Halligan nomination debacle exemplifies America's precarious crossroads

By Chris Adamo

Finally, Senate Republicans have achieved a political and moral victory. Caitlin Halligan, a far-left judicial activist and Obama nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was soundly rejected in a fifty-four to forty-five Senate vote on Tuesday. Though liberalism continues to ravage the nation, at least one extra-constitutional militant will not be spearheading the movement by exceeding and abusing the authority vested in the court system.

Heartland America is daily bombarded with horrendous news of continued unraveling of the economy, abetted by the latest Obama affronts to the Constitution and the free market. People on Main Street are angry and alarmed that the nation they love is being wrested from them while the liberal media looks on with gleeful approval. On that basis this small victory can be regarded as an encouragement in and of itself. But in a much larger sense, it embodies both the assaults on the nation by the liberal/Democrat political machine, and the manner in which they must be repulsed.

Liberal lawmakers and executives, from state capitols to Washington, have been aggressively undermining the foundations of this country for the purpose of remaking it in their twisted image, and politicizing every position of power where they can entrench themselves, in order to wield state sanctioned authority over the common citizen. Regular breaches of the public trust, perpetrated under the auspices of "the greater good," pose a burgeoning threat to the lives, property, and freedoms formerly enjoyed as the unalienable rights of the American people.

Among the worst offenders have been those liberal judicial activists who shamelessly brandish their appointed and unaccountable positions as the means by which to conform society to their own perverse worldview. From the atrocity of "Roe vs. Wade" to the ongoing cavalcade of judicial opinions declaring any public profession of the Christian faith to be violations of the "separation of Church and state," much of American life has had its norms and boundaries drastically reordered at the whims of liberal jurists. And given that such individuals are almost entirely beyond the reach of the electorate, it is altogether predictable that liberal strategists will focus their primary efforts at dominating the courts.

In the nation's highest court, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Barack Obama's two appointees, epitomize the brazen leftist arrogance that construes judicial office not as any objective charge to impartially uphold the law for all, but as an opportunity to exercise unbridled power. To nobody's great surprise, they were considered for their current positions with only cursory references to their abhorrent track records of undermining basic constitutional principle. Their confirmation hearings quickly degenerated into contrived controversies pertaining to gender and ethnicity. Now they sit at the pinnacle of American jurisprudence, potentially controlling the final arbitration of such fundamental and defining issues as whether or not government can forcibly impress the population into socialism.

Among the defining issues facing a Supreme Court review is Obamacare, with its inarguable despotic excesses and unconstitutional infringements on the rights of American citizens. That it could have even reached this milestone signifies a dangerous lapse in the former adherence to the noble principles on which the nation was founded. Worse still is the ominous possibility that, with only a single teetering swing vote, the Supreme Court as currently comprised could indeed hand down a five to four decision upholding Obamacare as acceptable law.

With dwindling vestiges of judicial sanity standing as the only firewall between America's former splendor and the desolate future ordained by the liberal political cabal, the question of who will fill the nation's high courts becomes ever more crucial. Clearly, Barack Obama intends to thoroughly taint the courts, at the highest levels, with philosophically poisoned and morally bankrupt leftists of his own shriveled ideology. The attempt to appoint Caitlin Halligan epitomized just such an effort.

Senator Charles Grassley (R.-IA), who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned of her abominably biased track record. She has strenuously supported nuisance lawsuits against gun manufacturers as a means of negating the Second Amendment. She condones the intimidation tactics of the radical pro-abortion "National Organization for Women" (NOW), calculated to suppress the lawful actions of pro-life organizations. Yet with just as much zeal, she fights for the "rights" of Islamic terrorists to be afforded full constitutional protection.

It is wholly significant that the position for which Halligan was being considered was once held by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. It is not difficult to ascertain that Obama was likely lining up another avowed leftist to a position where she could be easily elevated to the next vacant position on the nation's high court.

The systematic dismantling of America's foundational principles over the past seven decades has clearly accelerated to an alarming degree during the three years of the Obama Administration. The cooperation of a thoroughly compliant court is crucial to keeping the Obama/Alinsky agenda on track. Though Americans at the grassroots have been thoroughly outraged at the changes they have seen since January 2009, such things would pale in comparison to what could ensue if the Marxist aspirations of this administration are eventually unshackled from constitutional restraints.

Republicans understood that any sincere regard for the integrity of the Constitution and the rule of law compelled them to reject Halligan as wholly unfit to hold an office of that stature. Nevertheless, liberals are predictably caterwauling in the wake of her rejection, spewing every standard "politically correct" accusation against their GOP rivals including, in Obama's words that they had put "party ahead of country." Meanwhile, from the mouthpieces on Capitol Hill to their parrots on the nightly news, Halligan was lauded in the highest of terms.

While Americans have understandably been focused on the disastrous downturn of this nation's economy over the past three years, and are intent on seeing it reversed, they had better be every bit as vigilant and concerned over the makeup of the justice system. Otherwise, they could lose any fleeting economic rebound they may enjoy, along with every other fundamental right and liberty they once cherished.

© Chris Adamo