A thread by any other name… 29 April 2007

Justicia Infinita?: anti Afghanistan war street art, Spain, 2002

would be just as useful… 8)

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Push push in the bush (still not about George) 23 April 2007

So… how is that Supreme Court working for you?  The Senate?  The House?? (sorry no!,  Waxman is not a majority on his own)

How is Bush at 29% working?  Bush the lame duck … how is that working?

 Clarence Thomas.  Yessssssssss.  Not one of the names that got thrown (by Dkos, FDL, MyDD, whoever else was a tag along) at online women posters, commenters and bloggers this week, was it?

No, we heard about NARAL (never gave them money in my life) and other old line inside the beltway orgs, Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way … And much talk of elections and Nader and ’00 and ’04 and Alito and Roberts.  Oh yes:  and how important to elect Democrats and of course The Democrat in ’08.

They, those sterling online adjudicators, lectured that elections matter. 

Do they?  Really?  Retail sales in politics seems to matter. A little different from elections really mattering…

Naming the names… not Roberts, not Alito:  Clarence Thomas.  Think this is his first assist in a critical, defining 5/4?  Think again.  Bush v Gore.  5/4.  Jane Mayer who, with Jill Abramson, painstakingly researched the pivotal 1991 Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas hearings as well as his nomination and confirmation wrote this for American Prospect in 2001, calling Bush v Gore, Thomas’s revenge.

Might as well laugh.

Even more damning of Biden (in congress from ’73, Chair of the Judiciary in the Democratically controlled senate, when CT’s nom was sent up) than the Prospect article by Mayer is this from Florence Graves (founding editor of Common Cause magazine), back and forth edits between Biden, interviewed first and Charles Ogletree, one of Hill’s attorneys, interviewed later and asked to comment on Biden’s narrative.

What’s a majority for?

Reagan’s strategy focused on appointing reliably conservative young lawyers to the federal bench, particularly the Courts of Appeals since most of the law governing Americans’ daily lives is made in some 35,000 Court of Appeals decisions, given the few federal cases reviewable by the Supreme Court annually. This strategy produced the appointment of Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork, Richard Posner, Kenneth Starr, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Alex Kozinski, Frank Easterbrook, and many other young conservative judges to the Courts of Appeal. Ideologically impure conservatives, like Philip Lacovara , were screened out.

Abortion was the primary litmus test, though not the only one.

  The above is from this … written by Herman Schwartz in 2004, an extract posted to the ACS blog in 2005….  A damning recap of congress and slews of judicial noms. Democrats in service to Republicans (“presidential knee pads” are not just for Monica).  Slews of conservative, pro life (it’s more than abortion, it’s the AGENDA) judges to the Federal bench.

Read it and weep.

At the end of his eight years, Reagan had made a good start at taking over the federal bench, but with Brennan and Marshall still on the Court, and an increasingly liberal Harry Blackmun, the conservatives could still not count on a solidly conservative majority. That, George H. W. Bush was able to accomplish with the departure of Brennan and Marshall and the appointment of Clarence Thomas.

With almost no Democratic protest, he also put through more bright young judges on the lower courts like Samuel Alito (Third Circuit), Michael Luttig (Fourth Circuit), Emilio Garza (Fifth Circuit), A. Raymond Randolph (D.C. Circuit), and Andrew Kleinfeld (Ninth Circuit).

In Bush’s final year, the Democrats who controlled the Senate, confirmed 63 judges, a record for a presidential year when the Senate is controlled by the opposing party. By 1992 when the 12-year Republican reign ended, 75-80% of the judiciary had been appointed by Republican presidents and the Courts of Appeals were dominated by Republican appointees.

