A lynch mob gathers: Part III

townhall.com ^ | 10/24/03 | Thomas Sowell

[kattracks]

Senator Charles Schumer went on television on October 22nd to announce that he was prepared to urge his fellow Democrats to filibuster, in order to prevent a Senate vote on the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to become a federal judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.

In other words, Senator Schumer is prepared to deny other Senators the right to vote yes or no on Justice Brown. He has turned the Senate's Constitutional duty to "advise and consent" on judicial nominees into the Senate minority's ability to delay and obstruct.

Such extremist tactics are especially ironic from those who have tried to portray Justice Brown as an "extremist" right-winger who would be dangerous on the federal bench. The fact that Justice Brown received a 76 percent vote of approval from California voters in an election to confirm her appointment to the state Supreme Court hardly fits the label that Senator Schumer and other liberal Democrats are trying to pin on her.

California voters are hardly known for being on the far right. Yet they gave Janice Rogers Brown the highest vote of approval among the four justices on the same ballot.

The truth carries little weight -- if any -- in political efforts to block judicial nominees. What matters is whether enough special interest groups are determined to block that person.

Many liberal-left organizations are determined to prevent Janice Rogers Brown from becoming a member of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in part because they are alarmed that she might move on up from there to the U.S. Supreme Court. If a few lies are all it takes to prevent that, they are more than willing to lie.

Why this bitter determination to prevent Justice Brown's nomination from even being voted on?

One reason is that Justice Brown's televised confirmation hearings showed her to be a very thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate black woman with a personality that would appeal to many of those watching her on C-SPAN. It could be hard for some Senators to go against public opinion and vote against her.

To people like shameless Schumer, the obvious answer is to prevent any vote at all.

Although Justice Brown has had more than 700 cases during her nine years as an appellate judge in California, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee kept emphasizing things she had said in various speeches to college students and others, while her supporters kept trying to keep the focus on what she did in her day job as a judge.

Liberal emphasis on judges' personal opinions on political issues helps create the impression that judges are deciding the social merits or demerits of policies like affirmative action, abortion, gun control and the like.

Liberal judges often do. But the whole point of the judicial philosophy of people like Janice Rogers Brown is that the political merits of policies are none of a judge's business. The judge is to decide what is legal, according to the written laws and the Constitution, not what the judge happens to like personally or politically.

Justice Brown's long history in hundreds of cases shows that this is in fact what she has lived by. Liberals seize upon cases in which her votes went against their pet policies like affirmative action or teenage abortions without parental notification.

In other cases, however, Justice Brown voted against policies favored by conservatives, leading to protests by the National Rifle Association and conservative newspapers. Although Janice Rogers Brown's own personal views are conservative, she ruled on these cases on the basis of the written law, not what she herself preferred.

Liberal-left hostility to Justice Brown is based on the very opposite of what they claim. Much of the liberal agenda can only be imposed by judges because elected officials cannot keep bucking public opinion. A judge who opposes judicial policy-making is a serious danger to their agenda and they will try to stop such nominees at all costs. Hence the lynch-mob atmosphere and the filibuster threat.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Thomas Sowell | Read Sowell's biography

[TruthNtegrity]

Such extremist tactics are especially ironic from those who have tried to portray Justice Brown as an "extremist" right-winger who would be dangerous on the federal bench. The fact that Justice Brown received a 76 percent vote of approval from California voters in an election to confirm her appointment to the state Supreme Court hardly fits the label that Senator Schumer and other liberal Democrats are trying to pin on her.

I watched about five minutes of Chuckie on C-Span last night before just having to change the channel. This guy is so blatant in his desire for activist Judges - those who see the Constitution as a "living document" in the light of current cultural thinking, I just wanted to puke.

Despite the candidate's getting 76% of CA vote - a state not known for it's Republican voters or for issues "on the right", Chuckie is about to deny Senators the right to vote on this candidate.

I am so sick and tired of the Dims and their obstructionist tactics, I can only hope that the Republicans have some ballistic responses in mind, and that this time, they use them.

To Chuckie, it's OK if we vote and confirm Judges who don't care a hoot for the Constitution, just as long as their precious Roe V Wade stands. They still don't understand how activist and wrong that decision was. The Supremes took a states-right issue, and made a decision on it.

