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September 14, 2005
Biden's Hypocrisy
Topics: Supreme Court
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) gave Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg the following instructions during her nomination hearing:
Judge, you not only have a right to choose what you will answer and not answer. But, in my view, you should not answer a question of what your view will be on an issue that clearly is going to come before the court in 50 different forms, probably, over your tenure on the court.Today, Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts declined to give Biden specific answers to questions concerning whether or not the U.S. Constitution supports the "right to die", citing the likelihood that related cases would come before the Supreme Court. "Senator, that's asking me for an opinion in the abstract on a question that will come before the court," Roberts stated.
Biden, who passionately believes in a passive euthanasia he calls "the right to die", displayed a profound level of hypocrisy in his response to Roberts:
(...) we are rolling the dice with you, Judge.(...) See, you've told me nothing, Judge.
With all due respect, you've not -- look, it's kind of interesting, this Kabuki dance we have in these hearings here, as if the public doesn't have a right to know what you think about fundamental issues facing them
The idea that the founders sat there and said, Look, here's what we're going to do: We're going to require the two elected branches to answer questions of the public with no presumption they should have the job as senator, president or congressman. But guess what? We're going to have a third co-equal branch of government that gets to be there for life; never, ever again to be able to be asked the question they don't want to answer. And you know what? He doesn't have to tell us anything. It's OK, as long as he is -- as you are -- a decent, bright, honorable man, that's all we need to know. That's all we need to know.
Is it any wonder that some question the value of the nomination hearings given that senators, such as Biden, unashamedly display gross levels of intellectual dishonesty and use the public platform as a pulpit to advance their own political agenda?
[Note that it was Arizona's Sen. John Kyl (R) who pointed out Biden's prior instructions.]
Posted by tim at September 14, 2005 8:17 PM
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