Re: Federalist 67

Post #100,136 by johnu 5/3/03 4:42:48 PM Reply	Re: Federalist 67 Recess appointments should only be used in extraordinary circumstances - not as a bludgeon to try to get the other party to cooperate. I agree. But I would argue we have extraordinary circumstances. Democrates seem to have raised the bar to the point where any judge that is nominated that does not meet their standard of "mainstream" (i.e left of center) justifies a filibuster and a 60 vote super majority to get the nomination thru. All the judges on hold now would get thru the senate on a majority vote if allowed to. There's an interesting article on NRO on what would have happened to George Washington's first judicial nominee had he gone before the current Senate. [link\|http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-daly050203.asp\|http://www.nationalr...nt-daly050203.asp] How far we've devolved. What was once a way to serve one's country seems now to be a one-way ticket to filibuster. Regards, John
Post #100,175 by JayMehaffey 5/3/03 10:31:55 PM Reply	Left of center? I agree. But I would argue we have extraordinary circumstances. Democrates seem to have raised the bar to the point where any judge that is nominated that does not meet their standard of "mainstream" (i.e left of center) justifies a filibuster and a 60 vote super majority to get the nomination thru. All the judges on hold now would get thru the senate on a majority vote if allowed to. Left of center? The Democrats have blocked two nominations, at the same time they have let others through, none of which where "left of center." One of the people being blocked right now is Priscilla Owens, a judge that is so far to the right and so poorly rated that she should never have been put up for nomination in the first place. It was the Republicans that began playing these games to begin with, holding up a huge number of nominations under Clinton. But once the Republicans had a majority in both houses they decided to change the rules to let them push through as many judges as they could. At the same time, the White House decided to abandon the old policy of having judges reviewed for competence before being put forth, so they could push highly partisan judges. And your accusing the Democrats of playing games? What they are doing is fighting back. Jay
Post #100,198 by a6l6e6x 5/4/03 12:59:03 AM Reply	Before Clinton, there was Reagan and the [link\|http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/f98_titles/vieira_gross.htm\|Judge Robert Bork] nomination to the US Supreme Court. President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court met with a fierce opposition that was apparent in his confirmation hearings, which were different in many ways from those of any previous nominee. Lasting longer than any other Supreme Court confirmation battle, the Senate hearings dragged on for eighty-seven hours over a twelve-day period. Bork personally testified for more than thirty hours, outlining his legal philosophy in greater detail than had ever before been required of a Supreme Court nominee. Nor had any previous Supreme Court nominee faced the number of witnesses who testified at the Bork hearings. The tit for tat continues to this day. Alex "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer
Post #100,241 by Another Scott 5/4/03 12:58:29 PM Reply	And before Reagan there was Johnson and Abe Fortas [link\|http://wais.stanford.edu/us_supremecourtabefortas91002.html\|Here]. Hank Greely explains the fate of Abe Fortas: "Fortas had been one of the key lawyers who preserved "Landslide Lyndon's" 87 vote victory in his 1948 race for the US Senate. Johnson used him as a trusted adviser thereafter, successfully nominating for a seat as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1965. In June 1968 LBJ nominated the very liberal Fortas for promotion from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, to replace Earl Warren, who had announced that he was retiring effective on the confirmation of his successor. Republican Senators and Southern conservative Democratic Senators stalled the nomination, hoping (correctly, as it turned out) that a Republican would be elected and would nominate a conservative successor to Warren. A vote to break a four-day filibuster failed on October 2 and Fortas asked that his name be withdrawn. Johnson's nomination of Fortas was not helped by the fact that LBJ nominated a Texas crony, Homer Thorneberry, a non-spectacular lower court federal judge, to take Fortas's Associate Justice seat. [link\|http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:g9uJ-xs6dtEJ:www.nevergoback.org/filibuster.pdf&hl=en&ie=UTF-8\|This page] says that about 20% of Supreme Court justices have been rejected, including 2 of Nixon's. The tit for tat continues to this day. Indeed. There are more news outlets, and more interest groups with a stake in the outcome, so the scrutiny of any new nominee is going to be increasingly intense. Cheers, Scott.
Post #100,245 by a6l6e6x 5/4/03 1:23:30 PM Reply	Yep, but Abe Fortas was tainted more than most. :) Alex "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer
Post #100,776 by johnu 5/7/03 4:23:23 PM Reply	Re: Left of center? One of the people being blocked right now is Priscilla Owens, a judge that is so far to the right and so poorly rated that she should never have been put up for nomination in the first place. Why do you consider her to be "so far to the right"? Why do you consider someone who got a unanimous \ufffdwell qualified\ufffd rating from the American Bar Association to be "so poorly rated that she should never have been put up for nomination in the first place"?
Post #100,780 by Simon_Jester 5/7/03 5:06:05 PM Reply	Didn't Bush give up the ABA rating and recommendation? so, aren't you applying ABA ratings selectively now? Isn't that hippocritical? As for Owens, didn't the President's own counsel (Gonzales) accused her of judicial activism?
