I don't think I'd be a very good nominee for a court position, but not for the reasons you think. But then again neither would many people who are currently legal experts or are budding legal experts and who happen to be blogging or commenting online these days. It's not that I don't think that many of these people couldn't answer Senator Biden's questions on Penumbras and Emanations or Senator Schumer's questions on separation of powers but consider that blogging for any length of time will result in a mightly long paper trail. Heck, I've blogged for nearly 10 years in one form or another, and there's more than a 1,000 postings on this blog alone in just about a year's time. That's an awful lot of material to examine. And it could easily throw a monkey wrench in any confirmation process - not just for the Supreme Court.
Just think about the various sites you visit, blog, or comment on. Some might be humor or satire sites that use various obscene language, language or comments that certain groups might find objectionable, or worse. They could even be more scholarly sites, but the anonymous posting, including in the comments, means that you feel that you might be able to say more than you would otherwise say if you were posting under your true identity.
Now go forward a generation or two. We're talking about the replacements for the current batch of Supreme Court replacements (Roberts and Alito). How will blog postings and comments be addressed in confirmation hearings? If you think this wont be an issue at some point in the future, you're kidding yourself.
Consider that we're already seeing that Democrats are trying to associate comments written by someone else to the current nominee, Samuel Alito, based solely on a membership with an organization. Alito had lent his name to the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Yet, at some time prior to Alito joining, the organization took a very restrictive view on who should be able to enter Princeton.
The issue with Alito may be completely overblown, but consider the situation if you're first entering college or law school. How many times have you posted to a blog or written your own blog postings? Who have you linked to? What did the people you linked to actually say on any variety of issues that were completely unrelated to the purpose of your posting? Did what they say in those unrelated postings affect whether you will actually link to the person or not?
Based on what happened in the Alito confirmation process, and the attempts to use completely unrelated information to scuttle the confirmation, imagine what a blogger engaged in a confirmation might face.
Bloggers are an opinionated bunch, on everything from abortion to Washington DC insider politics. Views may be considered disposable on the web, but they're not. They form a snapshot of a person's political views at any given moment and while anyone can claim that their views have changed over time, it will be increasingly hard for someone who has blogged for any length of time to escape their paper trail.
Will this mean that people who would otherwise be highly qualified for these positions will choose not to put themselves in a position where their blogging habits will be examined (by removing themselves from confirmation processes)? Will this chill the creative juices for many people who have aspirations for higher office? The jury's still out, but the current confirmation battles may indicate where we're headed unless the personal attacks cease and desist.
Now consider that come 2035 the President of the US has just put you on the shortlist for the Supreme Court. In the course of evaluating your credentials, you have to reveal that you were a blogger for a number of years. Watch as heads explode over the possibilities. Your dream job - being asked to join the highest court in the country - may go up in smoke because of some off-the-cuff posting you wrote, or even worse, to some off-color posting you linked to (or posted yourself). On top of the research done before you get nominated, opponents to your nomination (and there will be opponents) will conduct their own searches. And they'll certainly try to take comments out of context to portray the candidate in as poor light as possible.
Someone will spend a lot of time and effort using the wayback machine (aka Google or any of its contemporary or potential successor search engines) to data mine every last bit of commentary ever written by an individual. Both political parties will engage in this activity - both to support and defend the nominee and to destroy their chances at confirmation.
Every throwaway comment will be dissected. A comment that you like a certain blog or another could be a death sentence for a confirmation if that blog had a poster who routinely called out a certain group for destruction and engaged in race-baiting, unsavory conduct, or other behavior that folks might consider shocking.
Heck, linking back to this very posting could be hazardous to your chances, since I've posted and linked to various sites that some might consider unsavory.
So, if you think Sam Alito has it bad, just wait til Vodkapundit Jr, GOP and College, or The Political Teen, or anyone who isn't even on the radar screen at the moment, makes their way through the selection and nomination process in the future.
It has the potential to get downright ugly, and we have to ask ourselves is this what we really want out of our judicial candidates - the stifling of creative talent because any expression may result in a candidate being associated with content or groups that may have a constituency sufficiently powerful to influence the outcome of a confirmation battle. I don't think this is what most people want - we want to know who these nominees are, how they think, where they come from, and how they foresee their own roles develop and change over time. Stealth candidates might fly through nominations, but they certainly do a disservice to the American people if we don't know who they are.
UPDATE:
Posted to Don Surber's Best Posts for Wednesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment