrats wouldn't go for this, trial lawyers are one of their biggest constituencies.