Litmus Test

Barack Obama has decided to vote "no" on Judge Roberts. More interstingly, he appears to be in favor of a political litmus test for confirming judges

The problem I face ... is that while adherence to legal precedent and rules of statutory or constitutional construction will dispose of 95 percent of the cases that come before a court, so that both a Scalia and a Ginsburg will arrive at the same place most of the time on those 95 percent of the cases -- what matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult...In those circumstances, your decisions about

whether affirmative action is an appropriate response to the history of discrimination in this country

or

whether a general right of privacy encompasses a more specific right of women to control their reproductive decisions

or

whether the commerce clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce

...

in those difficult cases, the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.

When I heard that the Democratic party is the party of emotive theatrics, I understood that to be sarcasm, hmmm. I would presume to remind Sen. Obama that ultimate mastery is not of the body, but of the mind.

This little paragraph sums up the corner Democrats have painted themselves into

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) made a remarkable statement: "The president is not entitled to very much deference in staffing the third branch of government, the judiciary."

This country has only one president at a time ... if the presidential election means anything in this arena, it must mean that the president's choice has a heavy presumption of confirmation ... Why else would Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have received only a handful of no-votes among them? During the Clinton administration, we deplored the way that the Senate treated the president's judicial nominees during six years of Republican control over the Senate ... If Republicans had been applying Mr. Reid's standard, they would have been within their rights to reject [all Clinton's nominees].

UPDATE: Looks like the Chicago Tribune is thinking some of the same things.

No one expected such independence from Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, a reflexive partisan. It was disheartening, though, to see Barack Obama (D-Ill.) fall in line with the Democratic leadership--and do a poor job of justifying that position. Admitting that the nominee has a host of sterling qualities, Obama essentially said he couldn't vote for him because Roberts doesn't seem to share Obama's views on racial issues--in short, he just isn't as enlightened as Obama. Who knew of that constitutional requirement?