Posted on 01/30/2006 1:30:00 AM PST by RWR8189
Last February, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan to ensure any vacancies were filled by like-minded jurists.
The team recruited conservative lawyers to study the records of 18 potential nominees — including Judges John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and trained more than three dozen lawyers across the country to respond to news reports on the president's eventual pick.
"We boxed them in," one lawyer present during the strategy meetings said with pride in an interview over the weekend. This lawyer and others present who described the meeting were granted anonymity because the meetings were confidential and because the team had told its allies not to exult publicly until the confirmation vote was cast.
Now, on the eve of what is expected to be the Senate confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court, coming four months after Chief Justice Roberts was installed, those planners stand on the brink of a watershed for the conservative movement.
In 1982, the year after Mr. Alito first joined the Reagan administration, that movement was little more than the handful of legal scholars who gathered at Yale for the first meeting of the Federalist Society, a newly formed conservative legal group.
Judge Alito's ascent to join Chief Justice Roberts on the court "would have been beyond our best expectations," said Spencer Abraham, one of the society's founders, a former secretary of energy under President Bush and now the chairman of the Committee for Justice, one of many conservative organizations set up to support judicial nominees.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I wouldn't hold my breath. The liberals on the court would have to be taken off life support before they would let Bush appoint their successor.
"Briefly, the dems base this conspiracy on those feddies working for Reagan influencing the Reagan Whitehouse when the investor protection languge that would become NAFTA Chap 11 was composed. After these investor protections have spread thru-out the western hemisphere via all the FTAs, there will exist duel set of conflicting regulatory laws. Once that happens, the dems say, a Supreme Ct dominated by the Federalist Society would find a case in which they would rule that 90% of the regulatory law that the dems created in the 20th century to be un-constitutional."
An interesting conspiracy. However, this isn't what their activists use as rhetoric. They seem very concerned about "globalisation" and corporatism. Why wouldn't they rather be frank and express their fears that the New Deal era regulations would be ruled unconstitutional, and ride with that?
As for their "concern with 'globiliation' and corporatism", you need to understand that the dems and their activists/constituents are not neccessarily opposed globalization and world trade, they just want it done in such a way that it protects the worker(AFL-CIO), the environment(Earth Justice), and social justice(Public Citizen). As written, the investor protections in NAFTA Chap 11 and other FTAs benefit the investor/businessmsn/transnational at the expense of the labor, environment, and social welfare. The dems have tried to prevent this from expanding. This can be seen in the actions that the dems took before Bush was granted. fast-track authority and the Public Citizen lawsuit against Bush on transparency. They are toothless to prevent it.
The dems knew something was going on as far back as the 80s, but they didn't know what it was. When the NAFTA arbitration panel made its first few decisions, the dems knew then that Chapter 11 was being used as a sword against US and Canadian regulatory law. And when SCOTUS ruled in Bush vs Gore, the dems knew the full implications.
In 2001, Grieder wrote the article that describes, in great detail, this situation. It was piblished in The Nation and entitled: The Right and US Trade Law: Invalidating the 20th Century.
It is a long article that includes all that I have written here in much further detail. I could give you a link to the article, but, for a good reason, I won't. If you would do an exact phrase advanced google search on the article title, you will find links to the article published at many, many democratic-liberal-leftest-marxist websites. Being published and so many websites demonstrates that the left puts great credibility in this VRWC/Federalist conspiracy.
The dems last best chance to stop this is to stop FTAA, and to that end, Hugo Chavez' attempts to stop FTAA is the dems last best chance to stop the conspiracy. That is why Cindy Sheehan went to Venzuela.
To the NYT, the Constitutional Convention in 1784 was a vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Once that happens, the dems say, a Supreme Ct dominated by the Federalist Society would find a case in which they would rule that 90% of the regulatory law that the dems created in the 20th century to be un-constitutional.
The above appears like wishful thinking, but an originalist court could progressively, and over time, accomplish the same.
No doubt!
This is the article that torqued off Kennedy so much today!
So let me understand this, a group of thinkers, get together to hammer out a vision of what America should be. They then act on that vision and produce the desired results. The only weapons they used was their God given intellect and their persuasion.
Yeah, that's radical....
-- sounds like our Founding Fathers. :)
Very interesting.....Feinstein's question regarding the commerce clause makes a bit more sense now!!
I love it!
How'd ya like to be the next nominee? lolol
That should be even better, Kennedy may blow up .
Norm this is a superb reply to the whiners of the NY Slimes:
"So let me understand this, a group of thinkers, get together to hammer out a vision of what America should be. They then act on that vision and produce the desired results. The only weapons they used was their God given intellect and their persuasion."
"Yeah, that's radical...."
"-- sounds like our Founding Fathers. :)"
If you think about it, Bush's nomination of Harriet Myers also makes sense. If, as the dems maintain, a conspiracy exists, Myers is a better choice than Alito.
First, she is more pro-business/anti-regulation than Alito(tho he is no slouch on pro-business issues) and second, her history had nothing with which the dems could attack her.
In retrospect, as Alito appears to be confirmed, it is/was the best nomination. But at the time, there was a certain amount of risk in nominating Alito. That risk being the dems ability to find a social issue with which they could sway public opinion against Alito. With a negative opinion, the dems could have blocked him without appearing obstructionist.
Regardless of the implications in the courts, there is no dispute that US Regulatory law and US Trade law are on a significant collision course.
"Brokeback Reporting!"
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