Are Federal courts again going to override states' Constitutional rights?
A New York Times editorial dated November 10 argues that the task of moving stem cell research to the next level cannot be left to the states . . . As this page has argued before, stem cell research is of such importance and promise for the entire world that it deserves to be carried forward by a national program underwritten by federal funding.
Impelling the Times's editorial pronouncement was the recent defeat in New Jersey of a $450 million bond issue for local stem cell research, a measure championed by the state's socialist governor Jon Corzine. So far, liberals don't have the votes in Congress, either.
Implicit in the Times's editorial is the tactic that led the 1973 Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade to ignore individual states' Constitutional prerogative to exercise police powers, which are maintenance of law and order and protection of public health and safety. When the public opposes a liberal-progressive-socialist cause, liberals use judicial activism to do an end run around elected legislators and impose their will upon the majority.
James Madison is generally agreed to be the most influential single delegate to the 1787 Convention which drafted the Constitution. Judicial activism that infringes upon the Constitutional prerogatives of the states contrasts starkly with what Madison wrote on this subject in Federalist No. 45:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.
The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects [the so-called police powers] which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
From a purely practical viewpoint, overriding the necessarily lengthy state-by-state debate in the 1960s and 70s on the issue of abortion had the effect of throwing a match into a tank of gasoline. Passions aroused by the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s were blown up into a cultural war that still rages. Even arch-liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before joining the Court, lamented that it would have been far less divisive to have allowed the debate to proceed in each of the states, rather than imposing by judicial fiat what Justices thought the law ought to be.
What characterizes liberal-progressive-socialism in the legislative and judicial arenas is its endless succession of rushes to judgment, usually with unanticipated harmful ramifications arising from unwarranted Federal intervention into private businesses and private lives. An example of the moment is the Federal mandates and subsidies for ethanol (see "Liberal Economic Fog").
Unwillingness to respect objections to a program or to abstain from legislative or judicial enactment is justified by the presumption that liberal-progressive-socialist doctrine is ipso facto scientific truth, and that opposition can come only from ignorance.
Despite liberals' assertion that stem cell technology is an established methodology to cure a vast array of humanity's medical and genetic ills, it is far from a sure thing. See "Stem Cell Nihilism."
At this point it's little more than a prospective boondoggle for researchers eager to acquire Federal research funding annuities for life. See "Stem Cell Research Boondoggle."
In the context of social morality Charles Krauthammer put it this way in an earlier column "Stem Cell Miracle?":
You don't need religion to tremble at the thought of unrestricted embryo research. You simply have to have a healthy respect for the human capacity for doing evil in pursuit of the good. Once we have taken the position of many stem cell research advocates that embryos are discardable tissue with no more intrinsic value than a hangnail or an appendix, then all barriers are down. What is to prevent us from producing not just tissues and organs but humanlike organisms for preservation as a source of future body parts on demand?
South Korea enthusiastically embraced unrestricted stem cell research. The subsequent greatly heralded breakthroughs — accompanied by lamentations that America was falling behind — were eventually exposed as a swamp of deception, fraud and coercion.
An additional danger is that a potentially unscientific program may become fixed by Federal funding, shutting off other avenues of research.
As we see with the destructive aftermath of Federal ethanol policy, once it becomes Federally funded and develops a voting constituency, there will be no turning back, nor rational adjustment. Fetal cell research will become enshrined, as have so many liberal-progressive-socialist cult fetishes, as a "constitutional right."
Be forewarned.
The New York Times is generally thought to be the trend-setting voice of liberal-progressive-socialism in the United States. We can expect great pressure on liberal Senators henceforward to add Federal stem cell research to their litmus tests for Federal court nominees. Adding this to the abortion test means that Christians and religious Jews will be excluded altogether from Federal judgeships.
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If only we could use embryonic stem cells to cure voter gullibility, California taxpayers will save almost $6 billion. Compared to New Jersey’s failed attempt to give a paltry $450 million to science, California voters passed a public bond issue in 2004 to give $3 billion in cash to embryonic stem cell researchers and $3 billion in bond interest and related legal fees to Wall Street.
A special interest group talked California’s two leading research scientists, Michael J. Fox and Nancy Reagan, into publicly supporting Prop. 71, the so-called stem cell initiative. Embryonic stem cell research would lead to cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, heart disease and diabetes according to Michael and Nancy. Of course the fine print in the initiative doesn’t actually require the recipients of the money to develop therapeutic cures, it only requires California to establish a stem cell research agency and pass out $3 billion over ten years to whomever the appointed board members deem worthy of support.
And, strangely enough, if cures for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease were announced tomorrow morning by some Korean or French research lab, the state would continue to hand out the $3 billion. You see the law didn’t promise to stop giving away money if cures are found; the Proposition was specifically designed to give away 3 billion dollars to special interests and the miracle cures were simply voter bait. Ironically, the initiative was also promoted to the voters as financial seed money for a vast, bio-research industry that would germinate and thrive in California’s sunny valleys – you know, Stem Cell Valley just outside San Jose.
Promote new industries or develop miracle cures? Doesn’t matter which, the money is for a good cause so Californians readily agreed to give special interest groups $3 billion in return for that good old college try – no guaranteed results, no money back refunds if we’re not satisfied.
Maybe that’s just sour grapes; after all, we got Velcro and Tang from all that NASA money we spent on moon shots. So what’s the stem cell equivalent of Velcro? Well, we’re not sure what that might be out here on the Left Coast, but we’re pretty sure whatever it is, it will be good for us.
If the Feds take a page from California’s book, we will desperately need the stem cell cure for gullibility. If California can give away $3 billion, what could the Federal government do? $100 billion, $200 billion – the sky’s the limit! And what does funding embryonic stem cell research have to do with state or federal governing functions? Why absolutely nothing of course, but it does make for great politics.
You see, in California, the new Prop. 71 state agency (California Institute for Regenerative Medicine) doesn’t have to publicly disclose where the money went (it’s exempt from those pesky “open meeting” laws) or which parties received the hand-outs, err, “research grants”. That information remains secret or, as they politely term it, “confidential”. The Institute has 50 employees exempt from all civil service rules. And, the governor, certain University of California chancellors, the speaker of the assembly, the president pro-tem of the state senate and a few other favored politicians get to appoint commissioners to the Oversight Commission that doles out the money. However, the Oversight Commissioners did promise to recuse themselves whenever there was a conflict of interest between the private parties they represent and the proposed handout to some deserving special interest group. Fascinating concept that “recuse”.
It works something like this. Oversight Commissioner A represents a group of private businesses that would like to develop their own patents on new medical procedures or therapeutic drugs without paying for the required research. Oversight Commissioner B represents state and private university groups that would like a mere hundred million or so this year to fund their labs and pet research projects. So, when it comes time to vote on some modest $50 million grant, Commissioner A recuses himself from voting so Commissioner B can give those private businesses the money and Commissioner B recuses himself whenever Commissioner A decides to return the favor. It’s all perfectly legal and above board.
Everyone wins; the politicians get to control a vast giveaway and call in favors for appointing the Oversight Commission members suggested by the special interest groups, the special interest groups get a fairy godmother on the Oversight Committee who personally oversees the distribution of our tax money to the proper parties and the general public gets hope for those soon to be announced miracle cures. We’ll be seeing those miracle cures announced any day now – won’t we?
Comment by Pat Skurka | November 13, 2007