But the way the Dims are going, Pres. Bush isn't going to get any of his candidates on the Appelate Court, for fear of their possibly becoming Supreme Court Judges.

The Senators have forgotten "advise and consent" and I, for one, would like someone to teach them a real lesson on this one.

[claudiustg]

The Dims have walked up on the scaffold and put the noose around their own necks. I think they're going to pay dearly in the next elections, particularly for their short sighted attitude on Iraq.

[Trajan88]

About a week ago I saw some congressional bottom-feeders (Barbara "Commie" Lee, Maxine Waters, Shiela Jackson "Queen" Lee, others) on CSPAN spewing their venom against the nominee.

I must be honest, it was hard to turn away from their train wreck... their arguments against confirmation were freaky.

How do these people get elected and re-elected to represent humans?

Trajan88

[pogo101]

bttt to read tomorrow.

[Pontiac]

The Dims have walked up on the scaffold and put the noose around their own necks.

I am so sick and tired of the Dims and their obstructionist tactics

You keep talking about the Dims and the crap they pull.

Well what about the weak kneed Republicans who let them get away with the crap.

I tried of the Republicans just standing by and letting the Dims play their filibuster that isn’t games.

Republicans need to make the Dims put up or shut up with this filibuster.

Make Schumer stand on the Senate floor and talk non-stop four 24/7 if he is so serious about Justice Brown Being so unqualified and a terrible right winger.

The Republicans have been the majority party long enough to start acting like it.

[river rat]

"How do these people get elected and re-elected to represent humans?"

They come from districts where the Democrats and Teacher's unions have dumbed down the population to the point where they obey -- as plantation slaves are required to obey -- and vote for these stupid asses- their "leaders"....

An educated black is their horror... An intelligent and independent thinking black is to be ridiculed as "Not black enough".....which is code for not being stupid or racist enough to suit them.....

Semper Fi

[claudiustg]

"Make Schumer stand on the Senate floor and talk non-stop four 24/7 if he is so serious about Justice Brown Being so unqualified and a terrible right winger. "

I fully agree. Make Chuckie pay for his face time!

[Jeff Chandler]

Same old same old.

The voting public doesn't even know what the rats have been doing, the rat media won't tell them, and the Republicans respond by assuming the fetal position.

Same old same old.

[Jeff Chandler]

Make Chuckie pay for his face time!

That would require effort, and it really doesn't matter enough to the Republicans.

[SuziQ]

Bump for later reading. It's too late right now to do Mr. Sowell's writing the justice it deserves!

[Fledermaus]

Can't have a "black" that isn't on the DNC plantation getting through the underground railroad of Bush nominations to jobs they deserve. If they don't fall for the group-think of the left wing, they are labeled "Uncle Tom".

The Dems have successfully indoctrinated and controlled their slaves and keep them in their place. They decided it was bad TV to stand in the door of the schools and just took the schools over to turn their minions into uneducated dependents.

It's the Dems that created the KKK. It's the Dems that traded in slavery. It's the Dems that resisted emancipation. It's the Dems that voted only 62-38% for the 1964 Civil Rights act while the GOP voter for it 92-8%.

It's the Dems that created poll taxes, literacy tests and intimidated blacks from voting. In the South, the Dems wouldn't even register a black person to vote while the GOP would.

It's the Dems that fought welfare refrom in 1995 and 1996 because it would allow flexibility and allow people to get off the dependency plantation and then took credit for it when it worked.

It's the Dems that haul black voters from precint to precint and give them multiple ballots to fill out (Do you really think a punch card ballot is that hard? Do you really not understand that the only way you get 80-100% turnout is to stack those punch cards up 4 or 5 at a time? How else to you explain a hanging chad if you only had one thin piece of perforated paper that's almost impossible not to punch through?) and complain that asking for ID is "intimidation". Remember Florida in 2000? They even tried to say a road block a mile away from a polling place was "intimdating and not allowing people to vote".

What crap.

But so many blacks in America contribute to their own demise voting for Dems over and over. And now that the biggest minority is Latinos and growing, I can't wait until the liberal blacks realize they've been jilted when the Dems go after the Hispanics with the same old sales pitch of lies.

