John Whitehead saves SLL the trouble of writing about the Supreme Court selection process after the death of Justice Scalia. Constitutional jurisprudence that’s actually based on the Constitution was dealt a mortal blow during FDR’s tenure and has long since expired. Depressingly, Whitehead argues that the next justice, whether he or she is appointed by a Republican or Democrat, will be a statist apparatchik. He will undoubtedly be proved correct. From Whitehead on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
The untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has predictably created a political firestorm over who gets to appoint the next U.S. Supreme Court justice, when, how, and where any judicial nominee will stand on the hot-button political issues of our day (same-sex marriage, Obamacare, immigration, the environment, and abortion).
This is yet another spectacle, not unlike the carnival-like antics of the presidential candidates, to create division, dissension and discord and distract the populace from the nation’s steady march towards totalitarianism.
Not to worry. This is a done deal. There are no surprises awaiting us.
The powers-that-be have already rigged the system.
They—the corporations, the military industrial complex, the surveillance state, the monied elite, etc.—will not allow anyone to be appointed to the Supreme Court who will dial back the police state. They will not tolerate anyone who will undermine their policies, threaten their profit margins, or overturn their apple cart.
Scalia’s replacement will be safe (i.e., palatable enough to withstand Congress’ partisan wrangling), reliable and most important of all, an extension of the American police state.
With the old order dying off or advancing into old age rapidly, we’ve arrived at a pivotal point in the makeup of the Supreme Court. With every vacant seat on the Court and in key judgeships around the country, we are witnessing a transformation of the courts into pallid, legalistic bureaucracies governed by a new breed of judges who have been careful to refrain from saying, doing or writing anything that might compromise their future ambitions.
Today, the judges most likely to get appointed today are well-heeled, well-educated (all of them attended either Yale or Harvard law schools) blank slates who have traveled a well-worn path from an elite law school to a prestigious judicial clerkship and then a pivotal federal judgeship.
In other words, it really doesn’t matter whether a Republican or Democratic president appoints the next Supreme Court justice, because they will all look alike (in terms of their educational and professional background) and sound alike (they are primarily advocates for the government).
Given the turbulence of our age, with its police overreach, military training drills on American soil, domestic surveillance, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, wrongful convictions, and corporate corruption, the need for a guardian of the people’s rights has never been greater.
Unfortunately, as I document in Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we have been saddled with instead are government courts dominated by technicians and statists who march in lockstep with the American police state.
This is true at all levels of the judiciary.
To continue reading: The People vs. the Police State: The Struggle for Justice in the Supreme Court
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
THE CONSTITUTION: LIVING OR DEAD?
In view of the unfolding spectacle, prompted by the untimely death of a judicial giant, then set aflame by the asinine comment of the chief Pachyderm in the Senate, I have again today heard the oft-touted admonition that our Constitution must be a “living” constitution. It must logically follow then that the one to which the Founders gave birth, to the extent it is so “living,” must therefore be pronounced as “dead and buried.”
Here is what our Founders actually did write about the birth of our Constitution and the Rule of its Law.
George Washington: “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution, which at any time exists, ’till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
Thomas Jefferson: “Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. … If it is, then we have no Constitution. … [T]o consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions … would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. … In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Alexander Hamilton: “If it were to be asked, ‘What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic?’ The answer would be, ‘An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last. … A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. … [T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes — rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.”
James Madison: “I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers.”
I will end these perspectives with a quote from Jefferson in a letter to William Johnson in 1823. I urge that every aspiring/practicing attorney whether; 1) attending school studying the law so as to become an attorney; or 2) in the practice of his/her craft as an attorney; or 3) sitting on the Bench presiding over the administration of the Law by fellow attorneys; or finally, 4) good and common sense has been seemingly eradicated from your soul and you reside in the halls of a legislature, you should be compelled to adhere to Jefferson’s timeless admonition:
“On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
Legal scholars or practitioners who fail to adhere to the preceding are by the logic of their failure to do so, destroying the very foundation upon which they claim to base their “construction.” The abysmal track record of our legal “guild” lies at the very root of why we find ourselves experiencing the destruction of our heritage of freedom.
I must believe there is an increasing awareness of such things, an awareness that will, in due time, become unimpeachable…
Dave
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Dave,
If you don’t mind, I’d like to make your excellent comment the basis of tonight’s They Said That?
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I would be honored and gratified.
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