From PhonyKerry.com

I thought, as a naïve child, that the advent of greater, faster, more sophisticated, more widely available technologies would greatly reduce the misquotations and misunderstandings that often overwhelm reasoned discussion. Not so, I find.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in today’s issue (page A11), says that Bush stated in the last debate that “he would not appoint a Supreme Court justice who supported the 1857 Dred Scott decision justifying slavery.” The AJC then proceeded to complain about this puzzling comment and ridicule Bush on the grounds that, of course, nobody expects him to support a pro-slavery justice. If the AJC had listened, maybe they wouldn’t have been so puzzled. Here’s what Bush really said (source: CNN):

Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn’t pick.

I wouldn’t pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn’t be said in a school because it had the words “under God” in it. I think that’s an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights.

That’s a personal opinion. That’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we’re all — you know, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t speak to the equality of America.

He wasn’t talking about appointing pro-slavery judges; he was giving an example of judges basing rulings on personal opinion rather than on the Constitution. It’s a real shame how little attention people pay before criticizing each other.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.