[Fledermaus]

The problem there is, again, the rules. For the GOP to fight the filibuster and "make Schumer go 24/7" is that they HAVE to keep all 51 members of their caucus on the floor also.

I know they thought about changing those rules, but in the Senate that could come back to haunt them someday like the way the Independent Counsel law bit the Dems in the butt.

While I'd like to see the GOP get tough and pull a 51 member filibuster-buster, you can't expect the wusses like Snowe, Collins and Chaffee to go along.

The only hope, and it's fading, is to increase the margin in 2004 in the Senate to 54,55 or 56 seats.

[timydnuc]

The last vestige of liberal/leftist/anti American/anti constitutionalism is in the courts of this land. It was put there by the commies/lefists that ruled this land for 40 years. We have taken back the House, we are taking back the Senate, and we have taken back the Executive branches of government. The last hold on the freedom of Americans is planted in the federal courts. Look at the unconstitutional decisions of the leftist courts. The unelected, life term members of these little courts take away our rights by the day. This is not the intention of the constitution nor is it the intention of the founding fathers. It souldn't be our intention either. We, as a nation, should be appauled at the decisions of a court. They are taking away our constitutional rights, and we can't say a damned thing in response. The 'Robes' rule this land, not the people. The Bill of Rights be damned, they (the Robes) will define our liberty, and they will take them away. They legislate from the bench and the rest of us will fall in line, or we will be ruined. To hell with the legislative process, and to hell with the rights that are given to us by God, as a free people, and spit on the lives and fortunes of the men that have died for the freedoms that are written in our creed, our lives, and our law. They will make the law, even if it doesn't exist. They are higher that our power as "THE PEOPLE". Is anyone of us, WE, THE PEOPLE a little sick and tired of this bulls$it? I am, and it's time you should be as well. Time to take this to the people and get rid of these little rodents right now.

Interpret the consitiution and keep your opinions out of the law of the land. Or would it be better to just have the revolution and take the courts apart and put them back together again. I'm all for the ballot box revolution, but I'll do it the old fashioned way if necessary. This tyranny from the bench needs to stop, NOW!

There is no greater traitor that takes a man's liberty than a man that hides behind the law instead of standing before the law. These idiots must be stopped. The communists have a friend in the courts. We can't even pass a law without the courts throwing it out (Ref: California). That's tyranny!

The voice of the People is being silenced by the courts. Who is in charge here? These were people meant to translate the law, now they make it. This has to stop. The last vestage of power for the left are the courts, it's time we take back our liberty from the robes of tyranny, and send them 'packing' into the night mumbling something marxist and profound.

[Bullish]

The Dims have walked up on the scaffold and put the noose around their own necks. I think they're going to pay dearly in the next elections, particularly for their short sighted attitude on Iraq.

Please GOD, let claudiustg be right!

[Pontiac]

While I'd like to see the GOP get tough and pull a 51 member filibuster-buster, you can't expect the wusses like Snowe, Collins and Chaffee to go along.

Like I said, its about time the Republicans start acting like they are in the majority. Start exerting a little party disapline and put the Dims in their place.

The Dims did it to the Republicans for decades, its time for paybacks.

[tal hajus]

Very well put and, sadly, only too true.

[Mia T]

California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown was close to perfection at her hearing.

So effortlessly did she dispense with her critics that I was almost embarrassed for them. Her intelligence and thoughtfulness made her opponents look dumb, her empathy and equity made them look harsh, her strength and no-nonsense analysis made them look weak and feckless.

Not even the lunch break strategy session could save the dems. It is no wonder Schumer's rush to the camera was done at schumerdoubletime...

The Ds are understandably terrified. Justice Janice Rogers Brown is a natural for the U.S. Supreme Court.

[river rat]

This woman terrifies the plantation blacks, the poverty pimps, Black Caucus, Liberals, Leftists and Democrats in general..

She puts the lie to their victim status and their failed street culture...

If Bush does not see this woman onto her rightful place on the bench --- I will refuse to vote for another "Republican"..

If we can NOT expect to receive desired judges by voting in Republicans --- we might as well elect more leftists, and let them stack the court with enough more of their lunatics to kick off Civil War II, and resolve this once and for all!

Semper Fi...

[Pharmboy]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown