Senator Brownback at Ave Maria School of Law
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007Today Sen. Brownback came to Ave Maria School of Law.
He prefaced his remarks on the proper role of the judiciary by reminding us of how life is short, citing his experiences with melanoma (cancer) eleven years ago. He noted that he felt, back then, that he had sought too much power without purpose and urged us to focus our lives on “what is it we want to look back on life and be happy that we did?”
What follows are paraphrased or directly quoted versions of the Senator’s remarks:
The purpose is to climb up the ladder — no, the real purpose of life is for us to bear fruit, to love and be loved, things that cannot be measured, things that pass on. Always take the time to pull yourself back and ask, “What is it you want to do?” Everyone has a dream in life that’s far bigger than they are … they have to go into the desert and be shaped to be able to do their dream. Once you go through there, you have to face the giants to accomplish the dream. A good dream is never about you or for you, your dream is for somebody else. If you don’t do it, somebody else gets hurt, because you don’t do what you were called to do.
Growing up on a pig farm in Eastern Kansas, I can’t say that I thought about running for President very often. Life was good, it was hard work, it was simple, but I can’t say that I thought about these things. I never met a Congressmen until I went to college, because people didn’t come to Parker (my hometown) of 250 people — you can’t go through Parker, you have to go to it. But here I am today, running for President of the United States.
Here I want to go into some prepared comments on the role of the judiciary.
I felt John Roberts really set the frame right when he said, “We need a more modest court.” We need a court that shows judicial restraint. I think he uses an apt analogy when he says the court is to be a umpire, and it is a bad thing when the umpire becomes the most watched person on the field. Too much today the Court has injected itself into the game — being a super-legislature. Today we need a Court that wants to be a Court and not a super-legislative body. A large part of the controversy surrounding confirmation stems from the fact that the role of the Courts has been expanding. Even Alexander Hamilton, proponent of expansive government, assured his constituents that the Court would be limited. Unfortunately, the Court in recent years has invented constitutional rights that are unsupported by the text or history of the Constitution.
The narrow scope of judicial power was why the American people accepted the Constitution — that the Courts would recognize their role and defer to the legislative branches policy decisions. “Courts are not representative bodies; they are not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed within narrow limits. History teaches us that the independence of the judiciary is jeopardized when Courts engage in political debates.” That’s what it should be. Instead, we have the Congress pushing up against the judiciary in these political, economic and social issues.
Courts today have strayed far beyond this narrow judicial rule. Courts are defining marriage, deciding when human life begins, running schools and prisons by decrees, and interpreting our American constitution on the basis of foreign and international law. The Supreme Court’s most notorious exercise of political power came in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton — both of the plaintiff’s in those cases testified that the affidavits they put forward contained false statements. Since then, we’ve had over 40 million abortions in America. These decisions removed political judgment from the people in states — where legislatures had already decided on the issue of abortion — and placed it in the hands of the court, enabling wholesale slaughter of certain classes of people. Example: Eighty percent of babies diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome will be aborted this year.
The Supreme Court has boundaries. There are checks and balances on what it can and cannot do. For instance, the court cannot appropriate money. We all are constitutional officers, sworn to uphold the constitution. Yet each branch has separate functions which the other has checks and balances on. We’ve arrived at an important moment with respect to the Courts in this country. Will the Courts, as Hamilton assured the people, exercise judgment in the role they ought to have? This is a key issue for our day, and if I’m elected President, I will appoint judges who were strict constructionists — not liberal or conservative, not those who I hope have my views.
Thanks for joining me this morning, thanks for letting me speak to you. God Bless You All.masturbation movies hairy teenhardcore movies cumshot freehermaphrodites moviesfuck movies hometeen movies homecum movies horse freehot chick moviemovies huge porn Map