Posted on 11/07/2004 3:55:20 PM PST by joanie-f
I believe the three most overpowering crusades that this administration, and the next congress, have to initiate with historically unprecedented passion and resolve are:
(1) containing the threat of terrorism, no matter the financial and (unfortunate) human cost, and no matter the time commitment
(2) seeing to it that Supreme Court and federal judgeship vacancies are filled with justices who have a resolute reverence for the original intent of the Constitution
(3) crushing the massive, unconstitutional power over every aspect of our lives held trial lawyers, by instituting major, unrelenting tort reform measures
There are other, generally economic, issues – major overhaul of Social Security, major revamping of the tax code, and regaining sanity in federal spending and monetary policy -- that need addressing. But the three issues above affect the very lives of every American (and every American in utero), and the minimal acceptable quality of life that every prosperous, free people should be willing to endure.
I do not recall in my lifetime the Republican party enjoying such positive odds for genuine conservative, Constitution-respecting governance. When was the last time a Republican President enjoyed a majority of this size in both houses of Congress? Not during any of our lifetimes, for sure.
There has been no better time in our history for a President and congress to ‘spend their political capital’ to do what is right for this republic. There has been no better time to turn a deaf ear to calls for bipartisanship (from a party that only practices such when it is to their own partisan advantage), calls for healing (from a party whose ideological credo thrives on class/racial/social division), and calls for societal compassion (from a party that employs that altruistic tool only in order to increase the socialist, nanny-state power of government).
In virtually every campaign speech that this President has made over the past year, he stated that he would nominate federal judges who revere the original intent of the US Constitution. With the prospect of one, and maybe two or three, Supreme Court justices retiring within the next four years, there is no greater calling than for him, and senate Republicans, to do all that is within their executive/legislative power to see to it that newly-appointed members of the Supreme Court, and federal judgeships, faithfully adhere to their Constitutional job description.
There is nothing in the Constitution that requires that the chair of the senate Judiciary Committee to be elected on a seniority basis. The senate may elect anyone from among its membership to chair that all-important committee. It is now time to discard dangerous and liberty-erosive tradition and political protocol and, instead, elect as chairman of the judiciary committee a Constitutional scholar who reveres the genuine Constitutional definition of the judicial branch of government.
Under such a common sense, preserve-America definition, Alren Specter does not qualify.
More than half a million Pennsylvanians foresaw the current major crisis that is facing us regarding the potential appointment of Arlen Specter as chair of the senate Judiciary Committee. That’s why, despite big money/strong-arm tactics/profligate lies/temporary democrat primary registration crossovers (all committed by the Specter forces alone), Pat Toomey, a virtual unknown, came within 1.5% of winning the Pennsylvania Republican senate nomination in April. The four-term incumbent Specter won by a mere 16,000 votes, with more than one million votes cast. And Toomey would have won by a comfortable margin, had the President and our junior senator placed principle before political protocol and endorsed him rather than his unworthy opponent, who sports a long history of deceit and betrayal.
I am also certain that Toomey would have won the senate seat handily on Tuesday, and not only would we not be faced with the specter of a Specter chairmanship of Judiciary, but we would have a junior senator with major Reagan-esque leanings sitting in one of Pennsylvania’s senate seats. But, as they say, that’s water under the bridge. I simply hope that President Bush now has a new, and exquisitely personal, understanding of the phrase biting the hand that feeds you. Arlen Specter has one mean and powerful bite.
To those Pennsylvanians who have followed Specter’s infamous four-term career, it reads like an immutable script: (1) enter, stage right, having counted on moderates and conservatives to return you to the stage to begin with; (2) spend about five and a half years moving consistently stage left, while arrogantly defending yourself against those who, dutifully and sincerely, remind you that you are not playing the role you were cast to play; and then (3) half-heartedly meander back toward the right for the six months preceding your next re-election bid, hoping that the move right will eclipse the previous five and a half years of leftist role-playing. It always worked … until Pat Toomey shined a spotlight on the shenanigans. We’re wise to you now, Arlen. And it’s a good thing for you this is most likely your last term. Toomey would defeat you resoundingly in 2010.
Specter’s duplicity dates back to the mid-1960s, when he sat on the Warren Commission and formulated the ‘single-bullet theory’ to explain Oswald’s assassination of JFK. There are many right-minded people who believe he is responsible for a major cover-up of that crime, and its ramifications.
Around twenty years later, when Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions (who now providentially/coincidentally sits on the Judiciary Committee with Arlen) for a federal judgeship, Specter betrayed his constituents by voting with the democrats in killing the nomination. This betrayal marked the beginning of the now entirely too common act of killing the nominations of those with whom you don’t share a political ideology … and the Constitution be damned. Before Sessions’ defeat, a federal judicial nominee had only been turned down once in the four decades since the Roosevelt administration. So Arlen Specter effectively set the stage for politicized judicial confirmations – a mighty arrogant, and toxic, unconstitutional precedent that laid the groundwork for the awarding of judgeships based on leftist political ideology. And the liberty-eroding effect of this perversion of power on every aspect of American society has been monumental.
