The Heretik

The Heretik: Some More Bombs Fall Before Option Armageddon

 
THE HERETIK: COME THUNDER, COME LIGHTNING
More and more people like Mario Cuomo are pointing out what really is at stake in the bluster blowing around the filibuster.  

PLUS: ON THE BRINK, WHO BLINKED FIRST?
BROOKS DROPS A BOMB
Says Reid Offered Deal on Supreme Court Nominees That Frist Didn't Take
 
 

THE HERETIK: COME THUNDER, COME LIGHTNING
More and more people like Mario Cuomo are pointing out what really is at stake in the bluster blowing around the filibuster.  The coming storm of nuclear winter brought on by crybaby option sophists like Bill Frist has always had one thundrous reality.  It shouldn’t take a bolt of lightning to see starkly that this blustery blowout has always been about judges.  Judges who will decide whether we move further into the twenty first century or step back into the Dark Age of Plutocracy.

FROM MARIO CUOMO: If Republicans rewrite Senate rules to more easily end filibusters, the country will experience "exactly the kind of `tyranny of the majority' that James Madison had in mind," former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said Saturday.

Cuomo, in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address, said Senate Republicans "are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they cannot get from the proper political bodies."

"How will they do this? By destroying the so-called filibuster, a vital part of the 200-year-old system of checks and balances in the Senate," Cuomo said.

THE HERETIK: ON THE NUCLEAR BRINK, WHO BLINKED FIRST?
High Stakes Filibuster Game May Have More Than One Loser.
 David Brooks says Frist frosted a deal that would have gotten him his goal of Supreme Court nominees unblocked and on the bench.  Reid may have given away the Democrats store.

FROM DAVID BROOKS IN  THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Frist should have taken the deal.

Last week, the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, made an offer to head off a nuclear exchange over judicial nominations. Reid offered to allow votes on a few of the judges stuck in limbo if the Republicans would withdraw a few of the others.

But there was another part of the offer that hasn't been publicized. I've been reliably informed that Reid also vowed to prevent a filibuster on the next Supreme Court nominee. Reid said that if liberals tried to filibuster President Bush's pick, he'd come up with five or six Democratic votes to help Republicans close off debate. In other words, barring a scandal or some other exceptional circumstance, Reid would enable Bush's nominee to get a vote and probably be confirmed.


 

Frist Makes Another Threat on Filibuster

Celebrate Poetry with The Heretik: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Today is the official end of National Poetry Month.  But not here, friends.  Just as Black History Month never ends with February, just as Women’s History Month never ends in March; the celebration of poetry will never end here.

More on that after our featured poem of the day.  A personal note: I tried to save this last week for my father Walt Whitman, but as with so many other plans, life came crashing into that wondrous car riding down the street of dreams.  In these posts and in e mails, I have received requests for one poem more than any other. Maybe more than anything, those calls remind me what poetry is: the spirit of the age, the ageless essence of our souls.

As always, the comments section here is intended for you to pour out your heart and your soul.  Pour out your day or night with a song you like, a poem you have written, or one you recommend.  In that pouring we are all the richer.  I, The Heretik, Joe Ivory Mattingly, working at my desk at the mouth of hell, thank you all for sharing the light found in our often shadowed world.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"
Dylan Thomas

Hear Dylan Thomas Read the Poem here.

The beauty of poetry is that it remains forever pure on the page in its words. The wonder of poetry is how it flies into our hearts, how mere words lift us above the clouds of joy and dash us into the sea of sorrow, and all in just a few lines.

Poetry is the tiny diorama of our day, the grand tale of eternity, the battle of the real and the ideal.

For me poetry is some small sign of salvation on this earth.  I am ever a creature of two senses, of humor and of outrage.  Outrage is my hell.  We each choose our own outrage, what will take us to our hell. I will always rage against the dying of the light.  In this I know I am not alone.

But we sometimes feel alone.  We have that sense.  It grows in each of us, often keeping us apart.  Poetry is my connection to you.  Thank you all.  A sense of humor is my heaven.  Humor is a winged wonder, Icarus unmelting in the heat of the sun. I have said this before and will probably say it again: if there is a god, laughter must be his echo in this world.

Poetry is echo, whisper, shout and scream.  Poetry the curse.  Poetry the dream. Thank you for sharing your dreams with me.  Rage always against the dying of the light.  Do not go gentle into that good night.

Thanks again to all my generous commenters!

