Report of the anonymous committee

Speaking of "anonymous," I found this comment at Prof. Rick Esenberg's blog this morning:

Regarding "it" [that's me!], he's in full support of our courts being filled with liberal judges that have given us abortion, Everson and so on. He actually thinks that no one can speak as a Christian in public places.

Like most libs he doesn't care about the founding or history of this nation, he only cares that liberal and aethiest [sic] actions are somehow made law. That means if you cannot get it done through legislation, that you must have judges that get it done for you.

That is what has been happening since Everson and what they want to continue by trying to get judicial appointments in the State.

Here's a quote for you from the Senate Judiciary Committee 1853-1854 report regarding the founding fathers' intent for the judiciary: "they did not intend to spread over all the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy."

That is what "it" represents by his babbling.

Of course there's plenty to mock in that litany of completely made-up bullshit, but the best is anonymous's citation to a Senate committee report in the context of deriding liberal judges (including Hugo Black, apparently, the textualist's textualist who wrote the majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education [which the apathetic clique of revolting atheists known as the Catholic Church won, incidentally]).

Here's what Justice Antonin Scalia — who, whatever he may be, probably wouldn't be mistaken for a liberal judge — said of the Supreme Court's use of committee reports in Blanchard v. Bergeron:

That the Court should refer to the citation of three District Court cases in a document issued by a single committee of a single house as the action of Congress displays the level of unreality that our unrestrained use of legislative history has attained. ... As anyone familiar with modern-day drafting of congressional committee reports is well aware, the references to the cases were inserted, at best by a committee staff member on his or her own initiative, and at worst by a committee staff member at the suggestion of a lawyer-lobbyist.

What a heady feeling it must be for a young staffer to know that his or her citation of obscure district court cases can transform them into the law of the land, thereafter dutifully to be observed by the Supreme Court itself.

I decline to participate in this process.

In other words, making use of a Senate committee report for the purpose of supporting an argument (if that's what it's supposed to be) in favor of more Antonin Scalias is, well, a little odd.