Jeffrey Rosen has a very important question for Eric Holder:
Do you agree with Mr. Obama’s implication that the Supreme Court needs someone who will side with the powerless rather than the powerful? What if the best nominee happens to be a white male?
The Supreme Court just used the Fourth Amendment for a bib, we have indefinitely detained terrorism suspects whom we have tortured and therefore can't bring to trial because the evidence against them is tainted, and the government has been eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants. It's not like there's a shortage of intense legal issues one could ask the attorney general designate that might actually have something to do with his professional responsibilities. Rosen does ask whether Holder will pursue investigations in response to some of the above actions, but only in the context of worrying whether "liberals" will push Holder to do so "over Obama's objections," rather than staying quiet like they should.
At any rate, this isn't an honest question. In picking a justice, there will be a number of qualified candidates, each of whom would bring different strengths to the court. It's not like there's a strict point system for evaluating candidates objectively and determining that one sound nominee is better than the other. At a certain point it becomes completely subjective. The question is merely a rhetorical justification for whining after the fact should Obama indeed choose to go over the one-seat quota reserved for women and minorities on the court. But it's not clear what role the attorney general would ever play in selecting a justice! Maybe Rosen just wants everyone to know how lucky Holder is to be there instead of the really super-qualified white guy who should have gotten the job. Everyone knows that guy, you know the guy who would have gotten that job that time if it wasn't for that other inadequate black male, who only got the job because he's black?
Speaking of minorities, The New York Times looked for five legal experts and managed to come up with one who writes a conservative blog, one who used to work for the Bush administration, one who refers to liberals derisively in one of his questions, and another who works for the Heritage Foundation.
And all of them are white guys. Which is how you know they really know what they're talking about.
Fair and Balanced!
- A. Serwer