The Heretik On: When the Bush Circus Comes to Town

UPDATED  2PM  EASTERN APRIL 29, 2005

WHEN THE CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN
Our President George W. Bush is a sad clown.  There is no other explanation for his circus tent performance at that press conference last night.  Sad excuses, sad explanations.  Does he think we all are idiots?  Or perhaps he is just an idiot. The people thought he was smarter not too long ago, right around the last election.  Bush has gotten stupid awfully fast. Or maybe his ideas are just dumb. 

Who spoon fed him the idea that anybody looking at Social Security would go for that pitchfork full of elephant manure?  No matter how much happy talk you hear, the war in Iraq isn’t getting any cheerier.  And every time Americans go to the gas pump, they will feel they were fooled by a fool. I have a bad case of gas in my stomach right now. Or maybe something I can't hold down in my gut. 

Only a clown would rail against gay marriage and then be seen walking around hand in hand with his Saudi boyfriend.  Walk around all giggly and explain it all as cultural differences.  Oy.  Irony truly is dead. Nobody is happy with this circus here in town.


HERE ARE SOME HO HOS From Jillian passed to us by Skippy

HOW MANY MEMBERS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ARE NEEDED TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

   1. one to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed,

   2. one to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs tobe changed,

   3. one to blame clinton for burning out the light bulb,

   4. one to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for darkness,

   5. one to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to haliburton for the newlight bulb,

   6. one to arrange a photograph of bush, dressed as a janitor, standing ona step ladder under the banner: lightbulb change accomplished,

   7. one administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how bush was literally in the dark,

   8. one to viciously smear #7,

   9. one surrogate to campaign on tv and at rallies on how george bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along,

  10. and finally one to confuse americans about the difference betweenscrewing a light bulb and screwing the country.
ranklin Delano Roosevelt

The Heretik wants to know if anybody is laughing yet.

UPDATED AND ADDED 2 PM EASTERN APRIL 29, 2005

WHEN PEOPLE START TO LAUGH IS A SERIOUS MOMENT.
That's the point when real questions start to get asked and presidencies fall apart.

From SALON: There comes a moment -- it happened to George H.W.Bush, it happened to Bill Clinton -- when reporters in the mainstream media make the pivot against a president. All actions become desperate. All pronouncements become suspect.There comes a moment -- it happened to George H.W.Bush, it happened to Bill Clinton -- when reporters in the mainstream media make the pivot against a president. All actions become desperate. All pronouncements become suspect.

PARODY IS NOT A PRESIDENTIAL MOMENT
Norbiz Take Bush Town, the Town Dump

QUESTION: Your top military officer, General Richard Myers, says the Iraqi insurgency is as strong now as it was a year ago. Why is that the case? And why haven't you been more successful in limiting the violence?

BUSH: I think he went on to say we're winning, if I recall. Boy, he really isn't bright. Umm... wait a minute... receiving catch-phrases: tyranny and darkness and torture chambers and mass graves. Ideology of hate. Freedom and hope. (eyes roll back in his head)

QUESTION: Sir, I asked you about what you think of the way faith is being used in our political debates, not just in society generally.

BUSH: Well, I can only speak to myself. And I am mindful that people in political office should say to somebody, You're not equally American if you don't happen to agree with my view of religion. I mean, that's bullshit, of course. Those Shintos and agnostics and Zoroasterians are low, low people.

ADDED 7 PM EST APRIL 29, 2005

MAHABLOG  JABS BUSH WITH TWO TWO BLADES

Item one for "saving" Social Security is removing Bushie fingers from the national treasury.

If we could just find a way to get rid of (employees/citizens), the (company/country) would be out of the red and into the black next week.

The Heretik notes all of this with  balanced senses of outrage and humor.  For now.  I have watched this man wage war on everything my profane heart holds holy and my damned soul considers sacred, as much as one like myself can.  Bush is one comic fall on his face away from falling from the good graces of the people he has so often tried to fool.

Celebrate Poetry with The Heretik: Yeats, Shakespeare, and Auden

Consider this post your chance to post whatever you like about poetry here and elsewhere in this world, to drop in favorite poems and songs in part or in whole that mean the world to you, to do whatever you like.  Thanks, Joe.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
William Butler Yeats

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'

"Sonnet Eight"
William Shakespeare

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

"Funeral Blues"
W.H. Auden

The Heretik On the Latest Release From the President's iPOD Commission

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shootin at some food,
And up through the ground came a bubblin crude.
 
Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClelland has yet to respond to the following questions:

1. Is Sixties sit com character Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies making energy decisions at the White House?
   
2. Would a sit com character  make better energy decisions at the White House? . . . . .
3. . . . . .  then why do White House Energy policies seem like such a joke?
   

What do you think?

THE HERETIK: On Radicals, Republicans, and Other Options

 
THE HERETIK: On Radicals and Republicans

PLUS: FRIST DEMANDS UP AND DOWN VOTE
Then Asks That You Trust Him.

REID TELLS FRIST HE CAN KISS .  . .
The Far Right Ass. And the Date with Destiny Is Set

HATCH LAYS HIS EGG
And It Smells. Rotten. Like a Lie.

REID: KILLING THEM SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG
I Heard He Had a Good Song, I Heard He Had A Style

SOMEBODY CALL THE ASYLUM
The Resolute and Now Quiet Uncommitted Will Commit Us to Our Future


 
 

THE HERETIK: ON RADICALS AND REPUBLICANS
The Heretik notes that the essence of judgment is certainty about who deserves what.  In this battle over judges, in this discussion of the nuclear option, I am reminded constantly that one side speaks for what the judicial nominees deserve and one side speaks for a slow deliberative process.  Most odd it is that seeming conservatives want to speed ahead into the future and give  some judges what they deserve: this so called up and down vote.  And curious it is that those of the liberal tradition speak up for the slow charms of process.  These times flip all things over.  These times flip all people on their heads.  These times make politicians flip out.  Any Republican who votes for the nuclear option is no longer a conservative.  Any Republican who votes for the nuclear option to help install these most dubious judges, who continues to call himself a conservative is a liar.  A radical liar.

One need only look at the year 1789 for instruction on this. 1789 was a bad year for tyrants.  In America our Revolution was embodied and given flesh in the living words of the US Constitution, an ideal we struggle to make true.  In 1789 France, the souls of tyrants were disembodied, heads were lost, and rulers were sent to their deserved heaven or to their more deserved hell. 

In 1789 America the cool head stayed the hot hand, our essential conflict forever found in the Constitution.  Our government will forever be a republican democracy, with the curse and benefit of whom we vote for voting not just for our feelings of the moment, but for our needs of the future.  In 1789 America struck a balance between the rule of the majority and the recognition of the rights of the minority.  America’s essence and hope for the world is recognition that you may be different from me, and I from you and we will both be the better for it. Respect for the different, for the minority, makes America majestic in the eyes of the world, a common people with an uncommon dream, a commonwealth where all may share the bounty, each as they see fit.

In 1789 France told a different tale.  Cool heads could not stop hot hands, so heads were lost as the majority spoke.  Quick judgements with less thought bring fatal results.  Oh, but all those victims deserved their up and down immediate vote.  France had her Radical Republicans, we had our own in the years after the Civil War, and now we have them again.  Too much honesty and feeling wreaked too much havoc in the years following 1789 in France and 1865 here.  Look to France yesterday and look to the Red State South here for the Avenging Majority who would make all things right in an instant and for all time.

Judges who serve for all time, for life, require no immediate instant, sudden death up and down vote.  America deserves all the time it takes for judgements on judges wisely made.  In this battle over the nuclear option what is at stake is not these judges, what is at stake is what was at stake in the last two presidential elections. Those election battles were never over who would rule as President King then. 

Bush the Usurper in 2000 who seems Bush the Regent in 2005 would need to be present for that moment, that instant when America could be changed for life and for the future, for when the next Supreme Court Chief Justice and his cronies could be named.  If anyone wants an explanation of how seeming conservative judges like Scalia and Thomas went from favoring conservative, state rights oriented judgements to suddenly suggesting the government should stop the counting of votes, remember that we live in times when justice has been turned on its head.
In the present we must remember the past and not forget the future.  The future now deserves all the time it needs.

 

 

 
FRIST DEMANDS UP AND DOWN VOTE
Then Asks That You Trust Him.

Never trust someone who asks you to trust them.  One who has your trust never needs to ask for it. One who asks the trust will give nothing and take everything when you are distracted by political sleight of hand.  We live in the Age of Political Magic and Trickery, when much of what deserves our considered attention is simply waved away to seeming disappear.

FROM SENATOR BILL FRIST ON THE SENATE FLOOR:
Let me briefly discuss how we got here.

