I take issue with the contention by professor Frank Ravitch in Potential Supreme Court Selections Factor in Election (SN 10/1), that Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts are “judicial activists” and, if elected, Republican presidential nominee John McCain would be beholden to the religious right to the point where he would be forced to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court.
It’s clear from the recent decision on Washington, D.C.‘s handgun ban that it is in fact justices like John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg who are the judicial activists when they voted against the wording of the Second Amendment and tried to uphold the Washington, D.C. handgun ban.
Furthermore, I resent this article being printed as “news” when it is, in fact, simply an opinion column. The title suggests that one needs to consider the ideology of both candidates when choosing who one will vote for, but the body of the article contains nothing but a discourse on how McCain’s judicial appointees would be detrimental to our country. Nowhere does it discuss Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s thoughts on the subject except for an alarmist quote from him on how bad McCain’s choices would be for abortion rights.
Let’s see a little more objectivity in your articles from now on, or maybe they belong on the opinion page.
Jason Smolinski
astrophysics graduate student
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