Posted on 09/10/2005 9:27:57 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Stand Up to Them, Mr. President: Nominate Another Scalia by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted Sep 9, 2005
We are about to find out what George W. Bush is made of. For he is approaching the greatest crisis of his presidency.
Nine days after 9-11, Bush gave the most powerful speech of his career and rallied a nation. Today, he sits atop a government whose agencies -- FEMA and Homeland Security -- are synonyms for bumbling in the worst disaster in American history. Democrats sense Bush may be assaulted with impunity. He can't or won't fight back.
Thus, Hillary hits four morning TV shows to denounce his handling of the Katrina disaster. Nancy Pelosi, after Bush rejects her demand in a private call that he fire FEMA head Michael Brown, reveals the content of the call and declares the president to be "oblivious, in denial, dangerous."
For the U.S. House minority leader to say the president of the United States is off his rocker and a danger is a rare insult. But it reveals that the Democrats no longer fear retaliation by this White House.
And so, Jesse Jackson brazenly plays the race card. "We have great tolerance for black suffering," he told CNN. "Those who are suffering the most ... in New Orleans certainly are black people.
"Today, I saw 5,000 African-Americans on the I-10 causeway, desperate, perishing, dehydrated, babies dying. ... It looked like Africans in the hull of a slave ship. It was so ugly and obvious."
Jackson is parroted by the Black Caucus and rapper Kanye West, who blurted out on an NBC benefit program, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
Now, about these race charges. Yes, the vast majority of those who refused to leave or were left behind and wound up in the squalor and terror of the Superdome and convention center were black. But, so, too, is that klutz of a mayor, many of the cops who fled, and nearly all the looters and rapists.
But most of the Army and Guard troops and U.S. agents pouring in to restore order and almost all of the rescue workers are white, a fact the race-baiters ignore, not wanting truth to dilute the purity of their hate crimes.
But a backlash has begun, if calls to talk radio are an indication. A week ago, everyone was demanding the president send in the 82nd Airborne. Today, rage at FEMA is being replaced by rage at the race-baiters.
But in this crisis, President Bush has signaled weakness. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a splendid conservative jurist and public man, had not even been laid to rest at Arlington before Bush held a press conference to announce his successor: John Roberts.
The unseemly haste in elevating Roberts suggests Bush is desperate to divert attention from the New Orleans disaster. And where Roberts had originally been named to replace a social liberal, Sandra Day O'Connor, thus strengthening the conservative bloc, he is now to replace his mentor, thus simply maintaining the existing balance on the court the president is committed to change.
When Roberts is confirmed -- Democrats now intend to cut him up -- the constitutionalist bloc will still consist of, at best, only three justices: Scalia, Thomas and Roberts. And while Roberts is a man of brilliance, integrity, judicial temperament and wit, and showed nerve and grit as a young aide to Attorney General William French Smith and President Ronald Reagan, he is unscarred in public battle.
Unlike the man who should have been Bush's choice.
Antonin Scalia, a generation older than Roberts, with near 20 years experience on the high court, has scar tissue aplenty, all of it acquired in battle for the philosophy and beliefs Bush claims to hold dear. He is the veteran warrior for constitutionalism and intellectual heavyweight of the court. To pass over Scalia for Roberts is like passing over George Patton and giving command of the 3rd Army to a brilliant young staff officer from the Pentagon.
With only 13 percent of the public blaming Bush for the failures in handling the Katrina disaster, the demagogues are making fools of themselves, once again repelling Middle America as they pander to the basest instincts of the far left.
The media establishment is not so stupid. Sensing weakness in the White House, they are now demanding that Bush, to prove he truly wants to be a uniter in a time of division, not do something so divisive as naming a Rehnquist conservative to replace O'Connor.
Should the president accede to these poorly disguised extortion demands and name a centrist jurist, it would be an act of appeasement that would break the hearts of his constituency. The liberal media would applaud him publicly, but privately they would laugh, for we would all know that this presidency had been broken.
