george
Can you give an example of anti-religious flavor seeping into education?
george, I would really like to see some data to back up your contention that the current democrats are worse than past republicans for blocking court nominations..stats like how many Clinton nominations were blocked compared to how many Bush nominations are being blocked.
Republicans routinely blocked nearly 60 of President Clinton's nominees with anonymous holds, filibusters and other roadblocks. The President began his term by ending the pre-nomination peer review vetting by ABA, then also ended the normal practice of consultation with the opposition party and with home state senators that earlier presidents have followed (President Clinton even let Chairman Hatch pick a Utah judge, a Republican). More than any recent president including Reagan, President Bush is picking nominees based on their ideology - and brags that he is doing that.
perception,
According to the Democrats, Justice Brown is an arch-conservative with extreme views. She's attacked the New Deal which gave us Social Security as "the triumph of our socialist revolution." She's praised the Lochner cases. In these cases, the Supreme Court from 1905 to 1937, struck down worker health and safety laws as infringing on the rights of business. She has regularly takes extreme positions, being the only dissenter. Her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company's free speech rights. In another case, her court upheld $10,000. award for a black woman who had suffered emotional distress because she was turned down for an apartment because of her race. Justice Brown dissented, saying that the agency involved had no power to award the damages. The Chief Justice of her court has criticized her for "presenting an an unfair and inaccurate caricature" of affirmative action.
These are the reasons given by those Democrats who objected to her nomination. They seem valid to me.
Dyslexia,
I have seen & heard several versions of the comparative statistics offered by both Democrat and Republican protagonists, but I don't know or have ready access to the numbers. Comparisons have been made between overall numbers including appointees to all or just some courts and other offices, and between various combinations of these data for comparable periods in both presidencies. No doubt the selection is made to advance the view of whoever is speaking.
In Clinton's case the opposing party, the Republicans held the majority in the Senate and could approve or deny confirmation by normal voting as well as various tactics to delay or obstruct appointments in the judiciary and other committees. Now with a Republican President and a Republican majority in the Senate the Democrats have had to resort exclusively to committee tactics and filibuster to obstruct the normal advise and consent process by the Senate. We have not seen before such doctrinaire obstruction by a minority party. I view that as a significant worsening of an already bad situation. Moreover the Democrats have degraded the selection process and the judiciary itself by excessive partisanship over specific issues and often personal attacks.
As the Federal government legislates its way into more and more areas of our lives , often with ill-conceived programs designed to induce certain behaviors or help this or that favored group, more and more contradictions are created which become the fodder of the Federal courts. Increasingly tangled legislation is modified or limited by the judiciary instead of the legislature. This has grown to embody a very significant portion of what I regard as the legislative function of our government, now being done by a judiciary with lifetime tenure. This is what is behind the higher stakes now apparent in these battles. More often than not these stakes involve ill-conceived legislation sponsored by Democrats and defended by their allies in the judiciary. So I see the recent obstructionism of Democrats in the Senate as driven by problems largely created by Democrats, and worsening the standards of both the Senate in its approval process, and the judiciary itself in its operation and growing tendency to legislate.
The American Bar Association is a private group with no standing whatever under law. In recent decades, owing mostly to the political activities of trial lawyers, the ABA has chosen to adopt very partisan and public political positions on numerous issues. This has, properly in my view, rendered it useless as an objective advisor on the professional qualifications of lawyers who are candidates for judicial appointment. Since the President's announcement that he would no longer consider their recommendations, the ABA has continued to issue them and has made a serious effort to suppress the worst of the partisan excesses that previously colored its findings. However the remedy comes too late.
You assert that President Bush has discontinued a degree of consultation with Democrats that prevailed, you say, during the Clinton years and perhaps before. I have no knowledge of the truth of any aspect of this proposition.
Lola wrote:perception,
According to the Democrats, Justice Brown is an arch-conservative with extreme views. ....
These are the reasons given by those Democrats who objected to her nomination. They seem valid to me.
They don't seem very fair or valid to me, Lola. None of your anecdotes suggests anything extreme, unless perhaps you believe that it is impossible to misuse and violate the intent and purpose of our fair employment laws. The fact is that, particularly in California, such abuse has become increasingly common. There is nothing extreme abut limiting excessive awards given to "victims" who in many cases are merely manipulative extortionists. (I closed a fairly large office of our company in California for reasons related to these issues - there is simply too much unpredictable liability for the operation of a competitive business in California, and like many others, I chose to move our operations. ) Each anecdote refers to a complex case, no doubt with a story on each side, since it reached an appellate court. Raising them up, entirely out of context is at best a bit deceptive.
Quote:I've lived in some nations where there is the exact rule Tartarin describes, no political contributions are legally allowed. In the nations I describe the effect is more corruption in government.
