"What are we gonna do tonight, Teddy?"
"Same thing we do every night, Leaky...TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
Posted on 05/18/2005 5:48:45 AM PDT by ken5050
Welcome, all you Freepers, to the continuing C-span soap operas about judicial nominations. "The Guiding SEARCHLIGHT, " "As the SENATE Turns, "One NOMINATION to Live" "GERIATRIC Hospital" (for all you Byrd and Lautenberg fans out there). Follow along with us, as the Dems raise the level of histrionics, bloviation, pontification, and all around bad acting to new highs, er, lows...
Thanks very much for those quotes, OX!
UGH--I just HATE it when Leahy leans over on his podium like some teacher that is gonna "teach" us how wrong we are...then he gets soft-spoken....blech
Fortas was a Johnson crony. Both Nixon and Humphrey wanted the newly elected president to appoint the next Chief Justice. The filibuster was a means to bring the issue and Fortas' corruption to the attention of the people. The filibuster was not intended to go on forever. Both the president's term and the Congress were coming to a close and if Fortas was brought up for a vote, he would have been defeated.
I've been slammed at work, I can't possibly catch up on this - what's the score?
Am I hearing him correctly that the Democrats are now on record as being against activist judges?
If I remember correctly, it was deemed the most dangereous part of the system. As a one party system it could work...but as soon as two parties came about, the danger was headed to fruition. The Justices were given life terms so as to be beyond the "rewards" of politics.
Currently screaming how we want to impeach all justices and how dare we challange the supremacy of the court. LOL
Filibuster Precedent? Democrats Point to '68 and Fortas
By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page A03
The Senate was launched on a full-blown filibuster, with one South Carolina senator consuming time by reading "long passages of James F. Byrnes's memoirs in a thick Southern accent," according to a newspaper account.
That four-day talkathon in September 1968 has largely been forgotten. But some Senate Democrats want to bring it back to mind to counter a key Republican attack against their stalling tactics that have blocked confirmation votes for several of President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees. The GOP claim, asserted in speeches, articles and interviews, is that filibusters against judicial nominees are unprecedented..................
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See link for remainder of the article.....
FOR SHAME, FOR SHAME! Says Leahy.
The people, through their elected representatives, who have the power of impeachment granted under the Constitution.
Thanks for posting the NRO take...
He is soooo boring. He's putting me to sleep.
I'm going to check the mail.
"What are we gonna do tonight, Teddy?"
"Same thing we do every night, Leaky...TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
I believe his nomination was totally withdrawn and no vote of any kind was ever really taken.
I did a google search and came up with this. I vaguely remember some of this and I believe the filibuster in this instance was supported by both parties. If the dems keep bringing this up some of the reps should bring out all the lurid details. Abe Fortas was a crook as all of LBJ's cohorts were.
1964-Present
October 1, 1968
Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment
Justice Abe Fortas
In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren's timing.
In the final months of his presidency, Johnson shared Warren's concerns about Nixon and welcomed the opportunity to add his third appointee to the Court. To replace Warren, he nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas, his longtime confidant. Anticipating Senate concerns about the prospective chief justice's liberal opinions, Johnson simultaneously declared his intention to fill the vacancy created by Fortas' elevation with Appeals Court Judge Homer Thornberry. The president believed that Thornberry, a Texan, would mollify skeptical southern senators.
A seasoned Senate vote-counter, Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas. The president took encouragement from indications that his former Senate mentor, Richard Russell, and Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen would support Fortas, whose legal brilliance both men respected.
The president soon lost Russell's support, however, because of administration delays in nominating the senator's candidate to a Georgia federal judgeship. Johnson urged Senate leaders to waste no time in convening Fortas' confirmation hearings. Responding to staff assurances of Dirksen's continued support, Johnson told an aide, "Just take my word for it. I know [Dirksen]. I know the Senate. If they get this thing drug out very long, we're going to get beat. Dirksen will leave us."
Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.
On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination, privately observing that if he had another term, "the Fortas appointment would have been different."
Reference Items:
Henry J. Abraham. Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Kalman, Laura. Abe Fortas: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
Urofsky, Melvin I., ed., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland, 1994.
Leaky embarassin' hisself , but the RATS and DUmmies will be cheerin'
We use loads of Lava soap here... but I don't recommend it for showering unless you've been graced by a skunk or something like that...
Did I just hear him say that they are on God's side--and that the reps are on the religious McCarthyism side?
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