"'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last. 'Good heavens! Listen to the voice of an innocent child,' said the father, and one whispered to the other what the child had said. 'But he has nothing on at all,' cried at last the whole people. That made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, 'Now I must bear up to the end.' And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist."
– "The Emperor's New Suit," by Hans Christian Andersen
In 1989, the United States Supreme Court decided that it was OK to execute 16-year-olds for their oftentimes brutal, heinous and murderous crimes against the rest of us. On Tuesday of this week, the same Court decided they were sorry they had offended political correctness, that the social consensus against capital punishment and international law compelled them to rule unconstitutional the execution of anyone under age 18 who commits a crime. Thus international law and social consensus now trump state legislatures and the will of the people.
This particular enlightenment came to the Court as they pondered the case of "Christopher Simmons – who was 17 on Sept. 8, 1993, when he broke into Shirley Crook's house, kidnapped her and threw her, bound and gagged, into a river – the Court also canceled the death sentences of 72 others for crimes they committed while younger than age 18" ("5-4 Supreme Court Abolishes Juvenile Executions," by Charles Lane, Washington Post, Page A1, March 2, 2005).
Unfortunately for all of us, the Court did not see fit to rule on Ms. Crook's plight, nor on the plight of the victims of the 72 other murderers whose death sentences they canceled. But like the fraudulent weavers described in the fairytale, the "swindlers came to this city; they made people believe they were weavers, and declared they could manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined. Their colours and patterns, they said, were not only exceptionally beautiful, but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid."
As Tuesday's decision indicates, there are five weavers on the Supreme Court who have convinced themselves – if not the rest of us – that they are weaving the black robes of impartial American justice, when in fact they are using the nonexistent weave of international law trimmed with the gilded threads of other nation's expectations. Their nakedness and shame as they don their own robes are visible to all who care to look upon them.
The Eighth Amendment is short: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." In 1878, the Court considered "cruel and unusual punishments" and wrote that:
Difficulty would attend the effort to define with exactness the extent of the constitutional provision which provides that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture [such as drawing and quartering, embowelling alive, beheading, public dissecting, and burning alive], and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment to the Constitution.'
– Wilkerson v. Utah, 1878
To the weavers on today's Court, the Constitution is a "living document." Perhaps that means the Founders periodically arise from their graves, take note of the more "advanced" and "enlightened" nations surrounding us in the European Union, Russia, Cuba, China and the Mideast and pencil in the "rights" they neglected to mention in the original document? How else can we explain the "right" to an abortion, a homosexual "marriage," discrimination against whites to advance minorities, and now to a free pass from the most effective and permanent punishment against those who take the life of an innocent person for their own ends? Only the most enlightened and fit for office can see these new rights – is that the case?
The Senate's self-appointed role to "advise and dissent" with a manufactured 60-vote majority on the appointment of high-ranking federal appeals and Supreme Court nominees has finally birthed its bitter fruit. Those possessing legal talent and an ability to think and reason – Robert Bork comes to mind – were simply unacceptable to the 'ol boy, 'ol girl atmosphere in the Senate. Rather than give us top legal talent, the process has now given us the bitter dregs of the bottom of the barrel of our society. Those appointed made comforting sounds during their confirmation hearings and went on to issue equally muddled opinions after their appointment.
In 2004's New Year's predictions, I wrote:
"One of the nation's less-grounded federal appeals courts will issue such an outrageous verdict in a case – which the Supreme Court will affirm by refusing to hear – that Congress will finally begin discussing impeachment for federal judges. Congress will rediscover its constitutional authority to put certain legislation beyond judicial review."
We aren't yet there, but it's coming. In the meantime, take a look at my Feb. 19, 2004 column, "A stealth stake through the left's heart."