Posted on 03/06/2022 7:13:29 AM PST by MarvinStinson
Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) will be in the news a lot this month. Beginning March 21, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee will preside over the confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Mainstream media outlets have already started praising Durbin for his "historic" role in the confirmation of the High Court's first black female justice, and it's only going to get worse. Last month, the Washington Post published a lengthy profile of Durbin highlighting the career politician's determination to "make history." He could not have asked for a friendlier (as in whitewashed) assessment of his 40-year career in Congress.
The Post examined how Durbin is preparing "to make his star turn on the Senate's biggest stage" by overseeing a historic confirmation that "would represent a capstone moment in a long, storied career." By achieving the widely anticipated outcome (Jackson gets confirmed), Durbin would enhance an already "extensive résumé" and cement "his status as a player in some of the most significant racial advancements in American politics of this generation." The report cites Durbin's "close association" with Barack Obama (they represented the same state in the Senate) as an example.
The paper's "wide-ranging interview" gave Durbin the opportunity to praise himself and his party, while revealing very little substantive information. "Making history … means a lot to me," the senator said. He is also looking forward to helping Biden "advance civil rights in America." Critics complained that the profile, which described Durbin's "unpresuming, unfailingly courteous, thoroughly Midwestern personality" as one of his only flaws, was egregiously fawning in nature.
The triple-bylined "fluff piece," in the words of former Republican Senate aide Gregg Nunziata, was a "discrediting" work of journalism that ignored crucial aspects of Durbin's record. "This is the profile only Dems get," he wrote. "Impossible to imagine this credulous and almost fawning tone" in an article about a GOP Senate leader. According to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of the Post profile, Nunziata's criticism is correct.
During a recent interview on CNN, for example, Durbin urged his Republican colleagues to "keep an open mind and to meet with Ketanji Brown Jackson, ask the hard questions, ask for materials—we'll provide them." He stressed the importance of a "bipartisan" process. As David Harsanyi of National Review noted, Durbin and his Democratic colleagues have a long history of using aggressive partisan tactics to befoul the judicial confirmation process.
Several months after President George W. Bush took office in 2001, Durbin and Senate Democrats began plotting with activists to "change the ground rules" for judicial nominations by insisting that "there was no obligation to confirm someone just because they are scholarly or erudite." Democrats spent the next several years using the filibuster and other procedural tactics to stymie Bush's nominees for federal judgeships.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), the current majority leader, spearheaded his party's aggressive use of the filibuster, which the New York Times described as "an extreme tactic" in 2003. (Last year, the paper's editorial board called for the filibuster's elimination on the grounds that it was preventing Biden from enacting his controversial agenda.) When Republicans returned the favor during the Obama administration, Democrats responded in unprecedented fashion by abolishing the filibuster for most presidential nominees.
Perhaps the most egregious example of Democrats blocking a qualified judicial nominee for purely partisan reasons came in 2003, when Durbin and his colleagues repeatedly filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Estrada would have been the first Hispanic judge to serve on the court. After a delay of more than two years, Estrada eventually gave up. Durbin and the Democrats declared victory.
Weeks later, leaked memos from Durbin's office revealed that left-wing activists groups viewed Estrada as "especially dangerous" because "he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment." Also among the leaked documents were talking points prepared for Sen. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.) for a speech to his Democratic colleagues in which he urged them to oppose Estrada's nomination. The talking points included the line "We can't repeat the mistake we made with Clarence Thomas," referring to the first black justice to serve on the Supreme Court.
Rest assured, mainstream media outlets are unlikely to mention any of this in their coverage of Jackson's confirmation hearings later this month. Instead we'll be treated to a barrage of mindless punditry about how Republicans are to blame for injecting partisanship into the judicial nominations process and are opposing a black woman because of racism.
He’s worse than scum. Hopefully Michael Madigan’s indictment takes Durbin down with him. There’s no way those 2 weren’t involved in political schemes together.
Dick Durbin gives partisan hacks a bad name. And he is yet another reason for term limits.
THIS! is Dick Durbin. There’s nothing else to listen to him about.
https://www.independentsentinel.com/dick-durbin-calls-u-s-troops-nazis-soviets-pol-pot-like/
Why have the Republicans not taken advantage of their temporary majorities take over chairs/majorities of the committees, and make McConnell Majority Leader? If it’s out of a sense of fair play, they need to ask themselves what the Dems would do under the same circumstances.