The message Bush should send this city that is at his throat is that Michael Brown, no matter his failures, will not be handed over to a lynch mob, and the new associate justice of the Supreme Court will be Michael Luttig or Edith Jones. Yes, they would howl -- but so what?
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Death of the West, The Great Betrayal, and A Republic, Not an Empire.
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Good advice Pat. Too bad you've burned all your bridges with the President.
Pat is freaking bipolar. One day he wants Bush impeached, the next day this.
This second nomination will define the truth behind President Bush.
Roberts was a good - but milquetoast - selection. Very reasonable and the perfect (IMHO) choice for a calm collected SCOTUS. He will (should)judge by law.
This second nomination though willrequire Bush to show some "intestinal fortitude" and put a justice in that can counteract the years of the socialist oligarchy now running SCOTUS and all the other federal courts in America.
If Bush really had some cojones, he would just erase all the outlying federal district courts run by a multitude of demigods who call themselves "MASTERS". - they were NOT authorized by the constitution.
Won't. Alas, it just isn't in his nature.
I can't remember the last Republocrat who actually grew a pair and did the right thing.
Very true ....
I would rather see Pres. Bush nominate another Bork.
Let the Rats go absolutley frothing-at-the-mouth-nutso, let the senate deny the noiminee, THEN nominate another Scalia.
Wasn't Pat calling for the President to be impeached? Now he thinks he has a say in the Court? Interesting.
Was Pat talking Judicial appointments--or Dissaster relief?
If Judicial appointments then from what I've seen having a
former clerk of the Late Chief Justice ,one who we presume
shared much of Justice Rhenquists beliefs. Seems an appropriate decision.Thus I must disagree with Pat that it
seems a sign of weakness. If he is talking dissaster relief
and the decision to pull Brown back to D.C. then why introduce that by speaking of Judicial appointments? The Only litmus test for any Judge ought be his/her/it's desire to adminster justice according to the Oath administered and recorded in Marbury v. Madison. And if that Judge intends and is determined to interpret the Law
according to how man made law is reconciled to the Divine Law (as Wilson,and Hamilton and others who followed Blackstone believed we ought.)If our Law is not to be
interpreted according to the Clear language used and the intent of htose who wrote the document (as opposed to how it
now seems done --according to the wim of the corrupt judiciary) then it is not law but despotism and evil.
Pat is right this time. I've been in disagreement with him especially with his isolationist stance concerning Iraq and the War on Terror. I think the President will stand true to form, he will nominate a conservative. I think the President needs to go further and stand up to "them" not just on this issue but with words. I recommend he begin this by firing his Press Secretary, he is horrible and whoever is behind the scenes that is advising the President on how to present himself should be sent to the showers also. There is no reason for the President not to take a leadership stance starting with putting the shameful democrats and goodtime Republicans in their place. Leadership is just not taking a beating its also knowing how to speak ones mind. We need a Jeremiah who know's how to speak his mind because I don't know about you but I'm sick of the word parsing and the obsequious approach to governance. The opposition is a horrid ugly mass of hateful cretins and its about time the President stood up to them and knocked them down a few pegs.
What's the difference between a Bork and a Scalia?
I think the author has it wrong. Bush didn't nominate Roberts so fast to distract attention from the hurricane, he did it to ensure 9 justices on the bench for the upcoming term.
My guess is if you look through those cases to be decided the administration has a significant hand in many of them.
What's the difference between a Bork and a Scalia?
Five Republican senators and a Republican Senate Majority.
If Bork had been nominated before 1986 senate elections he would be still would be on the SCOTUS.
Not too bad for Pat.
Actually, 1) Yes, the various District courts were constitutionally established; the Regress can (and did) establish them by law (''...and such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time establish.''), and 2) The president does not have the constitutional power to disband a court; that power rests, again, w/the Regress.
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