{"id":166,"date":"2009-05-04T11:10:40","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T11:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/shocking-news-president-may-pi.html"},"modified":"2009-05-04T11:10:40","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T11:10:40","slug":"shocking-news-president-may-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/05\/shocking-news-president-may-pi.html","title":{"rendered":"Shocking News! President May Pick Justice Who Agrees With Him"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been amused over the weekend by the “sky is falling” rhetoric<\/a> of the Right about the impending retirement of David Souter from the Supreme Court. Curiously, Jay, many of your colleagues concede that they don’t like Souter’s record, but all note, as you do, that somebody worse is about to take his seat.  Some echo your post sentiment that this will “set the stage for President Obama to put his liberal stamp on the federal judiciary in a big way”.<\/p>\n

Please.  What did you folks expect?  Barack Obama won the election of 2008.  According to the Right<\/a>, it was elections that gave former President George W. Bush the “right” to put on the courts anybody he wanted.  Did the rules change sometime when I was sleeping?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let me be clear.  Justice Souter had a very fine record<\/a> on
\npivotal constitutional issues, including the separation of church and
\nstate.  I would expect any Obama nominee to be as good, or better.  It
\nwould be terrific to see a nominee (and then an appointee) who
\nunderstands that the Constitution itself is designed to reflect core
\nvalues like “justice,” “equal treatment,” “religious liberty” and
\n“human dignity.”  I’d be absolutely delighted to see a person whose
\n“heart”–and mind–rest upon those principles.  I would like to see a
\nnominee whose experience reflects the real world existence of
\nAmericans, instead of simply being lost in the ethereal worlds of
\nacademia or the judiciary.  Some judges never lose sight of reality;
\nothers do so easily.<\/p>\n

My fervent hope is that nobody in the Senate or the White House
\nstaff convinces President Obama to do excessive “outreach” to the Right
\nabout this matter.  If you are on a ladder picking apples and you reach
\ntoo far for that one piece of fruit (or that one extra Senate vote),
\nyou can come crashing down in the orchard.<\/p>\n

By the way, Rich Mullins’ song is exactly the kind of musical exposition that has no place at a public high school graduation.<\/p>\n

To subscribe to “Lynn v. Sekulow” click <\/font>here<\/font><\/a>.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been amused over the weekend by the “sky is falling” rhetoric of the Right about the impending retirement of David Souter from the Supreme Court. Curiously, Jay, many of your colleagues concede that they don’t like Souter’s record, but all note, as you do, that somebody worse is about to take his seat. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,5,69],"tags":[140,132,141,51,67,393,142,388],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-barack-obama","category-separation-of-church-and-state","category-supreme-court","tag-david-souter","tag-graduation","tag-judiciary","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-president-barack-obama","tag-rich-mullins","tag-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nShocking News! President May Pick Justice Who Agrees With Him - Lynn v. 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Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}