Dick Durbin Calls U.S. Troops “Nazis”, “Soviets”, “Pol-Pot”-like
January 12, 20183
https://www.independentsentinel.com/dick-durbin-calls-u-s-troops-nazis-soviets-pol-pot-like/
It was 2005 when Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) compared U.S. troops to Nazis, Soviets and Pol Pot because that’s the kind of guy he is, even as he takes the high and mighty road to trash President Trump for a far more apt description of some nations.
He called President Trump “vile and racist” but what would he call someone who betrays U.S. troops? Like himself?
Durbin was comparing the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners by the U.S. military to these monsters. It was 100% untrue.
Knowing military who were in charge, I know that the military were out getting them McDonald’s and sundaes, not abusing them. Durbin lied about our troops.
The Jane Fonda of the Senate gave one of his hollow apologies.
“More than most people, a senator lives by his words … occasionally words fail us, occasionally we will fail words,” Durbin, D-Ill., said.
“I am sorry if anything I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.
“I am also sorry if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military. … I never ever intended any disrespect for them. Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them I extend my heartfelt apology,” Durbin said, choking on his words.
“They’re the best,” he said of U.S. service men and women.
They went from “Pol-Pot” to the “best” in his mind after significant backlash and an angry John McCain who quickly forgave him.
The media ran to his defense and gloried in his courageous apology.
He suddenly realized the horrors perpetrated by those thugs the next day and that it “was a poor choice of words”.
Under Pol Pot’s regime, 1.5 million died in death camps and another 200,000 so-called “enemies of the state” were executed. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews and forced hundreds of thousands into slave labor. The USSR’s Joseph Stalin (search) sent 25 million people to labor camps where many were worked to death.
I have not bothered to get into the history of Ketanji Brown Jackson. I figure the RATs are simply replacing one Communist on the Court of Supreme Whim with another Communist. The rest is boring details.
He’s a stinking piece-of-leftist-$%%^ as far as I’m concerned. Nothing he says now can remove what he said back then
We are hiring a judge, not welcoming a demigod.
Dick Durbin, D-Fossil
poster child for term limits
On May 4, 2018, Democrat Senators Pat Leahy of VT, Dick Durbin of IL, and Robert Menendez of NJ demanded that Ukraine cooperate with the Robert Mueller Probe. Mark Levin calls out their hypocrisy and says they should be expelled from the Senate.
+1
A classic from our Iowa Hawk:
From the Desk of Senator Dick
https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2005/06/from_the_desk_o.html
There needs to be a constitutional amendment to create a separation of press and state.
Never thought these white scumbags would be screwing you
Turbin Durbin strikes again.
Think of Dick Durbin... 40-50 years in Washington and nothing of value or importance accomplished.
Dick Durbin is a schmuck, scum bag. He is one of the worst of the Damnocraps!
Before his 2010 letter urging the IRS to target conservatives, Dick Durban, the Senate majority whip's 1996 campaign benefited from the targeting of his opponent by a Federal Election Commission official with a familiar name.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the IRS scandal may have its roots in Illinois politics with the 1996 targeting of Illinois conservative Al Salvi by a familiar name, Lois Lerner, then head of the Enforcement Division of the Federal Elections Commission.
That year, (1996) Democrat U.S. Rep. Dick Durbin and Republican State Rep. Al Salvi were locked in a battle for the U.S. Senate seat Durbin would eventually win.
As the journal Illinois Review details, Salvi was confronted with an "October surprise," not one, but two, FEC complaints filed against him — one by Illinois Democrats about the way he reported a loan he made to himself, and another by the Democratic Senatorial Committee about a reported business donation.
The late inning complaints stalled Salvo's campaign against Durbin. "We couldn't get our message out because day after day, the media carried story after story about the FEC complaint," Salvi told Illinois Review.
Nearly four years and $100,000 in legal fees later, federal Judge George Lindbergh dismissed the frivolous FEC case against Salvi for lending his campaign his own money, leaving FEC attorney Lerner, who was present and actively arguing before the judge, dismayed. "We never lose!" Lerner said, in a veiled threat to Salvi afterwards.
It is not surprising that Durbin wanted Lerner to target conservatives. He may very well owe his Senate seat to her doing so.
Me: Rats always play to win. Since Pubbies are average alligator wrestlers, they don't bother.
“We never lose!” Lerner said, in a veiled threat to Salvi afterwards.
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