Obama eligible for presidency on two counts

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

You have probably heard about it. President Obama is not entitled to be President because he was not born in the United States. Not because Hawaii was not a state yet, as Hawaii was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959, and Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 (I know, younger than me, too), but because he was actually born abroad. Not that there is any proof he was born abroad, but because of some concerns about…

How can you ignore empathy in judicial decision making?

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

President Obama commented yesterday on qualities he will look for in a Supreme Court justice to replace the retiring Justice David Souter. The President said, “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”  Senator Orrin Hatch commented that empathy is not the law. Presumably, to him, empathy is not a relevant factor in interpreting the law. The public and the media that…