never play poker with the Dubya, this was perfect... now when Rehnquist retires Dubya can nominate Judge Brown and then they will really howl!!!
Posted on 07/21/2005 5:05:53 PM PDT by flixxx
The Stakes in Roberts's Nomination by BRUCE SHAPIRO
[posted online on July 20, 2005]
Judge John Roberts is a white male who has spent his entire adult life in Washington. Those facts themselves mean nothing, but they do beg a question: What could be so compelling about Judge Roberts as a Supreme Court candidate that the White House was willing to forswear all claims on ethnic diversity and all geographical political advantage, not to mention the express desire of Laura Bush and countless other women to see a nominee of their gender?
To understand Judge Roberts's unique appeal, forget for a moment "conservative," "textualist," "original intent" and the other shorthand with which get-ahead Republican law school grads watermark their résumés. Look instead at a single case decided by Judge Roberts and two other members of the DC Court of Appeals less than a week ago. As it happened, the day before that ruling was released, President Bush interviewed Judge Roberts at the White House. Judge Roberts, it is widely reported, aced his interview; but his appeals court decision due for publication just twenty-four hours later--about the rights of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay--was, in effect, the essay question.
Here is the question: Do the obligations of the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners seized in Afghanistan? And can the President convene military trials, unreviewable by any courts and Congress? The case involves Salim Ahmed Hamdan, allegedly a driver for Osama bin Laden, captured on the post-9/11 battlefield and held in Camp Delta. Last year a federal judge shut down Hamdan's trial and up to a dozen other military tribunals. As convened by the Pentagon, those drumhead tribunals, wrote the lower court, amounted to a violation of the Geneva Treaty and an unconstitutional seizure of power by the President.
Whatever Judge Roberts's performance in his interview with the President, whatever his sterling report card as litigator and jurist, we can be sure there was only one acceptable answer to the Guantánamo essay question, and the judge gave it. He voted, along with his two appeals court colleagues, all three of them Reagan or Bush appointees, against Geneva Convention protections for Guantánamo captives, in scathing language ordering the military tribunals forward, empowering the President, and the President alone, to determine those prisoners' fate.
More than anything else, to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the Bush White House sought an advocate for ever-expanding executive branch powers. With a raft of antiterrorism and Patriot Act cases in the judicial pipeline, seeking relief from federal laws and international standards on interrogation, torture and the treatment of prisoners, the Bush Administration badly needs a friend like Roberts on the Supreme Court--a friend who shares its view that the President's authority in the "war on terror" is above judicial review, and counts more than acts of Congress or international treaties. In other words, if you like the Patriot Act and Guantánamo, you'll love John Roberts.
Roberts started his career as a protégé of Justice Rehnquist. The Chief Justice's distinctly activist vision--of conservative means of expanding the authority of presidents while stripping back federal regulations on business and civil rights--shaped Roberts's views. Then Roberts spent years embedded in the executive branch, arguing cases in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Reagan and first Bush Administrations' efforts to promote school prayer, restrict abortion and punish flag desecrators.
Perhaps most telling is Roberts's brief track record on the federal bench on individual rights, a threshold issue not just for the left but conservative libertarians. A few years back, Washington, DC, police arrested a child for eating a single french fry on the Metro, during a zero-tolerance crackdown on subway-rule violators: arrrested her, handcuffed her, fingerprinted her, threw her in the back of a squad car and held that 12-year-old in lockup for three hours. The child's mother sensibly pointed out in a lawsuit that an adult committing the same offense would have been issued a ticket, not treated like a dangerous felon. Judge Roberts rejected the mother's plea for sanity: Arresting a 12-year-old like a suspect on Cops for eating on the subway, Roberts wrote, advanced "the legitimate goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts." Even in red states, parents may not spare much enthusiasm for a judge who would lock up their 12-year-old for public consumption of McDonald's fries.
