a “maybe I’m amazed” missive from Liberal Street Fighter
“Those papers that we have received paint a picture of John Roberts as an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then, and now. In influential White House and Department of Justice positions, John Roberts expressed views that were among the most radical being offered by a cadre intent on reversing decades of policies on civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, privacy, and access to justice.”
Believe it or not, this quote from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont was in today’s Washington Post.
Of course, many of us KNEW this already, but apparently word is starting to reach some of the Democratic Senators. One might ask what took their staffs so long ….
Could we be hearing this now because:
In a further bid to dispel an air of inevitability that liberals think too many Democrats have embraced, several organizations told allies that they will call for Roberts’s rejection this month rather than wait for the Senate hearings to start on Sept. 6, as some members of the anti-Roberts coalition have urged.
The senators and liberal groups were reacting in part to a Washington Post article noting that many Democratic lawmakers have expressed little interest in mounting a strong fight against Roberts, barring unexpected disclosures. The senators’ tepid stance has frustrated the organizations, which are important to the party, because they feel the information being gleaned from thousands of documents is starting to portray the nominee as someone considerably more conservative than the justice he would replace, Sandra Day O’Connor.
“What we’ve seen is breathtaking in his approach to weakening the enforcement of civil rights laws,” said Nancy M. Zirkin of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. “A picture is emerging that Roberts was there every step of the way taking the far right position. . . . He is no Sandra Day O’Connor.”
So maybe some shrill “single interest” groups could be having an effect, hmmmm?
Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said Democrats who support Roberts could face a voter backlash, particularly if he turns out to be as conservative as the groups contend. “History shows us that voters turned on Alan Dixon for his vote on Clarence Thomas and voters gave Arlen Specter the toughest reelection of his life,” Aron said, referring to the former Democratic senator from Illinois and the current Republican senator from Pennsylvania. If grass-roots voters “are where we expect they’ll be around the time of the vote [on Roberts], they’ll remember long and hard.”
Ralph G. Neas, head of the liberal People for the American Way, noted that “there have been almost daily revelations from the Reagan Presidential Library” indicating that, as a young White House lawyer, Roberts “was a charter member of the Reagan-Bush legal policy team that had attempted to dismantle the civil rights remedies” embraced by previous GOP administrations. He added: “I believe a significant number of progressive organizations will soon be coming out against the Roberts nomination.”
Neas declined to say whether his group will be among them. But several liberal activists said they have been told that People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other major groups plan, before Labor Day, to urge Roberts’s rejection. These groups have expressed concerns about Roberts since President Bush nominated him on July 19, but they have stopped short of calling for rejection.
Roberts has many troubling views, at least as revealed in many documents:
“As we review more and more documents, I think we’re finding more evidence that Roberts would vote with the far-right wing of the court and against civil rights protections,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.
In his letter to colleagues, Kennedy said recently released evidence “shows that he was on or beyond the outer fringe of that extreme group eager to take our law and society back in time on a wide range of issues of individual rights and liberties, and on broad issues of government responsiveness to public needs.” For instance, Kennedy said, he “opposed effective voting rights legislation, and wanted to restrict laws vital to battling discrimination by recipients of federal funds.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement: “All this talk about whether Democrats will support the Roberts nomination is laughably premature. . . . The White House has so far refused to produce relevant documents, and the documents we have seen raise questions about the nominee’s commitment to progress on civil rights.”
Speaking of documents, it seems a file folder of Robert’s writings for the Reagan Administration went missing “after its review by two lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department in July”
As part of a vetting process before Roberts’s formal nomination by the White House in late July, the two lawyers requested and were granted special access to the Roberts files. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department would name the lawyers yesterday, but sources said one works for White House counsel Harriet Miers and the other is an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.
Upon the lawyers’ arrival, Archives officials said, they asked to inspect various folders, and as they were pulled from the boxes, a marker was inserted in their place and the lawyers signed a checkout sheet. An attendant present in the room at all times did not, as a matter of routine, sign a form signifying the return of each folder.
Nonetheless, Fawcett said, “we are quite confident that the records were returned to us.” Asked why, she said that while the attendant does not recall seeing the affirmative action file in question put back, the marker was not in the box after the lawyers departed. “It would have been very difficult, given the circumstances in the room,” for the lawyers to have retained the file because they were separated from their bags, she said.
