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Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 7, 2009 / 13 Iyar 5769

The Libs Are Snickering

By Bob Tyrrell


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Is it possible that Justice David H. Souter has sensed what I have sensed in reading the liberals' dutiful adieus to him, their judicial Benedict Arnold? They all are snickering behind their hands. Sure, he pleased them enormously with his 19 years of tergiversations against conservative jurisprudence, after being President George H.W. Bush's "conservative" Supreme Court nominee. But through all Souter's years here in Washington, he revealed himself to be a stupendously self-absorbed oddball and not much else. He fell far short of the liberals' conception of a progressive Supreme Court dissenter, to wit: a charismatic, outspoken, slightly outre intellectual on the model of William O. Douglas.


Souter has been, as The Washington Post puts it, notable for his "quirky independence in spurning the right." The operative word here is "quirky." It is not meant as a compliment. Our liberals admire eccentricity but not the eccentricity of a misanthropic loner. Thus, in every supposedly friendly retrospective that I have read of him since he informed the Democratic president that he, a Republican's Supreme Court nominee, is retiring, the liberals have stressed his weirdness: the misfit, the loner, the guy whose luncheon consists of yogurt and an apple, which he eats "core and all." That was The New York Times speaking. On the front page of its "Week in Review" section, the newspaper ran a huge picture of him from years ago, in which he is wearing a silly plaid suit, the collar of his shirt vaguely reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge, his face expressionless but his eyes large and glistening, like the caricatures one used to see of girls with huge Bambi-like eyes. Another Times picture shows him in a coat and tie hastening past his ramshackle, unpainted, wooden farmhouse, situated at the end of an unmarked dirt road in rural New Hampshire. Some locals have thought it was abandoned.


It is a farmhouse his parents and grandparents inhabited and bequeathed to him, an only child, a bachelor, the Supreme Court's "solitary soul," as the Post subtly joshes. At every opportunity, the liberals write in their bon voyage reminiscences, Souter would flee Washington and drive his Volkswagen sedan to this hick hideout. He eschews airplanes, public appearances, and society in general. Now he is vacating his rented Southwest Washington apartment. He will not spend much time packing because, we are told by the amused liberals, he never unpacked when he drove down from New Hampshire in 1990. He just kept his effects in boxes. So now back into those boxes, he will dump his clunky shoes and his ratty old out-at-the-elbows sweaters before taking his last solitary ride back to the woods. There he likes to hike alone at night with a flashlight. I did not make this up. These are the details that the liberals have been relating as they recapitulate his career as a Republican-turned-progressive. As I say, they are snickering.


They have very little to say about Souter's work on the court other than that he sided routinely with the liberal minority. I can understand their reticence. After conferring with scholars who follow the court, I can report that they recall not one opinion of his that was memorable for anything other than smugness. As one told me, Justice Stephen Breyer's dissents have been "thought-provoking," Justice John Paul Stevens' "intelligent." Souter, in his dissents, has been simply a liberal tag-along. There is something about him that is not quite adult. He asks questions persistently, the liberals say with a wink. Well, so does a lost child.


It is said that Justice Souter is a "ferocious reader." (That from The Washington Post, perhaps again in jest. There is nothing ferocious about this milksop.) Supposedly, he reads a great deal of history, but his rare public remarks give little evidence of it. In one of his occasionally remarked-upon dissents, he seems to be oblivious of history. Two years back, he sided with the liberal minority in expressing the fear that Louisville, Ky., would slide back into segregation, perhaps even Jim Crow, without citywide racial quotas in its schools. If history demonstrates anything, it is that America is well beyond racial bigotry from government, whether local, state or federal.


Souter's bland years on the court should remind us how important it is for our leaders to have experience. President Bush and his advisers might have thought it was clever of them to nominate a judge with almost no paper trail. After serving on the New Hampshire Supreme Court for seven years, Souter served just two months on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before his nomination. But for almost two decades, it has been clear that he is out of his depth. The troubling thought is that the president who is about to nominate Souter's replacement is out of his depth, too.


I began this column with a question. Does the departing justice realize that the liberals, whom he benefited, are snickering? The answer is no. As with much else, he is oblivious.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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