The french-fry case suggests that behind Judge Roberts's famous amiablity--which has won him influential friends in both parties--lies a far more doctrinaire personality. Whiffs of that ideological rigidity leak out of his careful opinions and briefs. Hostility to environmental regulation? Yes, at least in his ruling in a California land-development case in which he sought to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Hostility to reproductive rights? As a deputy to solicitor general Ken Starr in the Reagan years, he curried favor with the antiabortion right by adding an irrelevant footnote to his briefs in a family-planning-funding case, arguing that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overturned." In his appeals-court confirmation hearings, Roberts said this footnote simply reflected Administration policy, adding that he regards Roe as settled law; but his willingness to go beyond the call of duty and politicize his briefs suggests, at a minimum, enthusiasm for revisiting the issue.
President Bush may not have had a "litmus test" on Roe v. Wade, but there was one very clear litmus test: membership in the insular GOP judicial patronage network. Of the names floated as Supreme Court finalists in the past week, most were members of the Federalist Society, a GOP employment agency masquerading as conservative counterweight to the ABA. Judge Roberts--whose Supreme Court aspirations have long been widely known in Washington--is a prince of the right-wing legal family.
The President has also, after a long search, managed to find a Supreme Court candidate who in many ways looks remarkably like himself: born in the Northeast (in Roberts's case, Buffalo), heir to old-line power (his father was a US Steel executive), moved to a red state (Indiana), Ivy League-educated (Harvard, Harvard Law). From the day of his graduation from law school, Judge Roberts has held no job except those secured through conservative Republican patronage. With the selection of Judge Roberts, President Bush hopes that the Rehnquist Revolution will continue long after the ailing Chief Justice retires. The stakes in Roberts's nomination could not be higher.
Which is basically what the judge's opinion says: He almost openly insults the wisdom of the law but, failing to see any constitutional barriers to it, cannot bar its enforcement. Libs like Shapiro just want the right result in policy terms, the actual democratically-passed law be damned.
Antoher writer who doesn't know the meaning of "beg the question".
The more I read about the good judge, the more I like him.
For too long the judiciary and a leftist house had hamstrung
republican presidents, perhaps I might even be alive to see
a renewal our government.
...but they do beg the question.
A lesson from From Lynch's Style Guide:
It doesn't mean what you think. Begging the question — from the Latin petitio principii — is a logical fallacy; it means assuming your conclusion in the course of your argument. If you say "Everything in the Bible must be true, because it's the word of God," you're taking your conclusion for granted. If you say "The defendant must be guilty because he's a criminal," you're doing the same. It's a kind of circular logic. The conclusion may be true or false, but you can't prove something by assuming it's true.
This is very different from raising the question, though people are increasingly using the phrase that way. It's sloppy, and should be avoided. Here, for instance, is a piece from The Times (London), 30 Nov. 2004:
The behaviour of ministers is a matter for prime ministers, who appoint and dismiss them. But this begs the question of who should find out what has gone wrong on behalf of a prime minister.
No it doesn't. It raises the question; it prompts the question; perhaps it forces us to ask the question; maybe this question begs for an answer. But it doesn't beg the question.
You beat me to it. See post 6.
Thanks!
There is always more to criticize about the Left's rants...not just policy, philosophy and logic, but grammar and syntax...gotta love this Board!
Hey, jackass Shapiro, all they have to do is wear uniforms and quit targeting civilians. Then they get Geneva Convention treatment.
I'd be willing to bet that The Nation had no problem with supporting Al Gore's nomination for President, despite the fact that he is a white male who has spent his entire adult life in Washington.
I used the Case of the French Fry as a solid reason to support Roberts, not oppose him. And as for appointing another women, I am certain that when Justice Ginsburg finally releases her claws from the US Constitution and squawks her way into retirement, I guar-on-d*mn-tee that President Bush will nominate a woman to replace her.
Congressman Billybob
Buffalo is not part of the northeast. It's more along the lines of the other Great Lakes cities -- Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, etc. In New York State, the Northeast ends about 15 miles west of the Hudson River.
never play poker with the Dubya, this was perfect... now when Rehnquist retires Dubya can nominate Judge Brown and then they will really howl!!!
