Unparalleled? Tina Fey might be offended at your dismissal of the effort she symbolized.
Posted on 10/25/2011 8:58:25 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I have to admit that when I saw the headline “The Ugliness Started with Bork” over an op-ed column by Joe Nocera in The New York Times, I reckoned it would be yet another chapter in the long-running left-liberal campaign to demonize the great jurist Robert H. Bork. I was wrong. Today — October 23 — is the 24th anniversary of the Senate’s shameful vote against Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Nocera wrote, if not to apologize, exactly, then at least to acknowledge that the poisonous campaign to discredit Bork — unprecedented in its nastiness — was “the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics.”
That’s probably correct. And while politics by its very nature is a partisan business that elicits strong emotions, and strong rhetoric to match, the campaign against Judge Bork was unparalleled in its ferocity and — something Nocera touches upon but gingerly — patent mendacity. Supreme Court nominees had been voted down before (and since). But had any previous candidate with what Nocera right calls Bork’s scholarly “pedigree” and “intellectual fire power” ever been voted down? After all, at the time he was tapped by Reagan, Bork had been a professor of law at Yale, former solicitor general of the United States, and a federal appeals court judge. He was — and is — also a prominent and articulate legal scholar, arguing forcefully for the doctrine of “original intent,” i.e., that a judge’s primary task is to discern the law in the light of the Constitution.
Democrats, as Nocera acknowledges, recognized that were they to follow the usual Senate procedure in reviewing Bork’s nomination, he would almost certainly have been appointed to the Supreme Court. Instead, they knowingly endeavored to besmirch his reputation and record, portraying him not as a serious and thoughtful legal scholar (which he was), but as “a right-wing loony.” Nocera recalls an ad that “claimed, absurdly, that Bork wanted to give ‘women workers the choice between sterilization and their job.’” But that was just business as usual for the hyenas — including many at The New York Times — who poured through Judge Bork’s trash and movie rental receipts in the hope of discovering something embarrassing.
Perhaps the most disgusting of all those disgusting performances was committed by one of America’s most disgusting families, the Kennedys. The day Robert Bork was nominated, Senator Ted Kennedy rose in the Senate and said this:
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of democracy.
This was not the expression of a difference of opinion. It was a stream of outright lies that escaped the designation of slander only because the speaker enjoyed the immunity of Senatorial privilege.
Nocera quotes from, and disapproves of, Kennedy’s unfounded denunciation. Yet I think there was a certain equivocation about his criticism. Kennedy’s rant was an exercise in “character assassination,” said Nocera, but he also described it as a “fiery speech” — an impressive thing in a speech, to be “fiery,” no? Perhaps it’s because of where he was writing, but I sense a current of equivocation, “faults-on-both-sides,” splitting-the-difference in Nocera’s piece. Sure, Democrats were completely unfair to Bork, he admits, and they set an example that has sullied political discourse ever since. And yet, it was “completely understandable that the Democrats wanted to keep Bork off the court. … There was tremendous fear that if Bork were confirmed, he would swing the court to the conservatives and important liberal victories would be overturned — starting with Roe v. Wade.”
Do you sense a non sequitur there? Democrats disagreed with Robert Bork that the law was something judges should follow, not invent, ergo . . . what? Ergo it’s “understandable,” i.e., at the end of the day it’s excusable for U.S. senators to get up on the floor of the Senate and lie? Nocera suggests that when asked why Republicans are “so intransigent,” liberals ought to “look in the mirror.” Let’s leave the question of who is more intransigent to one side. The deeper question, I think, is one of basic honesty — or rather, in the case of the way Robert Bork was treated — revolting dishonesty.
You can only Bork a nominee when those that purport to support him have no spine.
Unparalleled? Tina Fey might be offended at your dismissal of the effort she symbolized.
Leftists are natural-born bullies and tyrants. What else can you expect from them?
Perhaps Tina Fey will join Sen. Kennedy in the afterlife, where, between flames and brimstone they can reminisce about the good people they besmirched.
Democrats since then have been the party of hatred.
“was ‘the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics.’
That’s probably correct.”
No it isn’t. Look at the Founders, who in general had much better manners than us. They were horrible to eachother, if often through intermediaries. Ted Kennedy never murdered Bork like Burr did Hamilton, is what I’m saying.
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The Second Amendment states somewhat ambiguously: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The first part of the Amendment supports proponents of gun control by seeming to make the possession of firearms contingent upon being a member of a state-regulated militia.
The next part is cited by opponents of gun control as a guarantee of the individual's right to possess such weapons, since he can always be called to militia service.
The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm. The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possible tyrannical national government.
Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.
-- footnote Slouching Towards Gomorrah
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I wonder how Heller would have been decided had he been ruling.
“You can only Bork a nominee when those that purport to support him have no spine.”
No doubt if Romney is the Republican nominee and wins the election, the Dems will not have to fear another Bork being nominated to the Court. He will doubtless be willing to compromise by appointing a David Souter type to the court like George H. W. Bush.
Republicans never seem to learn the lesson that when they compromise on principle they receive no benefit. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who refused to answer many questions during her confirmation hearings, was confirmed by a 96 to 3 vote in the Senate. The 3 dissenting votes were Republican. Contrast this “bipartisan” acceptance by the Republicans of a left wing Democrat nominee with the extremely partisan behavior of the Democrat Senate with the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
Wow! 24 years! It’s been that long. I wrote a college essay paper for a current events exersize in my English class on Judge Bork and the confirmation hearings. I ended up writing a scathing paper on the process and how unfair the liberals were to the Judge. I earned an A+ (I feared the instructor was going to fail me because of the position I took). He stated it was one of the best essays he’d graded in 20 years.
If there were many, they may have poured through, but while there, they would have pored through the contents! Modern jernalizm 101
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