Craven
Big difference between coincidence and causation, yes?
ok folks...time to focus. This discussion is spreading across the map like spilled cheezewhiz across an LA freeway midsummer, like lubricant across a large person's bottom, like America across everyone else
Lola
Certainly no one can deny Brown's record is controversial but does that record really reflect an ideology that is contrary to the values of the majority of Americans. None of her critics accuse her of being a constitutional revisionist-----something that cannot be said of some liberal judges.
This is certainly a battle over ideology and perhaps Dys is correct in his analysis----one thing can be said----minority nominees certainly put the Dems on the "hot seat" of public opinion. After all, the Democratic party is "the party of the minorities" and the little guy----except when it matters. Don't you think this stance is hypocritical and elitist?
Craven -- can you flesh out that remark about increased corruption? In which countries? How? Doesn't ring a bell with me...
blatham wrote:Quote:I've lived in some nations where there is the exact rule Tartarin describes, no political contributions are legally allowed. In the nations I describe the effect is more corruption in government.
Craven
Big difference between coincidence and causation, yes?
Do you mean to suggest that what I speak of is coincidental without knowing a thing about what I speak of? It would be odd to have a preferred answer without knowing the question.
Re intrusive government....I think someone ought to start a thread making the case (not at all difficult to make) that conservative social policy is uniformly intrusive, the one exception being areas related to justice or equity.
It's really not tough to draw a line from Augustine's notion of the individual (being prey to temptation and being so weak that he/she ought not to be allowed to determine his/her own life and values, and therefore being in need of of stern moral direction via state/church mechanisms) to the ideas of Antonin Scalia or Pat Robertson.
That would be a good thread.
craven
I meant only to suggest that you'd have to make a pretty thorough case to tie these two together, showing a causal relationship. It's certainly not apparent on the face of it that such a relationship would or does exist.
Just the facts, please, ma'am -- Craven, I mean.
Blatham,
You still purport to know an awful lot without any information.
Tartarin,
When you restrict yourself to factual postings I'll watch the pigs flying around in amusement.
There is no likelihood that political discussion will be divested of opinion.
Ducking, ducking. Quack quack, Duce.
Craven -- You posted an assertion without any modifier ("I believe," "it seems to me") and without any follow-up or further information, even when asked for it quite politely. Or you could have said -- well, I don't know for sure and we'd have all smiled and let it go.
Blatham and I may seem very opinionated to you, but Blatham and (I hope I as well) do our best to make clear the distinction in word or style between something we know as fact and something we believe strongly or have an instinct about. You haven't in this case, leading me to believe you were just mouthing off and, when asked for a little info, insulting us. You dropped into a fruitful conversation here in which some of us are depending on the knowledge of others. And then you cut and ran. You're being a pretty rude little smart-ass.
craven
Your second last post speaks about which one of us more appropriately? You continue to argue that there are opinions over on one side, and opinions over on the other side, and the middle is the place to be. It's a good motto, except sometimes, when it is a cowardly and soft-headed abrogation of principle and responsibility.
What is it you want to see? Everyone agreeing that there is nothing terribly important afoot in the present? Nothing to get worked up about?
Take a good read back through this thread. Read the piece on Strauss. Take it up with me point by point, but not if you are going to start with some prejudice that extremes do not exist already, that any suggestion they do is itself extremist. I'll do this with you, and in a disciplined manner, but only under that proviso.
My butler tells me that my tie is straight and my anger hardly evident at all.
craven...this is to you personally.
I have never...not once...not a single instance exists where I have written or spoken privately or publicly a negative about you personally or about this site. Where the invitation was extended by anyone to make such a statement, I didn't, because neither thought has been in my noggin. I have defended both you personally and this site on the very few times when a negation came to me.
I have NO disagreement with the way the site is run, other than the singular point I made to you weeks ago in a pm regarding Italgato.
I think you are an extraordinarily bright young man, and I suspect I cannot even come close to imagining how much work you have put into this project. You are one of the individuals here whom I most cherish, both intellectually and personally.
But I'm not about to cease arguing my take on the world. My responsibility is to learn and to be careful in how I go about that, and to comment and be careful how I go about that.
You said the other day that the site is not much fun for you any longer. I gather that the political threads have caused you both grief and disappointment...that you wished for something other. Well, me too, and too often. But to blame this on 'extremists of either color' is the easy way out.
This IS an unsual time. This thread reflects the unease we all feel. Change is severe and rapid. Powerlessness is the fact of existence for each of us on these matters we deal with here...all we can do is what we are doing...engaging each other with the best tools we each bring to the table. But this thread also reflects the depth to which we can try and make sense of things, to which we can engage someone who holds different view and talk with them. George has been immensely brave here, and he's hanging in and voicing his views, as are the others.
If we are going to have an open political forum, of this nature, then I don't know how we could hope for better.
