Ruling by Emotion, Not the Constitution
“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” Obama, 2009
“Therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men.” James Madison
Since last November’s Nuke Option stunt by Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats, the latest appointment and nominations show just how more radical Obama’s courts and administration will become. Until the Democrat-led Senate invoked the nuclear option, it would have taken 60 Senators to give a yes vote for nominee confirmations, but now that a simple majority makes the decision, Harry Reid is ordering votes on more than 75 nominations. One of these is highly controversial judicial activist Cornelia Pillard who has accused pro-life supporters of turning women into “presumptive breeders”, suggested that abstinence education is “unconstitutional” and claimed that ultrasound technology is manipulates Americans to think of the unborn in terms of “personhood”.
Turning now however to the most recent nomination for appointment to the DOJ, it has brought a promise by the Fraternal Order of Police to fight this nomination “to the bitter end”. It seems as though Obama has nominated an attorney who gave legal representation during the appellate court fight to notorious cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal to head voter-rights enforcement at the DOJ.
Mumia Abu-Jamal was a former member of the Black Panthers, who was convicted for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. On December 9, 1981, Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot dead while conducting a traffic stop on Abu-Jamal’s brother, William Cook. Abu-Jamal was injured by a shot from Faulkner and when further police arrived on the scene, he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He was originally given the death penalty, handed down at his first trial in July 1982, but that was commuted to life imprisonment without parole in 2012 because as a lawyer with the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP, Debo Adegbile argued that there was racial discrimination in the jury selection for Abu-Jamal’s original trial.
Fraternal Order of Police and Officer Faulkner’s widow are outraged that Obama would nominate Debo Adegbile, seeing it as offensive and have written Obama about the nomination, saying in part,
This nomination can be interpreted in only one way: it is a thumb in the eye of our nation’s law enforcement officers… it demonstrates a total lack of regard or empathy for those who strive to keep you and everyone else in our nation safe in your homes and neighborhoods—sometimes giving their lives in the effort.
Debo Adegbile defends his work on the case, saying it was on an “unconstitutional basis” that the death sentence was thrown out.
Whether or not the decision was made on a technicality the fact remains that out of thousands of highly capable lawyers, Obama picks one that has ties to not only a former member of the Black Panthers who became a cult of personality to leftists, but who also murdered a cop in cold blood. This nomination says a lot about the thoughtlessness of Obama, who once accused police of “acting “stupidly”and whose Attorney General, Eric Holder, refused to prosecute members of the Black Panthers for voter intimidation. The only race relations this administration is interested in is division and for the progressive Democrats in the Senate who love to hurl the race card at every given chance, we can be sure they will bully this nomination through the Senate.
