Court appointments: Crist pandering to Radical Right
Sun Sentinel
Stephen Goldstein | Columnist
September 28, 2008
Charlie Crist will be the most influential governor in the history of Florida.
He will make a total of four appointments to the seven-member state Supreme Court. For what could be decades, the Crist majority will weigh in on hot-button issues affecting the lives of every man, woman, and child in this state: Remember the 2000 presidential election and Terri Schiavo.
Charlie campaigned as a centrist, "the people's" governor. All of us assumed he meant all of the people, not a chosen few. But with one appointment down and three to go, it appears the guv feels compelled to pander to the minority Radical Right at the expense of the majority of 19-plus million Floridians.
Crist's first Supreme Court appointment is Charles Canady, Jeb Bush's onetime general counsel, whom he named to the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Canady has the political equivalent of a rap sheet only Sarah Palin could love. A former member of Congress from Lakeland, he pushed the mean-spirited, Republican, reactionary agenda — banning late-term abortions, keeping the "morning-after" pill from drugstore shelves, and pushing for federal rights to the unborn. He was one of 13 House Republicans named as trial managers to engineer the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Canady also voted to ban gay adoptions in the District of Columbia, end preferential treatment by race in college admissions, against alternative sentencing instead of more prisons, yes on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime, yes on making federal death penalty appeals harder, no on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment, yes on prohibiting needle exchange and medical marijuana in the District of Columbia, yes on allowing vouchers for private and parochial schools, no on starting implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, yes on decreasing the gun waiting period from three days to one, no on strengthening the Social Security Lockbox.
Sending a signal to the Religious Right that the governor was giving them a judge who would mix church and state, he has been quoted describing Canady as "a faithful servant in the truest sense of the word."
While in Congress, he voted yes on giving federal aid only to schools allowing voluntary prayer. I'm sure he would have preferred to make it mandatory!
At 54, Canady may shape the future of Florida for decades. But the tragedy of his appointment and the three others to follow, if they are equal ideologues, is that they are out-of-step on social issues with most Floridians.
Recently, two constitutional amendments slated for the November ballot, which would have ended the separation of church and state, were struck down unanimously by the pre-Crist majority Florida Supreme Court. Voters would have defeated one for sure and the second, had its language not been intentionally confusing. Amendment 2, banning same-sex marriage, remains on the ballot, but is now polling at less than the 60 percent needed to pass.
The jury awaits Charlie's next appointments. Will he go down as a statesman who chose distinguished, independent jurists on behalf of all "the people" or as a puppet of Jeb Bush and the Radical Right? Call the governor at 850-488-4441, and demand he be his own man and make fair-and-balanced appointments to the Supreme Court.
Stephen L. Goldstein's commentaries appear on alternate Sundays. E-mail him at trendsman@aol.com.