Reid Admits Dem Attempted Polticization of the Judiciary

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Chief Justice John Roberts of misleading the Senate about how conservative he was. This complaint comes after years of democrat complaints that Bush and Republicans tried to politicize the judiciary. So basically, Reid is complaining that Chief Justice Roberts foiled his attempt to filter out conservative justices no matter how qualified they were. What ever happened to confirmations being based on merit rather than politics?

The answer is that liberals have always seen the judiciary as a political branch. It started from nearly the beginning with John Adams creating ten new federal courts after losing to Jefferson in the Presidential Election. In order to insulate his political agenda, Adams then quickly tried to fill the new positions before leaving office, stocking the judiciary with Federalist political allies. The new appointments infamously became known as the "Midnight Judges." Granted, John Adams was hardly liberal compared to the socialists that currently constitute the left wing of American politics, but Adam believed in a bigger federal government than his opponent Jefferson, and is therefore the "liberal" of that era.

Another egregious example is Franklin Roosevelt's court packing plan. The first real shift towards liberalization of of the judiciary in this country came upon the threats of Roosevelt to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices in order to get through his New Deal economic agenda.

Lastly, up until Reagan, the Supreme Court nominees were generally quickly approved, and were rarely contested at all. The first real nasty public political opposition to a nomination was Robert Bork, an incredibly prominent and accomplished Federal Judge. According to Chief Justice Burger, Mr. Bork was the best qualified nominee in his own professional lifetime--a span of years that included the appointments of such judicial luminaries as Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter. The confirmation hearings included despicable personal attacks, blatant distortions and even out right lies in order to smear the nominee at all costs.

The trend only has intensified since then with outrageous treatment of Clarence Thomas, and many if not most of Bushes conservative appointments. So when Obama's nominees face obstructionist tactics in the senate, the Democrats better not complain, because they are the ones who have continuously denigrated the process to its current deplorable condition. And now, Majority Leader Harry Reid can't say anything about it, because now he has admitted the Supreme Court is all about politics for the Dems.