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Now that Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has announced his retirement effective at the end of the current term, President Obama will soon be announcing his second pick for the Supreme Court. Let’s hope he learned at least a bit about the Constitutional role of the Supreme Court since his nomination of Sonya Sotomayor just about a year ago. This is what he said at the time when asked the type of individual he would be looking for to replace Justice David Souter:

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Excuse me Mr. President, but according to the U.S. Constitution and the principle known as “rule of law” that govern our nation, the role of a Supreme Court Justice is based solely and completely on “abstract legal theory”. The law is the law and the Constitution is the Constitution, and the Supreme Court’s role in our representative democracy is to make decisions about the legality of laws and lower court decisions based entirely upon their constitutionality. “Empathy and understanding of how our laws affect the daily realities of people lives” have no legitimate place in the decision making process that a justice must use.

By now the liberals reading this are probably thinking that I have a heart of stone and ice water in my veins, but that isn’t the case at all. Empathy and understanding certainly have a place in running our government, passing our laws and “looking out for the little guy”. And that place rests soley among the members od the legislative and executive branches, NOT the courts.

New laws that right social wrongs and “level the playing field” are sometimes needed, and Congress has been pretty good at writing and passing them throughout our nation’s history. But when a law is contrary to the Constitution, regardless of how good the the lawmakers’ intentions when they passed it, the Supreme Court has a legal and moral responsibility to cast their personal opinions and their own good intentions aside and declare the law unconstitutional. If the problem being addressed is so grievous or outrageous that Congress feels that it simply MUST do something about it, they can either rewrite the law to conform to the Constitution or amend the Constitution in a way that makes the law that was previously struck down ultimately constitutional.

Critics of this approach – the correct approach – will say that it’s incredibly difficult to pass a constitutional amendment and get it ratified by the states. They’re right. And that’s by design. The founding fathers were wise enough to know that a Constitution that can be changed on a whim is pretty much worthless, so they made the process to amend ours both difficult to accomplish and lengthy. But the Constitution can be amended, and it has been numerous times since our nation was founded.

It is my hope that President Obama will honor the Constitutional role of the Supreme Court and nominate someone who will strictly interpret the Constitution when deciding how to vote instead of simply trying to “make new law” on his/her own. After all, we have a highly-paid Congress who have been tasked with that job, and all things considered thay have historically done a pretty decent job at it. And when they failed, the Supreme Court has set them straight.

Well, it has finally happened. Disney recently announced that the syndicated movie review program “At The Movies” will not be renewed after the current season ends. To be honest, I don’t see how it managed to hold on as long as it did.

Launched in the 1970′s by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the weekly show featured the two film critics squaring off about their likes and dislikes among new movie releases. The opinions they offered for each movie was easy to understand – either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, and the pair often gave different opinions. The critics staffing the show have changed over the years, but the format has remained basically the same.

The problem with the critics on “At The Movies” has always been their inclination to give reviews that didn’t jive with the success or failure the films would ultimately find in the marketplace. Films that receive two thumbs down often turn out to be blockbusters while the ones the critics rave about often turn out to be flops. But with only a handful of people reviewing movies, those who paid attention to them had little choice but to watch the show even if it meant taking the opinions rendered with a grain of salt.

As with so many other media industries, the undoing of “At The Movies” came courtesy of the Internet. Nowadays all one has to do to find out how good a movie is is visit a couple of blogs where real people – lots of them – post reviews of their own. No longer are we stuck with the opinions of just two opinionated critics who make their living telling others what they will or won’t enjoy. Now, in a matter of minutes we can read a couple of dozen reviews by real people just like you and me. I ask you, which reviews are likely to be the most relevant?

And so it goes. “At The Movies” certainly had a good run, but in all the years that it has been on the air I have never watched more than a few minutes of any particular show. Why? I always found it hard to find any common ground between what I liked and what the critics liked. And apparently I wasn’t alone.

For over two centuries now the United States of America has been the envy of the world. She has long stood tall and proud, a great nation whose strength and resolve have been admired like no other – even by her enemies. Our country and the free market economic system upon which it is based have not only allowed us Americans to enjoy the highest standard of living in the history of the world, they have also helped billions of people in other countries persevere through times of great trouble and distress when disaster struck.

But now as we head into the second decade of the new millennium, we Americans see our elected leaders taking us down a path of political and economic destruction. The boom created by the greatest economic engine ever devised by man and blessed by the Creator could soon give way to gloom and doom thanks to massive government spending and ever-stronger restraints on personal liberty and free enterprise. If our elected leaders fail to wake up to the idiocy of their actions, the United States of America will soon become just a hollow shell of the bastion of freedom, power and prosperity that she has been since rising triumphantly from the ashes of tyranny way back in 1776.

As an American patriot it pains me to see this great country being ruined by a temporary majority who have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about governing against the will and wishes of the governed. Make no mistake about it: America is in decline. It’s up to us, the REAL Americans, to reverse the nation’s course this November. If we don’t, the America we all know and love could quite possibly cease to exist.