Obama’s pick

Former President Bill Clinton last week advised President Barack Obama to nominate an outsider to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

"My advice to him would be to first of all see what the court is missing," Mr. Clinton said.

He said Mr. Obama should "take a look at somebody who hasn't been a judge."

Mr. Clinton said the chief qualifications should be the nominee's intelligence, competency to hold the job, and that "they understand the lives of ordinary people."

Yes, someone whose experience has not been limited to the privileged hallways of fancy law firms and government power -- someone who's worked for a paycheck in the private sector and seen how it can impact a private business when the tax men and regulators come swarming -- would certainly be a refreshing change.

Even more refreshing would be an abandonment of the quota game.

Meantime, it would be nice to be able to say we're surprised -- though we're really not -- at just how far off base this former professor of constitutional law could be in his summary of a would-be justice's "chief qualification."

Wouldn't it be refreshing for someone within hearing range to point out that the "chief qualification" should be an abiding faith and willingness to articulate that ours is a republic with a limited government, the limited powers of said government being spelled out in the Constitution, that the most important amendments in the Bill of Rights are actually the Ninth and 10th, reiterating that the central government has no powers not specifically delegated?

For starters, the first question we'd like to hear asked of any nominee is, "Would you take your first opportunity to overturn Wickard vs. Filburn?" -- the infamous, pernicious 1942 case in which the court actually ruled an Ohio farmer named Roscoe Filburn could be barred by Washington City from growing wheat on his own land, for the use of his own livestock, on the mind-numbing theory that if said private farmer were thus "allowed" to avoid buying someone else's wheat, this could have "an impact on interstate commerce."

So long as that is the law, the pretense that we have an on­going debate about the proper extent of the powers of government on these shores is mere Kabuki, a ritualized "Punch and Judy Show" to keep the peasants occupied while our masters decide which of our pitifully few remaining freedoms to grab and carry away next.