Never in 214 years -- never in the history of the Senate -- had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote…until two years ago.

In the last Congress, the President submitted 34 appeals court nominees to the Senate. A minority of senators denied ten of those nominees -- and threatened to deny another six -- up-or-down votes.

They wouldn’t allow votes, because they knew the nominees would be confirmed and become judges. The nominees had the support of a majority of senators.

. . . So far, only up-or-down votes on appeals court nominees have been denied. I sincerely hope the Senate minority does not intend to escalate its judicial obstruction to potential Supreme Court nominees.

That would be a terrible blow to constitutional principles and to political civility in America. I hope my offer will make it unnecessary for the minority to further escalate its judicial obstruction.

. . . . the minority of senators who have denied votes on judicial nominees are concerned that their ability to block bills will be curbed. As Majority Leader, I guarantee that power will be protected.

AND THE HERETIK SAYS: Kiss America now.
Kiss America while it's being . . .

 
REID TELLS FRIST HE CAN KISS .  . .
The Far Right Ass.  And the Date with Destiny Is Set

Frist’s approach to politics is the equivalent of date rape.  Hey, she was in the same room.  Of course she said yes, even if she didn’t say yes. No one says no to me.  I represent the majority.  Do we even have to ask . . . .

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist refused to budge Thursday on his demand that Democrats forgo filibusters against all of President Bush's past or present appeals court nominations.

''Throughout this debate, we have held firm to a simple principle, judicial nominees deserve up-or-down votes,'' Frist said.

He offered to allow senators to retain the right to filibuster District Court nominees as part of an arrangement in which confirmation votes would be guaranteed on the nation's highest judgeships after 100 hours of debate. The Senate's top Republican also said that under his plan, senators would no longer be able to block nominees in the Judiciary Committee.

''Judicial nominees are being denied. Justice is being denied. The solution is simple, allow senators to do their jobs and vote,'' Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would look at Frist's offer, but wasn't all that charitable in his description. ''It's a big wet kiss to the far right,'' he said.

 

 
HATCH LAYS HIS EGG
And It Smells. Rotten. Like a Lie.

Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah, blocked more nominees in his role as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee than any Democrat daring to filibuster now.  Hatch made sure Clinton nominees never made it to the floor for up and down votes.  What is that thing they have you swear to?  Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

ORRIN HATCH ON THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE APRIL 20: Giving judicial nominations reaching the floor an up or down vote, that is, exercising our role of advice consent through voting on nominations, helps us resist the temptation of turning our check on the President’s power into a force that can destroy the President’s power and upset the Constitution’s balance. We have historically followed this standard. When Republicans ran the Senate under President Clinton, we gave each of his judicial nominations reaching the floor a final confirmation decision. We took cloture votes, that is, votes to end debate, on just four of the hundreds of nominees reaching us here. All four were confirmed. In fact, even on the most controversial appeals court nominations by President Clinton, the Republican leadership used cloture votes to prevent filibusters and ensure up or down votes, exactly the opposite of how cloture votes are used today.

 

 
REID: KILLING THEM SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG
I Heard He Had a Good Song, I Heard He Had A Style

So I went to see him and listen for a while.  Harry Reid is a far better song and dance man than anyone has a right to expect from a Mormon from Nevada.  Now follow my lead, dear . . . Democrat message: We don’t just say we are reasonable.  WE ARE REASONABLE.  Moderate judges will have no problem.

FROM SENATOR HARRY REID: Working in a bipartisan manner the U.S. Senate today confirmed J. Michael Seabright, to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Hawaii. Judge Seabright is an experienced prosecutor, who has amassed an impressive record on several high profile cases in Hawaii, received broad bipartisan support.

“Today, we confirmed President Bush’s 206th judicial nominee, giving him the highest confirmation rate in decades. There are currently more than twenty vacancies on the federal courts in which the President has not forwarded nominees to the Senate. I would encourage him to nominate judges who will receive broad bipartisan support, and stop picking fights instead of judges. We were all sent to Washington to do the people’s business. We have the highest gas prices in history, growing insurgencies in Iraq, and millions of Americans living without health care. Clearly, the President should find ways to make progress on these important issues instead of further dividing the country over seven radical judges,” said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

J. Michael Seabright is the 206th judicial nominee confirmed since George Bush took office in 2001. Democrats have confirmed 35 circuit court nominees, more than in Reagan’s or Clinton’s first term. This is a better confirmation rate than that achieved during the Clinton, Bush Sr. and Reagan Administrations.

