Thoughts: Suggesting the benefits of online message boards, I questioned and got information from others regarding Dean/Kerry and Clark as well as providing a summary of the judicial nominations wars (ending with some proposed solutions).

Talking about judges ... Barnhart v. Thomas (11/12) was the first ruling handed down by the Supreme Court, striking down a lower court ruling that was in conflict with other circuits. No, it was not a Ninth Circuit ruling (which was cited for its consistency with other circuits on the matter), which was a prime target during the Senate talkathon. The true breadth of the "liberal" nature of the circuit is suspect, of course, when it hands down a ruling that production of machine gun parts is not a matter of interstate commerce, written by one of its conservative wunderkinds.

Anyway, back to the ruling. The ruling involved a federal disability case involving an claimant that could not get a job because the profession she was able to do in her current state was basically obsolete (manual elevator operation). Justice Scalia, writing for an unanimous Court, argued that a literal reading of the law could reasonably mean that being able to do a job is all that is required, not that the job actually exists. [Again, we see that federal legislation is rarely a wonder of clarity and courts disagree on their "obvious" meaning.] The alternative, he suggests, would be to open up the path of people refusing to work or something. Or perhaps make it harder to enforce the law.

The lower court logically noted that the ruling sets up an absurd situation of depriving her of benefits because she is able to do something that doesn't exist. And, yes, as Justice Scalia notes, being able to do the job might serve as a proxy of ability to work at all. The problem, however, is the result here is a Catch 22: being able to do the job, even if it doesn't exist, stops the process. All the lower court gave her was a chance to go to the next step, which would determine if she could work that was available.

This literal, hard nosed, and ultimately unjust reading of public benefit law reminds me of the unanimous ruling against innocent public housing tenants. It also suggests what happens when you do not have even one true liberal in the mode of a Justice Douglas, Brennan, or Marshall.