You haven't seen the west coast of New England?
I'll go along with nearly any insult about VT politicians, but lets not get carried away and insult one of the most beautiful places in the country.
Posted on 06/22/2002 5:14:15 AM PDT by Pokey78
. . until Patrick Leahy allows votes on Bush's judges.
BOYCOTTS don't always work, but they usually annoy. Maybe it's time to annoy Vermont and its two senators, Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, to get across how little the obstruction of judicial confirmations is appreciated.
Senator Leahy holds the chairmanship of the Senate's Judiciary Committee, a position he has abused from the moment he assumed it. Eight of President Bush's original eleven nominees to the federal bench have not been given so much as a hearing by Leahy, despite the fact that individually and as a group they represent the very best in American legal learning, practice, and thought. As former solicitor general Charles Fried said on my radio show in June, Leahy is denying these nominees their hearing not because they are unqualified, but because they are overwhelmingly qualified and would win the approval of the committee and the Senate.
This is only a one-man blockade, but it's working. Leahy raised the stakes recently by directing his staff to demand internal Department of Justice memos from the days when one nominee, Miguel Estrada, toiled as a deputy solicitor general. The administration will never release such material, so Leahy will have a new excuse for delay in his war against the nominees.
The stonewalling of the original eight Bush nominees has become a huge issue for the GOP base, and perhaps even beyond as the profile of the issue rises. Vermont's Jim Jeffords did Leahy no favor when, on the anniversary of his defection from the GOP, he pointed to Leahy in the crowd of well-wishers and remarked that he "slept better knowing that Pat Leahy is picking the judges." That is, of course, what Leahy is doing, but he and his allies prefer that it not be put so bluntly. This power in one senator's hands is obviously unconstitutional.
Genuine relief will arrive only if the GOP recaptures control of the Senate in the fall. In the meantime, though, perhaps the good people of Vermont should learn that their senators' behavior is not without its costs.
Leahy would not be the chairman with the power to obstruct all the nominees if Jeffords had not switched parties. Both are from Vermont. Rarely is accountability so clear in a matter of legislative obstructionism.
Vermont depends on out-of-staters' coming to its small preserve, in the summer months to hike and in the winter months to ski. But Vermont's senators are preventing courts that affect all 50 states from having their full complement of judges. Why spend money in a state that has so directly injured your interests in a functioning judiciary?
I think I'll say no to Vermont this year. Just as Leahy has said no to the nominees whose timely service might improve the circumstances in my state of California.
When I proposed this payback on the air and online last month, a few hundred people decided to act on the idea and dispatched notice of their decision to bypass Vermont to various hoteliers and the Vermont Chamber of Commerce (www.vtchamber.com). So many wrote, it seems, that notice was taken, though abruptly dismissed. "It's targeted at Senator Leahy and it's all wrapped around the judicial nominations," Chris Barbieri of the Chamber told Burlington's Channel 3. Barbieri allowed as how the Chamber had received 250 e-mails from individuals declining to go to Vermont this year. He was not impressed. "Two hundred and fifty boycott e-mails is really nothing significant. We get 8 million to 8.5 million visitors every year. We get about 5 million in the summer and fall, and 250-300 is really a drop in the bucket. It's not going to have an impact."
Senator Leahy agreed: "As everybody has said, this happens every year on one issue or another. And it ends up we just get publicity for Vermont and more people end up coming here."
The cumulative economic effect of saying no to Vermont is probably quite low. But some of the public is letting individual hotels, B&Bs, and ski resorts know why they won't be checking in this summer and fall. Those are unhappy hostelries. They are annoyed. Perhaps they will study the specifics of Leahy's atrocious actions. Perhaps they will get a clue as to why, as the New Republic's Michael Crowley has written at length, Leahy is unpopular within the Senate, even with some of his Democratic colleagues. He's a bully, and an arrogant one at that.
Under fire on the anniversary of the first nominations, Leahy took to the floor of the Senate to defend his tactics. He referred to another popular wartime president, FDR, and how FDR had tried to pack the courts. Leahy argued that his effort was like the successful effort to block FDR's court-packing plan.
When I played the audio for Arizona Republican senator Jon Kyl, also on the Judiciary Committee, he laughed and laughed. FDR's court-packing plan proposed a radical expansion of the Supreme Court, not the filling of existing vacancies by highly qualified nominees. And FDR sent the plan to Congress in 1937, four full years before he became a "wartime" president. But that's Leahy: Any smoke will do when the public's attention turns to his antics.
Which is really the point behind a Vermont boycott--turning attention to Leahy's tactics. I have been careful to argue that trips to Vermont should be planned as soon as hearings and committee votes take place on the original eight nominees held hostage these 55 weeks. This is very different from demanding that nominees be confirmed. That decision is the job of the Senate--the entire Senate. If a well-qualified nominee failed in committee or on the floor, it wouldn't be Vermont's fault.
But the conduct of Vermont's two senators surely is Vermont's fault. The Chamber's flack and the tourism industry would be well advised to let Senator Leahy know their opinion on the matter. They may support him. But they may also be annoyed. After all, what's the harm in holding hearings on the president's nominees and allowing the senators to vote them up or down?
Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated talk show host and a columnist for WorldNetDaily.
What else can I buy cott!
Boycott Green Mountain Coffee (which I enjoy every morning)......
but let's draw the line at Freeper STRAIGHT VERMONTER :)
what's "Vermont lobster", is that like sheep balls or something?
You haven't seen the west coast of New England?
I'll go along with nearly any insult about VT politicians, but lets not get carried away and insult one of the most beautiful places in the country.
but let's draw the line at Freeper STRAIGHT VERMONTER :)
Phew, this thread was starting to worry me there for a bit.
I received an email from my brother in CO., which showed that the State of Vermont is not concerned with the loss of tourism because of the inaction of Senator Leahy and the US Judiciary Committee. My wife and I with our traveling companions will bypass Vermont next week while we vacation in the NE. As US citizens and frequent travelers we will not support any state whose politics come before the needs of this nation
My email to Vermont Chamber of Commerce.EXCELLENT, captnorb!!!I received an email from my brother in CO., which showed that the State of Vermont is not concerned with the loss of tourism because of the inaction of Senator Leahy and the US Judiciary Committee.
My wife and I with our traveling companions will bypass Vermont next week while we vacation in the NE. As US citizens and frequent travelers we will not support any state whose politics come before the needs of this nation.
That is EXACTLY the kind of message that needs to be heard in the boardrooms of travel businesses all across Vermont!Please let us know if (and what) they answer.
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