 

 
SOMEBODY CALL THE ASYLUM
The Resolute and Now Quiet Uncommitted Will Commit Us to Our Future
THE NEW OLD NEWS: I am still convinced William Butler Yeats is alive and the best lack all conviction. The Nuclear Option debate will end with the word of the last to commit. Oy

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: As few as two or three uncommitted GOP senators have left Democrats and Republicans uncertain who might prevail in an eventual showdown in the battle over judicial filibusters, sources in both parties said yesterday.

The uncertainty has helped spur a recent compromise offer from Democrats and a go-slow approach by Republican leaders, even as an anticipated vacancy on the Supreme Court draws nearer. The push to persuade the small cluster of holdouts to support a ban on filibusters of judicial nominees is seen as a crucial test of Majority Leader Bill Frist's tenure as the chamber's top Republican, senators in both parties say.

Frist (R-Tenn.) in recent weeks has declined to speculate on whether he has the votes to change the rule, but his top associates predict he will have them. Still, they say the vote could be excruciatingly close, requiring Vice President Cheney to be in the presiding officer's chair to break a possible tie.

"It's looks like it's going to be the vice president," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who is helping Frist line up support, said in an interview yesterday. "You never have the votes until you have the votes," Lott said. "You've got your clear voters, you've got your nervous nellies, and you've got those who will never tell you until the vote is taken. . . . In the end I think they'll be there because [Frist] has been very restrained" in handling the issue, he said.

Republicans are angry that Democrats have used the filibuster - which can be stopped only by 60 votes in the 100-member Senate - to block 10 of President Bush's appellate court nominees. Senate GOP leaders want to ban such filibusters, but some of their 55 members dislike the idea. All 44 Democrats and the chamber's lone independent flatly oppose it.

Democrats say a two-thirds majority is required to change Senate rules, but Republicans plan to use a constitutional argument to contend that a simple majority will suffice to ban judicial filibusters. For three months, lawmakers, aides and lobbyists have speculated on whether Frist can muster the 50 votes needed to enable Cheney to put him over the top.

*****

Frist can lose only five Republicans, and three appear almost surely gone. Sens. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) have condemned the proposed rule change so sternly that party leaders assume they will side with Democrats. Many Republicans also expect to lose Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), although she remains publicly uncommitted. Collins "believes that the filibuster has been overused but would like to see the situation resolved through negotiation rather than a rule change," her office said yesterday.

If Collins, Chafee, McCain and Snowe oppose the change, then Frist could suffer only one more GOP defection. Speculation hangs most heavily on Sens. John W. Warner (Va.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Arlen Specter (Pa.), all of whom say they are undecided.

 

Welcome Back to The War On Everything TM

On the occasion of the Grand Re-Opening of The War on Everything TM,
The Heretik asks you to vote for your favorite No Idle American Threat.
Rumsfeld or Frist?   Maybe favorite isn't the right word for these right guys who are always right.  Vote for Doctor Right Back in the Stone Age or Mister More Righeous Than You.  Or is that Doctor More Righteous Than You and Mister Right Back in the Stone Age? 
Just vote. 
 

Celebrate Poetry with The Heretik! "One of Many Dreams"by Joe Ivory Mattingly

Consider this post your chance to post whatever you like about poetry here and elsewhere in this world, to drop in favorite poems and songs in part or in whole that mean the world to you, to do whatever you like.  Thanks, Joe.

feeding the hungry dog
the end of all evil

the enemy engaged
the battle won can wait

make time
to take the time

time will come
in its time

your hands are not
the hands of the clock

twin hands of the thief
the tick and the tock

stealing handfuls
from a mighty dreaming river

rise not when you are ready
but a moment after that

for imagination catches up quickly
and exceeds all things

"One of Many Dreams"
Joe Ivory Mattingly

The Heretik on WAH, WAH: The Crying on Judges Fair and Foul

WAH: The Cry of Republican Hypocrites . . .
Hypocrisy’s most rank smell comes from highest ranking Republicans.
Al Gore offers a unique perspective.

WAH, WAH: Give Me My Judge or I Will Not Stop Crying
Wrong Once Can't Be Made Right Now: Priscilla Owen
Why Enron's Sweetheart Judge Should Bear Another Rejection.
 

