Word: bork
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...without one. The collected wisdom has had it that they were wrong--that the initial lack of a bill of rights was the Founder's one big mistake. Yet no one has done more to challenge this position and vindicate Madison and Hamilton than Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork...
According to Judge Bork and the administration which nominated him, judges should heed the original intent of the Founders of the Constitution and should "find" rather than "make" law. Rights not specifically enumerated in the text of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, they argue, were not intended by the Founders and therefore do not exist; only the rights they mentioned really count. A good judge, consequently, must resist the temptation to create new ones...
...SAID that? 'Twasn't Robert Bork. It was, however, his Grand Inquisitor, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. Every day heaps new embarrassments upon the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and his presidential campaign is in trouble. Gary Hart may have fudged his birth date and shortened his name. But though Biden has yet to be caught with his pants down, his shortcomings are now no less exposed than those of his former Senate colleague...
Senators have a duty to ensure that Bork does not have a chance to continue playing his self-absorbed game with the Constitution for him is like a 200-year old Rubik's cube. After tortured reasoning, the game's self-proclaimed master manages to find a way to come to the same end point. Bork is more than a conservative activist. He's a radical puzzle-solver...
Examples span settings sublime and ridiculous. The sublime: Biden simply was unimpressive in his questioning of Bork. He rarely completed sentences, and continually flashed cheesy smiles as he asked the judge to repeat himself over and over "just so I can get this straight." The ridiculous: "I think I have a much higher IQ than you do," he snapped to someone named Frank at a New Hampshire event last year...