David Souter

Lies My Textbooks Told Me: Judging Current Supreme Court Justices
By Paul Wilson | May 8, 2012 | 11:07 AM EDT

Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect history textbooks to present and analyze events and epochs with complete objectivity. But it’s entirely reasonable to demand that they don’t actively reinforce the news media’s liberal bias when it comes to recent history and individuals who are still alive and active in shaping that history. 

Yet commonly used American history textbooks have eschewed historical analysis when discussing recent Supreme Court justices, and in its place substituted partisan political commentary.

Bozell Column: Glorifying 'Great' Liberal Judges
By Brent Bozell | November 30, 2010 | 10:13 PM EST

America was founded on the principle of representative democracy: the government would make policy based on the consent of the governed. Liberal elitists have grown increasingly impatient with this unenlightened system, and more and more, they are relying on judicial activists to remake society in their desired image. Far from being tribunes of the people, these judges are honored by the media elite for going around public opinion – and the Constitution – whenever the liberal impulse beckons.

CBS’s “60 Minutes” earned the title “Syrupy Minutes” on November 28 with a thoroughly one-sided tribute to the “great” liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, with a focus on how this “great” man publicly suggested George W. Bush was a tyrant.

Pelley hailed how Stevens had “shaped more American history than any Supreme Court justice alive.” He especially underlined how liberals see Stevens’ opinions on the rights of terrorist suspects as “among the most important of his career.”  The detention center at Guantanamo Bay is a legal and political mess. One could easily blame the “historic” Justice Stevens; CBS lauds him.

George Will, Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson School Arianna Huffington
By Noel Sheppard | April 11, 2010 | 12:44 PM EDT
For the second time in six days, liberal publisher Arianna Huffington stuck her foot in her mouth on national television only to get corrected by numerous others on camera.

Appearing on Sunday's "This Week" on ABC, Huffington foolishly claimed that Supreme Court justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter would never be appointed by a Republican President today due to "how far the Party has traveled," obviously meaning to the Right.

All three of her fellow Roundtable panelists were quick to correct her flawed logic beginning with Sam Donaldson (video follows with partial transcript, relevant section at 9:20):

Shocking Headline: 'Some on Left Souring on Obama'
By Noel Sheppard | May 17, 2009 | 1:54 PM EDT

Here's a headline you'd never expect to see at a left-of-center website so soon in the new President's first term:

Some on Left Souring on Obama

Maybe even more shocking was the content in Josh Gerstein's Politico piece that was so prominently placed as the feature story on the site's front page Sunday:

Politico Hit Piece on Sen. Sessions Uses Left-Wing Racial Talking Point, Omits Key Information
By Jeff Poor | May 6, 2009 | 1:07 PM EDT

Now that Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. has been named the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, some on the far-left are gunning for Alabama's junior senator. The battle is happening as President Barack Obama is on the verge of naming an appointee to the Supreme Court to fill void of Justice David Souter.Some of the left-wing points that suggest Sessions has racist tendencies were incorporated into a May 6 Politico story by John Bresnahan and Manu Raju.

"By elevating Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to their top spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans have selected their chief inquisitor for President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee: a Southern, white conservative man who has drawn fire for racially insensitive comments in the past," Bresnahan and Manu Raju wrote. "Democrats like how this is looking."

The story sets up Sessions to be on the defensive about race by spinning the senator's own history. According to the Politico story, Sessions had been accused of unfairly targeting black civil rights workers for election fraud charges as a federal prosecutor during a 1986 Senate hearing for a spot on the federal bench.

Williams Recommends Liberal Reading List on Souter and Successor
By Brent Baker | May 5, 2009 | 1:48 PM EDT
NBC anchor Brian Williams' Web surfing centers on liberal sites, as at least evidenced by the reading list he recommended in his Monday afternoon entry on The Daily Nightly blog consisting of four articles, all from left-leaning sites: Slate, The New Republic and The Daily Beast. “Because of my Souter departure obsession,” he explained, “today I want to share with you some interesting writing I found over the weekend.”

The suggested reading started “with a former Souter clerk (a familiar name from American history).” That would be “Justice Cincinnatus: David Souter -- a dying breed, the Yankee Republican,” by Kermit Roosevelt on Slate who maintained: “I think Souter is indeed in many ways a Republican; it's just that his sort of Republican no longer really exists.” Translation: liberal. Roosevelt hailed Souter's resistance to overturning Roe v Wade: “The charge fell short in the end, turned back by just a few people, Souter crucially among them, who found themselves in the right place at the right time.”

Second, Williams highlighted “a great essay by a journalist who covers the court.” That's “Justice Heartbreaker: David Souter leaves the court that left him behind,” also on Slate, by Dahlia Lithwick. She quoted President Obama's wish for a justice who has “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.” Lithwick then concluded: “He could have been describing Justice Souter, a man who may have looked on the surface like he preferred books to people, but in reality, and perhaps unbeknownst even to himself, always put people first.”
NYT's Linda Greenhouse Lavishes More Love on a Liberal Justice
By Clay Waters | May 4, 2009 | 3:56 PM EDT

The New York Times' former Supreme Court reporter, liberal Linda Greenhouse, came out of journalistic retirement (she's now senior fellow at Yale Law School) to write the lead Sunday Week in Review profile of retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter, "Justice Unbound -- Washington is only where Souter goes for his 'annual intellectual lobotomy.' At home, he reads history."

Souter was nominated by the first President Bush but disappointed conservatives by often voting with the court's liberal bloc, which may be why Greenhouse wished him such a fond farewell:

David H. Souter had no agenda 19 years ago when he took his seat on the Supreme Court, but he did have a goal: not to become a creature of Washington, a captive of the privileges and power that came with a job he was entitled to hold for the rest of his life. In this, no matter what else can be said about his tenure on the court, he succeeded brilliantly.

Just a few decades ago, this would hardly have been a singular accomplishment. Even the most distinguished Supreme Court justices often disappeared from public view, speaking only through their opinions -- the full texts of which were all but inaccessible to ordinary citizens without access to a law library. But in this media-saturated age, the justices are everywhere. If they are not on book tours, they are opining on the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, or mingling with their peers in Europe, or on C-Span addressing high school students, or at least delivering named lectures at law schools.

None of this held any appeal for David Souter, who after returning home from his Rhodes scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford, crossed the Atlantic only once again, for a reunion there. Who needed Paris if you had Boston, he would remark to friends. When the court is in recess, he gets in his Volkswagen and heads to Weare, N.H., to the small farmhouse that was home to his parents and grandparents.

Greenhouse took sides on a recent Supreme Court decision:

Ann Coulter Debates Joy Behar, Round Two
By Noel Sheppard | May 2, 2009 | 10:58 PM EDT

Joy Behar subbed for Larry King again on Friday night, and much like back in February, the "View" co-host invited on conservative author Ann Coulter.

On the agenda in round two was Arlen Specter's defection, torture, abortion, Sarah Palin, possible SCOTUS replacements for Justice Souter, Joe Biden's gaffes, the swine flu, and Obama's first 100 days.

Video part one is embedded right with part two below the fold along with full transcript (h/t Tim Graham):