Glenn Burkins, once a Charlotte Observer editor and currently the editor and publisher of QCityMetro.com, on Obama’s impending Supreme Court appointment.
Why is this a big deal?
Supreme Court Justices sit on the bench for life, or until they retire. With a handful of aging and sickly justices, Obama may have the opportunity to shape the Supreme Court for decades to come — justices who will help shape U.S. law.
That’s why you can expect Republicans (aka. “The Party of No.”) to kick and scream about anyone Obama appoints. You can bet they’re already digging for dirt on anyone they suspect might be on Obama’s short list.
It’s expected President Obama will appoint a woman, possibly a Latina woman.
OK, let’s admit it.We’re all thrilled that President Obama will get to make an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. For a Democrat, however, replacing David Souter is like re-marrying your ex-wife; where’s the fun in that?
Souter was appointed by the first President Bush but generally sided with the court’s liberal wing. So, unless Obama mistakenly names a closet conservative, his first appointment to the bench isn’t likely to move the court in one direction or the other.
Read the rest of this QCityMetro.com article, complete with predictions, here.
More from “The Party of No” from the DNC:
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 5, 2009.
Whoever President Obama picks, it should be someone who understands the gravity of the appointment.
I’m conducting research on how American foreign policy affects popular support for terrorism. This research project (RP) involves a worldwide survey to measure popular support for terrorism. It is inspired by the overall abuse of power pursued by the George W. Bush administration precisely at a time of ever-increasing demand for international cooperation and diplomacy. This RP maintains that the Bush administration’s foreign policies of unilateralism, preemption, and military hegemony (commonly referred to as the Bush Doctrine) represent a radical break from traditional American foreign policy. It further asserts a correlation between popular support for terrorism and a strong dissatisfaction with the status quo as upheld by the global hegemonic power.
Even though the Bush administration is no longer in office, this correlation is still relevant today as, without a clearly articulated Obama doctrine as of yet, we have no indication that American foreign policy will change course anytime soon. More broadly, a correlation between oppressive American foreign policy in general and popular support for terrorism would be of great interest to international relations (IR) scholars of all theoretical backgrounds— as America is the global hegemon. And for this reason, American foreign policy has a tremendous impact on the rest of the world. It can be used to secure peace and prosperity in the world (and along with it American credibility and legitimacy), or it can give rise to anti-American coalitions, create inefficiency through a loss of international cooperation, and diminish what legitimacy America may still enjoy as the leader of the international community.
During the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, we witnessed the latter at unprecedented levels. With a new administration in the Oval Office, research of this nature can prove invaluable in championing a more benevolent and multilateral American foreign policy in the future. Finally, measuring popular support for terrorism will afford us the ability to construct a model that demonstrates the demographic composition of a society supportive of terrorism versus one that is not. This model, in turn, should provide a method of measuring and predicting 1) the potential for terrorism in any given society, 2) the direction that acts of terrorism tend to be moving in (e.g. westward, eastward, or remaining static), and 3) broad trends in the support for terrorism, such as whether popular support is increasing among moderates, Westerners, and so forth. The survey can be accessed at
http://www.johnmaszka.com/SURVEY.html
Please take a moment and fill out the survey. The long-term goal of this project is to facilitate a more diplomatic American foreign policy in the years ahead.
Thank you!
John Maszka
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