There is more:

With Clarence Thomas, who succeeded Thurgood Marshall, they got all they could have hoped for. The story of the Thomas nomination, with Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment, the shameless White House-orchestrated assault on her character by Republican Senators Orrin Hatch, Arlen Specter and Alan Simpson (Simpson and Specter later apologized), 

[too late!  like apologies for the AUMF voted on October 11, 2002, years of war since then, TOO LATE NOW  – Mcat] 

Thomas’s own lies and deceptions, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden’s failure to call witnesses ready to corroborate Anita Hill – all this has been thoroughly documented by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer and others. The outcome was a narrow 52-48 confirmation and the appointment of perhaps the most radically conservative justice in Supreme Court history.  […]

Don’t be taken in by that apparently slim win:  11, ELEVEN Democrats crossed the aisle on the senate floor, just to vote for CT.

Clarence Thomas is on the court due to, thanks to Democrats and the desire for extremely conservative anti women judges – on the part of the Democrats.

They sure don’t seem to mind.

The taint on George W. Bush’s victory in 2000 from his loss of the popular vote and Bush v. Gore did not deter him from pushing the hard-right agenda he had covered up during the campaign. He filled his administration with Federalist Society zealots, for whom filling the 100+ judicial vacancies with extreme right-wingers was the top priority. Within a few months of his inauguration Bush sent up a group of judges for the appellate courts dominated by right-wing conservatives like Miguel Estrada, Jeffrey Sutton, Priscilla Owen, John Roberts and Terrence Boyle.

…

During their control of the Senate, the Democrats confirmed many conservative nominees, including Michael McConnell, a leader of the anti-choice forces; Judge D. Brooks Smith, who had serious ethical problems and had ruled consistently for business and against workers and others; Lavenski Smith, an undistinguished lawyer from Arkansas who had participated in numerous anti-choice suits, usually unsuccessfully. By the end of 2002, the Democrats had confirmed 100 nominees, including 17 appellate judges, and had rejected two in committee after hearings despite the disruptions caused by September 11 and the anthrax scare.

Overall, the Democrats averaged six confirmations per month during 2001-02, in contrast with the Republicans’ 3.5 during 1995-2000.

In November 2002, the Republicans narrowly regained the Senate 51-49. Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatch began what the New York Times called, “steamrolling judicial nominees” in order to achieve “an era of conveyor belt nominations” He brushed aside rules that got in the way, leaving Democrats with only the filibuster with which to fight nominees they considered especially egregious. In rapid order, John Roberts, Jeffery Sutton, Deborah Cook and Timothy Tymkovich were confirmed to appellate seats. Ten others were blocked, seven on philosophic grounds and three over a largely political fight about Michigan judgeships. Every district court nominees was confirmed.

it’s a long, painful, ugly story. Relentless in the achieving of the goal being realised.

How’s that collapse of the conservative movement working for you?  The one the Blahgs talk about every single damned day? 

Quite of bit of what Herman Schwartz has to say is packed into that single page posting… bad as it is… I still laughed at how out of date and poorly informed are rather too many of the commenters to these two threads (LINK LINK) of BTD/Armando/Fernando/poiuynick at a site run by a criminal defense atty (and a woman).  Doctors can be criminally charged.  Women now do not have access to the best medical advice of their doctor.   Even poor old Judy Woodruff, long past any acuity, was able to articulate, on Tuesday on TNH, that the fetus is NOW more important than the mother.  Health exception is gone. I have already, somewhere in the past year, read of a court mandated C-Section, in which both baby and mother died.  Already, in the past.  NOW the fetus is elevated beyond the woman.

DOA, in any practical reality (overnight fewer abortion docs will do the remaining procedure), is mid term abortion (tho Armando constantly refers to “late term”, it is a mid term procedure).  Remember when an amnio is done.

Check out Peaches in those threads….  What a winner.  And this thread is just a scream and a half.  Quess what other 5/4 decision completely obliterated the idea of States’ Rights?  Bush v Gore. 

Here he leads off with Adam B back at ol’ home base.

Worship the Baby!… because Democrats surely do not value women.  At all.  Nor do their pathetic tools online.  How sad to be no more than an appendage.  To a servant political party.

Bottom line, end of the day, everything that the R do, they can call bi partisan.  And they do.

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