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Arlen Specter accuses John Roberts and Samuel Alito of violating the oath they took at their confirmation hearings.

The former Republican, on the way out of the Senate, thinks this is worth saying:

"The Supreme Court has been eating Congress' lunch by invalidating legislation with judicial activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact finding and precedents...

"Ignoring a massive congressional record and reversing recent decisions, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito repudiated their confirmation testimony given under oath and provided the key votes to permit corporations and unions to secretly pay for political advertising ? thus effectively undermining the basic Democratic principle of the power of one person, one vote...  Chief Justice Roberts promised to just call balls and strikes and then he moved the bases."

Bleh. You just disagree with the call.  I hate this sort of political posturing. It's not the massiveness of the congressional record that makes a statute constitutional. It's fitting within the Constitution.

Specter is acting as if the question at the confirmation hearing was: If we put a really, really huge number of words into the record, do you promise to let us do anything we want? And the answer was: Yes, of course. When I see a lot of pages, I always think, wow, that must be true.

Full post as published by Althouse on December 21, 2010 (boomark / email).