WAH: The Cry of Republican Hypocrites . . .
Hypocrisy’s most rank smell comes from highest ranking Republicans. In this season of threat of a political nuclear winter what falls out of the sky is simply that the the up and down vote is something Republicans have come up with lately.  They were not so down with it when it came to another President’s judicial nominees.

Wah, wah. They cry Bush’s nominees must have an up and down vote.  We face a crisis without our judges on the courts.  The courts must have judges.  Our judges.  The plain fact is this “crisis” of lack of judges on the courts is entirely of the Republicans making.  Look at them as you would the child who murders his parents and begs indulgence for being an orphan.

Whom some consider still to be the rightful heir in politics has a unique perspective on this.  Al Gore knows something about a lack of judicial input in our political process and he knows a bit about too much political input as well. He says below what I have long known.  This crisis, this threat of a nuclear option and dark days of a political winter nuclear winter have been brought about because Republicans did all they could to avoid up and down votes in the past on Clinton nominees, so that they might have up and down votes on Bush nominees in the future.


FROM AL GORE: In fact, under the procedures used by Republicans during the Clinton/ Gore Administration, far fewer than the 41 Senators necessary to sustain a filibuster were able to routinely block the Senate from voting on judges nominated by the president. They allowed Republican Senators to wage shadow filibusters to prevent some nominees from even getting a hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Other nominees were victims of shadow filibusters after receiving a hearing and were not allowed a committee vote. Still others were reported out of committee, and not allowed a vote on the Senate floor.

To put the matter in perspective, when President Clinton left office, there were more than 100 vacant judgeships largely due to Republican obstructionist tactics. Ironically, near the end of the Clinton-Gore administration, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said: "There is no vacancy crisis and a little perspective clearly belies the assertion that 103 vacancies represent a systematic crisis."

Comically, soon after President Bush took office, when the number of vacancies had already been reduced, the same Republican committee chairman sounded a shrill alarm. Because of the outstanding vacancies, he said, "We're reaching a crisis in our federal courts."

The Heretik notes this is comedy indeed, the stuff of farce, but with more tragic consequences.

 

WAH, WAH: Give Me My Judge or I Will Not Stop Crying
Wrong Once Can't Be Made Right Now: Priscilla Owen
Why Enron's Sweetheart Judge Should Bear Another Rejection. Even Alberto Gonzales has questions about her. Enron may have disappeared from the political radar screen, but its rotting corporate aroma wafts around Owen.  These are mere trifles, however, compared to Owens' record.  Her record puts to sad rest the lie that Republicans are against activist judges.  Republicans want judges who will be active for their own agendas.

FROM PFWA, A  SAMPLING OF NATIONAL OPINION
on a  Very  Opinionated Judge Who Puts Her  Opinions Before Facts

• … the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board wrote, “Texas may be saddled with justices who elevate partisan ideology above law and logic, but justice and reason should discourage their infliction on the nation.”

• The San Antonio Express-News wrote that Owen’s record “demonstrates a results-oriented streak that belies supporters’ claims that she strictly follows the law.”

• Gonzales and other Texas Supreme Court judges criticized Owen for improperly trying to “judicially amend” Texas law or for “an unconscionable act of judicial activism” that would harm individual rights.

• The New York Times similarly termed Owen “the wrong judge” for the lifetime Fifth Circuit post, explaining that she “has been at times so eager to issue conservative rulings” that she has “ignored statutory language and substituted her own views.”

• Even her court colleagues have commented on her habit of twisting law to fit her hyperconservative political views,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune noted, and Owen was described as one of a handful of the President’s judicial nominees who were “unfit for promotions” due to their “radical views” and were “unable to separate personal opinions from professional conduct.”

• The Committee in fact rejected Owen’s nomination in 2002. Nevertheless, President Bush renominated Owen in 2003. After an additional hearing failed to resolve, and in fact underscored, the serious concerns raised by her record, she again failed to win confirmation as a result of a filibuster by Democratic Senators. As the Houston Chronicle wrote in praising this action, Owen’s record continued to show “less interest in impartially interpreting the law than in pushing an agenda.”

The Heretik will have more on Patricia Owen later in the week.  However, it is not too early to say that this woman has already had her day in the court of the Senate and in the court of public opinion. She simply lacks the subtance required for her to have any further appeal as a judge worthy of nomination.  2002, 2003, and 2004 to the present.  Bush has taken three swings at this looking for a hit.  If  he does finally connect with Owen, his hit will be most foul.