Instead, the folder was evidently lost later when all of the Roberts documents were transferred to new, acid-free folders and reorganized in anticipation of their disclosure to the Senate and news media.
It is “very difficult to believe it’s anyone other than ourselves responsible for this loss,” Fawcett said.
Well, maybe it’s hard for HER to believe it … and is anybody else noticing a troubling pattern here? The more an issue involves the rights of women, the more extreme Judge Roberts seems to become.
of an Oscar winning performance of capitulation….
probably, but it’s heartening that there was such a fast push back against that piece of crap that you highlighted yesterday.
It seems there is a bit of a civil war in the party.
I really have to wonder how long Reid’s going to keep pushing this piece of trash. I seriously doubt he was ignorant of any of this stuff that’s been uncovered – if he was, he deserves to be removed from his position as minority leader immediately, and should resign his seat before the next election, because he’s totally incompetent. If he wasn’t… He’s a right-wing helper, and needs to be wiped out.
because he’s pro-life. He agrees w/ a lot of this crap.
Yup. And thus we see why electing pro-life politicians – even if they claim to be Democrats – is a bad idea. They’re almost always pro-life fanatics, and are willing to throw away anything and everything else if it allows them to oppress women. I wonder what the “pragmatists” will say when their golden boys proudly stand up and vote for Roberts?
The whole idea of “Elect pro-life Democrats because they’ll vote the party line to preserve choice” is so stupid IMO. It seems to me that if they won’t vote their conscience on that, they don’t stand for anything.
And we’ve seen how well the Dems stick together and vote the party line too many times lately.
He pushes because he is pro-criminalization.
ah but check out the Washington Monthly website this morning… Roberts’ noose is there! I think we have the one to hang him on now…..
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_08/006922.php
And if they forget we will remind them! Forcefully and often, I hope!
He’s an agendist.
Maybe it was finally getting, and thoroughly reviewing the thousands of pages of documents submitted to the members. Or did you expect them to just read the online missives, or watch the detestable NARAL ad? Here’s Leahy’s Statement. First paragraph:
(D-Vt., Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee)
On The Recent Documents Relating To The Roberts Nomination
August 16, 2005
Since the President announced his intention to nominate Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, Democratic Senators have done our job on behalf of the American people in trying to learn as much as possible about the man who could replace Sandra Day O’Connor for this lifetime appointment to our highest court. As we made clear from the start, there has been no pre-judgment before the facts about this important nomination. Instead, Democratic Senators have gone about fulfilling our constitutional duty by insisting on fair access to documents from John Roberts’s time working as a senior policymaker for two Republican Presidents. Although the Bush Administration still refuses to provide the most important examples of Judge Roberts’s policy views from his tenure as the politically appointed Principal Deputy Solicitor General, we have been able to review thousands of pages of documents that have been provided by the National Archives and Records Administration in response to earlier public requests.
Senate Judiciary Committee:
United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-5225
Fax: (202) 224-9102
If you really want to know what took them so long, just ask.
who’s office do you work in?
Many of the activist groups had links and copies to actual documents showing his history. They weren’t made up.
I’m so sick of hearing this excuse. I work full time, go to school and I’m STILL apparently better able to keep up with wingers like Roberts that these guys who are paid for WITH MY TAXES.
Many of us, just from reading journals and the world press, knew that Bush was full of shit on Iraq, yet our Senators and Reps apparently had no fucking idea. Much of the material about Roberts was available when he was nominated for the seat he holds now, yet they didn’t even bother to give a thorough going over. Too cozy w/ their fucking DC insiderism and backslapping and collegiality to actually do any fucking work unless they are FORCED to, until activists and voters SHAME them into doing it.
Oh, and fuck you on the NARAL ad being “detestible” … go read BitchPhD’s takedown on that spin.
The other problem is that, if they didn’t have information, they shouldn’t have opened their mouths. Either way, Reid’s position makes him look bad. Did he support Roberts with full knowledge of all this stuff? If so, I think that’s the last bit of evidence we need to conclude that he’s a right-winger in disguise. Or did he voice his unequivocal, unquestioning support of Roberts without the information? I think this is actually more troubling, because it seems to imply that Reid would’ve supported Roberts no matter what his positions.
and that is the big problem w/ our so-called “leaders.” All insider calculation, instead of actual engagement with facts and issues.
Let me try this another way. There is screaming and cursing the darkness, or there can be educating and informing the public. That means as much as possible presenting your arguments as objectively as you can.