Uhhmmm...is that because the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to un-uniformed, no country allegiance, dirty rotten bastards that target innocent citizens?
How long is this asshole and others going to push this crap?
FMCDH(BITS)
FMCDH(BITS)
http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200410/03-7149a.pdf
Good reading - the "French Fry" case.
Some snips.
TRACEY V. HEDGEPETH, AS THE NEXT FRIEND TO ANSCHE HEDGEPETH, APPELLANT
v.
WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY, ET AL., APPELLEES
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
[snip] The child was frightened, embarrassed, and crying throughout the ordeal. The district court described the policies that led to her arrest as ‘‘foolish,’’ and indeed the policies were changed after those responsible endured the sort of publicity reserved for adults who make young girls cry. The question before us, however, is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Like the district court, we conclude that they did not, and accordingly we affirm.
[snip] The district court had and we too may have thoughts on the wisdom of this policy choice — it is far from clear that the gains in certainty of notification are worth the youthful trauma and tears — but it is not our place to second-guess such legislative judgments. See City of New Orleans v. Duke, 427 U.S. 297, 303 (1976) (per curiam) (rational basis review does not authorize the judiciary to sit as a ‘‘super legislature’’).
Ansche finally challenges her arrest on the ground that it was an unreasonable seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. This claim quickly runs into the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Atwater. There, a woman challenged the constitutionality of her arrest for violating a state statute requiring all motorists and front-seat passengers to wear seat-belts. As in this case, there was no dispute that the plaintiff had violated the statute in the presence of the arresting officer and that state law authorized her arrest, even though the offense was punishable by a fine no greater than $50. Unlike the present case, by statute the officer in Atwater had the option of issuing a citation instead of effecting an arrest.
[snip] On the basis of this passage, the defendants argue that Ansche’s arrest does not violate the Fourth Amendment, for it is undisputed that the arresting officer had probable cause to believe Ansche had committed a criminal offense, however minor. No balancing or inquiry into whether Ansche’s probable cause arrest was otherwise reasonable is permitted.
[snip] The present case is different, Ansche reasons, because here there was no exercise of discretion by the arresting officer. The officer did not have the choice of issuing a citation; arrest was the only enforcement option.
[snip] While we can inquire into the reasonableness of the manner in which an arrest is conducted, the most natural reading of Atwater is that we cannot inquire further into the reasonableness of a decision to arrest when it is supported by probable cause. That is true whether the decision to arrest upon probable cause is made by the officer on the beat or at a more removed policy level. Even if Atwater were not controlling, Ansche has not made the case that her arrest was unconstitutional. Her claim that a policy of mandatory arrest for certain minor offenses is unconstitutional boils down to an assertion that officer discretion is a necessary element of a valid seizure under the Fourth Amendment, at least for some minor offenses. She has not made an effort to defend that assertion under the usual first step of any analysis of whether particular government action violates the Fourth Amendment — asking “whether the action was regarded as an unlawful search or seizure under the common law when the Amendment was framed.”
[snip] Nothing requires that the no-citation policy for minors be subjected to heightened scrutiny. That policy is rationally related to the legitimate governmental interest in ensuring parents are notified of their child’s transgressions. Given the undisputed existence of probable cause, Atwater precludes further inquiry into the reasonableness of Ansche’s arrest under the Fourth Amendment.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
I agree. CJ -- head of one of the branches of the Federal Government -- let's see them deny her a vote via filibluster!!
luv that Dubya... i hate the word twofer but it's true. Judge Brown would give the court it's second black(plus one) AND it's second woman(even)and once again Dubya will have backed the RAT's into their corner with only their filibluster to fall back on and then their own swords!!!
But Jesus would never do that. He came to seek and to save the lost. That means liberal Democrats in particular.
Barf on the Nation, don't read the Nation.
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