Biden Finally Has A Good Idea

Sen. Joe Biden suggests "scrapping" Senate confirmation hearings for SCOTUS nominees.

WASHINGTON Jan 12, 2006 — Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden said Thursday.

"The system's kind of broken," said Biden, a member of the Judiciary Committee considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito.

"Nominees now, Democrat and Republican nominees, come before the United States Congress and resolve not to let the people know what they think about the important issues," such as a president's authority to go to war, said Biden.

The system is broken, especially if senators - namely Democrats - insist on turning confirmation hearings into peremptory witchhunts and smear campaigns instead of viewing them as simple measures used to confirm the professional qualifications of a nominee. And when it comes to SCOTUS nominees, Biden is either unaware of or has lost sight of the fact that such hearings aren't even intended to "let the people know what they think about the important issues." Sam Alito has been nominated to the Supreme Court; he isn't running for public office. The only thing that matters is whether he will respect the limits of government and apply constitutional law accordingly.

After Joe Biden rambled through the first 2:45 of "questions" on Day 1, Hugh Hewitt made the comment that "truly, anyone can be a United States Senator." Today Hugh points us to an op-ed by Richard Cohen, who by default, if unintentionally, makes the case for term limits as he explains how power and arrogance corrupt the career politician.

The seniority that makes Biden so knowledgeable on foreign policy -- a conversation with him is always instructive -- is also what cripples. He has been in the Senate since 1973 and suffers, as nearly all senators do sooner or later, from the conviction that he and his colleagues are the center of the world. After all, no one -- with the possible exception of family members -- ever tells a senator to shut up. They are surrounded by fawning staff and generally treated as minor deities. They lose perspective, which is why, now that you've asked, they talk and talk at these hearings. They are convinced the world is watching. Actually, it's only a half a dozen shut-ins on C-SPAN -- and, of course, the nearly catatonic press corps. Everyone else is playing computer solitaire.

Amen.