And Arlen continued wielding his leftist-agenda-driven power the following year, when Reagan nominated Robert Bork to sit on the Supreme Court. Bork had a sterling resume as a judge, and a Yale law professor (one needs only read his Slouching Towards Gomorrah to comprehend the sheer genius, judicial purity, and uncompromising allegiance to the Constitution that this giant of a man represents). Specter played a major role in Bork’s defeat, and I, for one, will never forgive him for his vicious character assassination of a man whose shoes he isn’t fit to shine.
Some believe that Specter regained his principles (although it’s difficult to regain that which one never possessed to begin with) when he defended Clarence Thomas against the left’s attacks in 1991. But one only needs to look at the timing of the Thomas hearings to understand Specter’s newfound fairness. The hearings occurred less than a year before Specter’s next re-election bid. Too little time to erase from the memory of conservative Pennsylvanians yet another betrayal. So he was forced to do what was right … simply because of the timing of the hearings.
Specter’s final betrayal occurred during the Clinton senate impeachment trial in 1998, during which he could have played a major role in ridding us of the most immoral, treasonous, criminal President we have ever known. Instead, he effectively ignored the US Constitution, and instead relied on (purported) ‘Scottish Law’ to allow the President to continue his reign of horror. He asserted that under the venerable ‘Scottish Law’ (which appears to trump the American Constitution), there are three possible verdicts in an impeachment trial: guilty, not guilty, and not proven. Voting ‘not proven’ (and enjoying the dubious distinction of being the only senator to do so) allowed him a cowardly retreat from alienating either his genuine leftist base, or the conservative/moderate supporters he needed to fool, yet again.
Chief Justice Rehnquist was so taken aback by the stupidity of Specter’s argument that he ordered Specter’s verdict to be recorded as ‘not guilty’.
And Arlen Specter’s probable lame duck status in this, his fifth term, means that, without concern for re-election for the first time in a quarter of a cerntury, he can move left over the next four years … and remain there.
Arlen Specter’s crimes against our republic have been many. But I believe the four above are the most grievous. He should not even be sitting in the US Senate, much less chairing the committee that will have enormous impact on the seating of federal judges, in an era in which activist judges have assumed the arrogant role of declaring the Constitution irrelevant when it comes to matters of leftist societal engineering.
There has never been a more opportune, or more urgent, time in our history for a President and congress to remain true to the conservative base that placed them in office. As regards (1) through (3) above, any compromises with leftist ideologues, and their barking cohorts in the media and academia, to which this administration and congress agree will amount to a betrayal of the populations of that overwhelming number of red states that sent a resounding message on Tuesday that they want American back on track.
The forty-third President, and members of the 109th congress, must govern like the conservative leaders they purport to be. The red states, and many inhabitants of the blue, believe it’s a matter of now or never.
Senate Majority Leader:
Republican Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
~ joanie
Comment invited, pro or con.
Spectre's action should henceforth be to get the hell out of the way!!!Scottish nincompoop.
"What Should Arlen Specter’s Role Be?"
Cloak room hat-check boy...
Thanks for the numbers, will call tomorrow.
Now that I've said that, let me actually read the article.
What comment? We all know that Spectre has to go.
Hatch could take the afternoon shift.
Water boy!
I heard somewhere in the last couple of days that Bush will be able to replace up to 50%-75% of the federal banch during his total 8 years.
And now he may be able to replace up to 4 members of the SC. We will shape this country for the next 50 years.
Arlen should get a job on another committee. I DO NOT TRUST HIM.
God bless you, Joanie!
You are one in a million. And that's a big understatement.
You have mail.
My comments still stand.
Nothing
Milk Monitor?
Is there such a thing as the Senate Janitorial Committee? He might do very well there.
Lingerie model?
I was thinking more of latrine duty. Or donator of stem cells....
Thank you for collecting all necessary info for the rest of us. Specter absolutely MUST NOT chair this committee.
A question I asked on another thread--maybe you know about it....
There was a comment made (can't remember by whom or which thread) that the Senators DID NOT follow "tradition" when they selected Frist for Majority Leader. Seems like maybe Nichols would have been the next-in-line "tradition" candidate for MJ. Do you know if this is correct?
If so, then I think we need to remind every Repub Senator (especially on the Committee) about it. As you noted already, according to the Constitution they do not have to pick Specter. And now even according to their previous behavior in selecting Frist, they don't have to follow tradition.
They need to be confronted with this point (if it is correct).
Specter must not get the Chairmanship. We need to emphatically let them know this and keep the calls going.
This essay is brilliant as usual, but your last sentence says it all- The forty-third President, and members of the 109th congress, must govern like the conservative leaders they purport to be. The red states, and many inhabitants of the blue, believe it’s a matter of now or never..
Thank you.
Put Specter on a transportation committee. Pa. roads could use the pork. He shouldn't be near anything involving national defense, the judiciary, etc.
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