Re: Left of center?

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

Welcome to IWETHEY!