Post #100,824 by JayMehaffey 5/7/03 11:42:31 PM Reply	Re: Left of center? [link\|http://www.independentjudiciary.com/nominees/nominee.cfm?NomineeID=21\|Independent Judiciary] A good short summary of Owens and her judical history. Quite simply, she is the sort of judical activist that real conservatives hate but neo-cons like. She is willing to grossly distort the law so that it matchs her political desires. Here is one of the better known bits. The Houston Chronicle wrote that her \ufffdinterpretations [in these cases] were generally stricter and more conservative than the majority of her all-Republican colleagues\ufffd on the court. Indeed, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, then a fellow Justice, called one of her dissents in a bypass case \ufffdan unconscionable act of judicial activism.\ufffd1 This is the same Alberto Gonzales that now has to argue for her nomination. Which shows you just how much respect the people involved have for the court process. Jay
Post #100,871 by johnu 5/8/03 8:44:03 AM Reply	Re: Left of center? I have to question the validity of your link. Most of the allegations in that summary are debunked in detail in the following: [link\|http://www.judicialselection.org/OwenReport.pdf\|http://www.judicials...rg/OwenReport.pdf].
Post #101,015 by JayMehaffey 5/8/03 10:40:16 PM Reply	Interesting peice A interesting and well written peice of work, if a highly partisan one. It will take some work to dig through it. A quick reading suggests it is rather heavy on spin. It's section on Texans for Public Justice claims that organization is an advocay group for trial lawyers but don't back up that claim. The best they can do is point to a statement that the group has gotten money from lawyers and a statement that most of the groups money comes from liberal groups. See the end of page 3 and start of page 4. It does contain one honest admission though. But neither should TPJ be mistaken for an objective, impartial voice. The group's pronouncements, like those of any activist group with a particular ideological orientation, should be taken with a grain of salt. From the looks of things, Judical Selection has a rather ideological orientation also. It is part of the Free Congress Foundation, which was founded by Paul Weyrich (of Heritige Foundation fame) and has this quote in it's about page. Free Congress Foundation is politically conservative, but it is more than that: it is also culturally conservative. Most think tanks talk about tax rates or the environment or welfare policy and occasionally we do also. But our main focus is on the Culture War. Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture? Or will we continue the long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness? If we do, America, once the greatest nation on earth, will become no less than a third world country. Jay
Post #101,038 by johnu 5/9/03 8:53:06 AM Reply	The truth is somewhere in the middle From the looks of things, Judical Selection has a rather ideological orientation also. As does the Independent Judiciary (just take a look at their Coalition Partners list). I think the reality is that Judge Owens is a moderate judge with right leaning tendencies and you will find that most of the Bush nominees are the same. It was the same for Clinton; most of his nominees were moderate judges with left leaning tendencies. Regards, John
Post #101,237 by Ashton 5/10/03 9:41:28 PM Reply	Just calibrate your abscissa, is all.. In today's environment: "left leaning" describes a moderate view (WTF ANY of these discredited buzz words might actually mean anymore) "right leaning" means quite far-Right from what "right" once tried to indicate. Actual 'Left' today, would signify to the custodians of slogan reeducation: some anarchist with a bomb, a poor understanding of Marx and.. a beard. We don't see many of those, but some see them under every bed. (And besides, that Marx dream morphed into State Corporatism pretty instantly: so was the USSR 'Left' or 'Right' ? I get so confused about these things. But hate to spoil the fun.) Then there are the qualifiers, social- financial- religio- and the ever-amusing trying-to-be ameliorating.. compassionate- Hmm, what were those before the new-spin - Genghis Khan Wing? Oops.. almost forgot the Btand-new 'neo-' thingie.. Gawd Knows what that's supposed to signify, cause the rheotoric is unchanged from My Gramma's time. See what I mean about confusion? Wonder why nobody dares run simply as a 'Moderate' anymore. Not exciting enough? never mind, Ashton
Post #101,243 by rcareaga 5/10/03 10:18:10 PM Reply	Re: The truth is somewhere in the middle Puts me in mind of the late (and now largely forgotten) novelist Peter De Vries, in his novel The Blood of the Lamb--narrator as a twentysomething speaking to Young Female Prospect: "Sometimes I think this leg is the most beautiful thing in the world, and sometimes the other. I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between." I thought this terrifically clever when I encountered it at twelve, but when I first felt confident enough to deliver the line to a sweet young thing three years later it fell unaccountably short of the desired effect, greatly to my puzzlement at the time. cordially, "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist."
Post #101,281 by Simon_Jester 5/11/03 11:22:55 AM Reply	ROTFLMAO
Post #101,295 by deSitter 5/11/03 2:52:23 PM Reply	Re: The truth is somewhere in the middle (new thread) Created as new thread #101294 titled [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=101294\|Re: The truth is somewhere in the middle] -drl

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