Can someone please tell me....

why in the hell the first question about President Obama's pick to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court is whether they will be a woman or Hispanic or black or whatever? Once again, we miss the entire point about the Supreme Court and more broadly the judicial branch. Look no further than your basic government class in school, and you'll see the Judicial Branch is an independent branch of government and was designed to be politically independent by making federal judgeships lifetime appointments under the Constitution. Obama's criteria in his choice of who will be the next person to sit on the Supreme Court should not include any kind of empathy toward a particular group. Can I get a 14th Amendment shout out? Every time this situation comes up, a controversy begins, usually of political prowess. And the main political issue that trumps all is that of abortion. Is the judge pro-life or pro-choice? Right now, every pro-life and pro-choice group you can think of is preparing responses to all the potential choices, and if that choice happens to lean personally one way or another, the other side will lose its bananas. Again, we miss the point that the judicial branch is supposed to INTERPRET and APPLY the laws according to the Constitution, not make up its own legislation. That would be the LEGISLATIVE Branch's job. But nowadays, and this went on with Bush too, it's all about gaining a political edge and putting in judges who will mirror your views. Simply applying the law is merely an afterthought.

It's not always black and white:

I just completed the spring semester at college. In my intro to the law class, I was asked to write a three page response to an article regarding the issue of American "torture" of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and how President Obama has handled the issue. The author took a shot at Obama for side-swapping the issue and not pressing for prosecutions, even though he campaigned strongly on shutting the facility down, which he has indeed signed an executive order for. But maybe President Obama realized that campaigning is easier than executing, and that situations are often complicated ones. I never really warmed up to President Bush, but I always resented him being called a war criminal by people who praise other presidents who made similarly morally gray choices. Whether the acts such as water-boarding and walling should be considered torture or not is beside the point. Let's allow the proposition that it is torture: was it justifiable? The radical anti-bushies would say no. Some of those same ones will praise other presidents who made even tougher decisions. Let's take a look at some comparisons. I'm not saying these decisions are necessarily wrong, they're just rhetorical questions.

- If water-boarding and sleep deprivation are war crimes, what is dropping an atomic bomb on thousands of innocent civilians?

- Bush holding terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay has been called a war crime by some. Go to your google box and type in Japanese Americans, "war relocation camps".

- Bush was berated for denying habeas corpus rights to the detainees by some of the same people who praise Abraham Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus to American citizens during the Civil War. Democrats love to praise Woodrow Wilson, who signed the Espionage Act, which made it illegal for Americans to use critical language about the government.

- Finally we can't forget all those who clamored for a third Bill Clinton term, the same Bill Clinton who backed the NATO bombing of Serbia, which killed hundreds of innocent civilians. His defense was that the bombing helped prevent a bloodier offensive, the same type of argument used over and over again by presidents.

It's not enough to say each situation is unique, and one is situation is more morally demanding than the other. There are just some complex questions that go along with these issues? Did dropping the atomic bomb save thousands of other lives down the road? Did water-boarding these suspects help prevent violent acts against Americans akin to 9/11? We may never know the true answer, but maybe President Obama understands it's not always a black and white thing. Sometimes you have to be morally gray.

Two years down

I just completed by second year of college, which flew by even more quickly than the first. I'm more than grateful for the three new people that came into my life over the course of the year. I still like the college very much, despite some housekeeping flaws and asinine policies. The people, students and most of the professors are great. I would like to see more people from this part of the state go to the school.