No cheers for Bork

Well, Robert Bork thinks that Elena Kagan, the President's nominee for the Supreme court, is unfit to serve. His main reason is that she is a big fan of the former president of Israel's Supreme Court, Aharon Barak. Barak's sin is that he is a liberal judicial "activist". Bork believes that the only true way to adjudicate constitutional issues is by "originalism": determining how the originators of the Constitution viewed or would view each issue. Consequently, Bork doesn't believe in a right of privacy or any civil rights embelishments such as prohibition of the poll tax. This puts him solidly in the Scalia-Thomas axis. Ironically, Scalia himself has given at least one speech in which he praised Aharon Barak, though conceding that they differed on ideology. Of course, Scalia himself is a judicial activist as evidenced by his support of the absurd "corporations as individuals" position. It's hard to believe Jefferson or Madison -- who had something to do with our Constitution -- would believe that artificial corporate entities (unknown in their time) had rights of free speech.

Bork was indeed "borked" out of a Supreme Court seat: not by a filibuster, but by a good old-fashioned bipartisan "NO" majority. He has since been whining about it from the sidelines. Most Americans especially hated him for firing Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox, after both Elliot Richardson (Att. Gen.) and William Ruckelshaus (Dep. Att. Gen) courageously resigned rather than do Nixon's dirty work. Bork's arrogance, toadyism, and bad judgement made his eventual rejection by the Senate well-deserved. He was unfit to serve, and now appartently is guided by the well-known playground principle "Takes one to know one."