Joel Connelly Misses the Point (again)

I haven't been able to pick on Floyd McKay much recently, but Joel Connelly fills the void with another left wing political screed. In the rather scarily titled editorial, "Will our Constitution Get Rolled Back?" Connelly argues:

"Let us no(t) weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs," Jefferson wrote.

He was, of course, right.

Would James Madison be able to grasp "wiretapping?" Or "intelligent design" be explained to Alexander Hamilton?

The United States is vastly better off for recognition of a right of privacy, for restraints exercised on powers of the state and police, and for the expanded rights of citizens to challenge their government in court.

Such changes in American life, amazingly, get demonized.

"There is a Republican noise machine that goes on arguing that 'legal activism' is killing us," Sunstein said. "Liberal judicial activism was decades ago."

Fundamentalists are the new activists, eager to erase precedents and strike down acts of Congress.

He is, of course, getting it backwards. Legal fundamentalists, strict constructionists, are not eager to strike down acts of Congress, they are eager to strike down acts of the courts who think they are Congress. Roe v. Wade did not end some kind of Congressional move to impose abortion rights, it created a whole new right out of thin air, and pre-empted the legislative branch's rights and responsibility to pass laws as it sees fit. Legal fundamentalism isn't about imposing ideology, it is about realizing the court's role in our constitutional framework, and letting the voters through their elected representatives determine the ideology of this country, and not through a bunch of unelected judges.