Supreme Judge Judy.

[Shockeye]

Judge Judy's candor is the benchmark

Over the weekend I went to a party, where I was asked who I thought should succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. Without hesitation I boldly gave my answer: Judge Judy.

I have no idea if Judy Sheindlin is a Republican or a Democrat, and her legal ideology is a mystery to me. I only know that she gets the job done and can, in the inimitable words of the Ultimate Judge Judy Web page, "see through BS pretty fast." That's the judge for me. I am (mostly) serious.

Groups on the right and on the left are reportedly prepared to spend as much as $100 million to promote or block certain nominees. Indeed, the handkerchief has already been dropped and the duel begun. The E-mails seem to arrive by the nanosecond. The alarmist letters stuff the mailbox. The interest groups act as if the vacancy on the Supreme Court belongs to them. I beg to differ. It is the United States Supreme Court and belongs to all of us.

This is emphatically not how interest groups on the right see it. They consider this seat on the court their own, recompense for their support of George W. Bush. What's more - and unmentioned for the sheer bad taste of it all - is that they feel the President owes them one in restitution for his father's boneheaded appointment of David Souter. It is Souter who haunts this nominating process. Souter was not asked his views on abortion. This will not happen again.

The upshot is that even the plenty conservative Alberto Gonzales, now the attorney general and once the White House counsel, is being pummeled by religiously based right-wing groups. Based on some of his decisions when he was on the Texas Supreme Court and, more pertinent, his lack of fulsome anti-abortion rhetoric, he has been deemed unacceptable by the true leaders of this very Christian nation. It is, really, an absurdity. If he is not acceptable, then Strom Thurmond will have to be exhumed.

For even Bush, it was too much. He reminded his friends on the right that Gonzales was his buddy. At the same time, the White House dispatched a swarm of the usual aides to say - mostly on background, of course - that their allies on the right were going too far.

This sense - this keen appreciation - that the Supreme Court vacancy is owned by right-wing special interest groups will, in the end, damage the GOP as its left-wing variant (support for late-term abortions, affirmative action, etc.) has hurt the Democratic Party. The difference is that the Democrats were mostly engaged in expanding rights while the GOP's extremists are industriously determined to narrow them.

I and maybe you would much prefer a judge whose ideology is rooted in pragmatism and who gets immense satisfaction from knowing that simple justice has been done. That's why people watch "Judge Judy." Mr. President, she's on at 4 in Washington.

[Fargull]

Fuck that.  Harry Anderson for the WIN.

[WayAbvPar]

I would rather see Judge Smails than Judge Judy. Hell, Ted Knight's decomposing corpse is likely to be a more palatable candidate than anything this administration will try to ram through the Senate.

[schild]

Reinhold. Judge Reinhold. Supreme Court Justice Reinhold.

[WayAbvPar]

He used to work at All American Burger!

[Bunk]

Hell, why don't you guys just import Judge Dread. Get some real shit done.

[Pococurante]

There can only ever be two candidates to bring America back to its rightful place among nations.



Right on!

[Shockeye]

Judge Judy gains in the court of public opinion

Kurt Vonnegut has climbed aboard the Justice Judy bandwagon.

"I'm all for Judge Judy for the Supreme Court," the 82-year-old novelist told me. "I don't want any other judges, just her. She is so fair-minded and so ideally American."

Vonnegut, the author of "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and other best sellers, is joining columnist Richard Cohen - and me - in urging President Bush to consider television jurist Judy Sheindlin to fill one of the vacancies that will be left by the departures of Sandra Day O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

"She represents the authority of the state at its most humane and reasonable," Vonnegut said. "She represents an America that I would like to belong to."

Vonnegut told me he "got hooked on 'Judge Judy'" a few years back, when he was in Northampton, Mass., teaching at Smith College and recovering from the effects of smoke inhalation suffered in a house fire.

"She's a swell performer. But that's just fun. And she is very attracive, spiritually. I like the way she deals out justice."

Vonnegut, a self-described "New Deal Democrat," said he has no idea what Sheindlin's ideology is. "I'd like to hear what she'd have to say about abortion and gay marriage," he told me.

But as for skeptics who point out that presiding over a TV small-claims court is worlds away from sitting on the highest court in the land, Vonnegut answered: "There is no difference. She refers to the law again and again. American law is American law."

[tazelbain]

Better than Dr. Phil.

[Paelos]

Yeah, I'd love to hear Judge Judy's take on Roe v. Wade.

She'd call someone a whore in the first paragraph.

[HaemishM]

I'd watch that.