Sandra Day O'Connor is stepping down as a Supreme Court justice after 24 years, and most Americans still have no idea how she got the job in the first place.
She got it through deception.
She fooled President Reagan into thinking she was a supporter of the Constitution as written, and she did it with the help of a conservative Republican icon named Kenneth Starr.
Starr is best known as the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton's crimes as president. As such, he set himself up as a foil for Democrats – a kind of pit bull who would stop at nothing to bring Clinton to justice.
The truth? He was either the most incompetent prosecutor in the history of the country or complicit in the cover-up of those crimes. I lean toward the latter judgment.
I tend to judge people by their deeds, not their words. And, intentionally or unintentionally, Starr and O'Connor are two people who have done much more to harm this country than help it.
Ultimately, Starr let Clinton off the hook on all his crimes. And he did it in a way that actually persuaded many that he was unjustly persecuting the ex-president. That is no mean feat.
But less well-known is Starr's role in deliberately deceiving President Reagan about O'Connor – changing the very dynamic of the court for nearly a quarter-century.
I'm sure there will be many nice words expressed about the O'Connor legacy over the coming weeks and months. But the truth is that O'Connor has been a disaster on the court. She has no respect for the U.S. Constitution. She fancies herself a lawmaker, not a justice. And that is just how she has handled her long tenure on the court.
She is also one of the majority members of the court who believes the U.S. Supreme Court should look to foreign courts for precedents. It is an astonishing betrayal of American sovereignty, independence and our Constitution.
While others today are extolling Sandra Day O'Connor's tenure on the court, I say, "good riddance."
What was Starr's role in elevating O'Connor to this position?
In 1981, it was – as recounted by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak – "a hurriedly prepared, error-filled memo by a young Justice Department lawyer" that convinced President Reagan to go through with the nomination of O'Connor to the court – despite tremendous opposition from those who believed she was unfit and unworthy of Reagan's support.
That young Justice Department lawyer was Kenneth Starr.
The memo gave O'Connor a clean bill of health on abortion by "using legal gymnastics to explain her Arizona legislative record," wrote Evans and Novak. He wrote that she had "no recollection" of how she voted on a 1970 bill to legalize abortion when, in fact, she was a co-sponsor of the measure that was defeated 6-3 in committee.
Starr misrepresented that O'Connor was something of a friend and associate of the leader of the state's Arizona pro-life leader, Dr. Carolyn Gerster. In fact, Gerster told Evans and Novak: "I had an adversary position with Sandra O'Connor" and called her "one of the most powerful pro-abortionists in the [Arizona] Senate."
Starr has since reportedly confided to a few conservatives that his role in the O'Connor debacle is his biggest regret. That hardly begins to undo the damage he has inflicted on the nation as a result of that chicanery. And if I were Starr, I would regret even more the fact that I was unable or unwilling to charge President Clinton with any meaningful high crime or misdemeanor given the overwhelming evidence against him on the public record.
The Starr historical legacy can best be summarized like this: He deceived President Reagan about O'Connor and let Clinton off the hook for monstrous crimes. Just what is it about the career of Kenneth Starr that some find so heroic and laudable?