Cato Weighs in on the Candidates and Justices

Is there any doubt who would be better on Supreme Court Justices? If you have any, let the Cato Institute put them to rest:

While John McCain’s views on the First Amendment are unacceptable to freedom-lovers of any stripe, he has at least promised to nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Sam Alito (who have ruled against campaign finance restrictions). Obama and Clinton, meanwhile, are in the John Paul Stevens camp of relying on empathy, international opinion, and “my own experience” as a basis for constitutional interpretation.

Indeed, while defending his vote against Chief Justice Roberts’s confirmation, Obama explained that his standard for a justice must be “one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.”

As Jonah Goldberg says in a devastating column, “Now that is a pure expression of the principle of judicial fiat.”

The strongest case for voting for John McCain is the idea of Hillary or Obama choosing Supreme Court Justices. That sends shivers up and down my spine. The last thing that court needs is a fresh influx of liberal ideology.