Voters can help pick U.S. Supreme Court justice with their presidential vote
We've seen videos of politicians saying things in the past that they deny saying in the present. They are successors to one of humanity's more important inventions: writing and the written record. Written records and written laws ended ambiguous contracts, agreements, and fungible laws in ways not seen before.
No other modern document is more important than our 4,400-word U.S. Constitution, our law of laws. It defines our government's construction, limits it, and lists God-given rights we all have and a process, in the document, for amending it when needed.
By ignoring our Constitution we undermine the certainty that all of us should have, that our laws are what they say, not what some judge, judges, prosecutor, politician, or policeman claims they mean. It is a document that any reasonably literate person should be able to read and know their defined rights, sans lawyers.
Most revisionists have contempt for our Constitution, calling it outdated, a "charter of negative liberties, full of constraints imposed upon us by our Founding Fathers," in Obama's words.
Obama can, and likely will, make an appointment to the Supreme Court to replace its strongest supporter of original meaning with a liberal who would amend it from the bench; rule by nine people in black robes, not written law.
Congress likely will, and must, block his appointment, as a video shows Democrat Sen. Chuck Shumer trying to deny George W. Bush with two years left in office. Obama is a weak, lame duck, failure, with little support for his policies and programs among voters. His public support is well below 50 percent.
Americans must have a voice in who will replace Justice Antonin Scalia for decades to come, by voting for who will choose his replacement in the presidential election. Republicans may be hurt, but given an angry electorate and dire consequences of a lame duck appointment, it is a risk that must be taken if a written law is to have any meaning.
David R. Kraner
Bradenton
This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Voters can help pick U.S. Supreme Court justice with their presidential vote ."