THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, October 4, 1996               TAG: 9610030016
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A16  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                            LENGTH:   41 lines

VOTTERS SHOULD REMEMBER THAT THE COURT IS SUPREME

On Jan. 20, 1993, Bill Clinton took an oath that he would ``preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'' Now, as the next presidential election approaches, the American people are entitled to know whether he has kept his vow. Specifically: Are Bill Clinton's judges mostly effective defenders of the Constitution? Or are they legal realists who feel free to rewrite the Constitution?

Many people don't realize just how liberal Clinton's two affable Ivy League justices really are. In part, this is because Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer are exceptionally bright and likable people. Nevertheless, in case after case they have voted for Big Government, for a radical secular humanism that hates religion, against traditional social values, for the ``rights'' of pornographers and drug dealers, against private property, for racial quotas and preferences and against the creation of a truly colorblind America.

For example, in U.S. vs. Lopez, both Clinton justices voted for the position that the national government has unlimited power to regulate all aspects of the nation's economic, social and cultural life. Under Justice Breyer's interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the federal government could nationalize education curricula, local law enforcement, family law and nearly everything else under the sun, so long as Congress could rationally think that doing so would in some small way be connected to interstate commerce.

In a militantly secular tirade against any role for religion in any public institution, both Justices Ginsburg and Breyer joined the minority, dissenting opinion in Rosenberger vs. University of Virginia. At issue was whether a student activities fund, which was used to support various publications by other student groups, could be used to pay for the printing costs of a Christian student newspaper.

Should Bill Clinton be given four more years in office, his next appointment to the Supreme Court will in all likelihood shift the balance of power to the rewriters rather than the interpreters of our Constitution.

A. P. ROOSENDAAL II

Suffolk, Sept. 24, 1996 by CNB