NARAL ad? Explain how an attack ad furthered the NARAL agenda, or changed anyone’s mind about Roberts. You can’t have it both ways. Either you support negative attacks or not – from whatever source.
And I don’t work in anybody’s office, I’m just sick and f*cking tired of the self-rightous chest-pounding – and the noise – on all sides. Way to get the message across.
can I ask you what 30 years of right wing attack ads has gotten them? Do you understand how the fundi/corporatist coalition got where it is?
Negative ads are part of politics. Attacking another group or persons views or background is part of politics. We need to learn that, or just quit pretending that we give a fuck about what is happening to this country.
This isn’t a debating society, it’s POLITICS, and politics is ugly.
Pew Research Center, 2004 Election Report:
While the electorate is deeply divided on many issues, the sense that the campaign was more negative is shared by comparable numbers of Kerry voters (74%) and Bush voters (70%). This perception is widely shared across the demographic spectrum.
Go ahead and put your elephant suit on. And don’t forget to send Karl a card thanking him for the lesson. But try to remember that you don’t defeat fear-mongering bullies by becoming one.
Off the top of my head, I probably would’ve hired John Cleese to be a doctor in an office with a pregnant Margaret Cho, with “Mr. Smith” (Matrix) in the background: “Who’s he?”. “That’s Judge Roberts. He says he represents the government, and has a right to be here.”
and people will say they love puppies, kittens and big warm hugs. So what. They respond, and always have responded, to attacks as much or more than they respond to solutions.
I’m jealous that you live in a nicer, cuddlier world than the real one I inhabit. Does nice New Age music play all the time there?
People always respond to attacks, true. It’s how they respond that concerns me. They don’t respond well to shrill voices, or personal attacks. (See: Teachers, Firefighters, et. al. versus Schwartzenwhatsis).
have you been sleeping for the last 30 years. There has been a nonstop series of shrill attacks on liberals, women, minorities and gays by politicians and interest groups on the right. They now own ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT, and the media.
Actually, how they respond is pretty consistent. They claim that “attack ads” only negatively affect their opinion of the person making the attack. However, when you actually look at their opinion, it tends to either negatively affect their opinion of the person being attacked (as is the case with many moderates who currently vote Republican) or negatively affect their opinion of both parties (as is the case with the massive number of citizens who don’t vote). Thus, candidates will rarely lose ground relative to a single opponent when employing attack ads.
Interesting.
Of course, as the Dean and Gephardt campaigns discovered, using attack ads directly in an election with multiple “viable” candidates is suicide. Using them at one remove – through a PAC or other organization, as Kerry did – is much more effective.
Yes, I understand “attack by proxy”. Still think the best way to defeat the bastards is a fast-response team. Funny that as far back as the ’50’s, Ike sent “truth squads” to opposition events. Passed out counter-position fliers as the audience came out. NOT personal attacks, just your basic debunking operation. Very effective.
Clinton did it best, Kerry’s crew failed miserably. In the Dean v. Gephardt battle, Edwards won.
well, isn’t that what we’re doing?
I know that the NARAL ad has been characterized as somehow sleezy, but everything in it was factual. Roberts DID advocate for a very violent anti-woman group, freeing them up to ramp up the violence in spite of Congress’ attempt to rein them in before it went too far. Everything in that ad was a FACT.
Attack ad is a phrase that focuses on the tone.
Attack ads can be factual, e.g., based on his record and writing, Roberts were criminalize birth control by rejecting G v C.
Attack ads can be complete lies – Swift Boat Veterans.
It’s not the tone of voice, it’s the lies.
So why the fuck did the ABA just say this bastard was “well qualified”?
There’s too much capitulation from too many places. I keep hoping more can be made of the hiding of documents, but it’s going to require political will from the Dems (which is about like asking a jellyfish to get a spine). The media didn’t cover that aspect of the Bolton saga too well, maybe we can get them to pull their heads out of their collective asses on this one.
they said Judge Thomas was “qualified.”
Who knows what the hell their standards are.
My guess: is a lawyer registered with the ABA.
Their priority is, of course, maintaining their power.
Historically, the ABA has been fairly liberal. Many of Bush’s recent court appointments were never looked at by the ABA, something presidents have done for a while. Instead, Bush uses a more conservative group to suggest/approve judicial appointees:
Well my take is Reid is more or less fine with Roberts. LOL, as in fine…
He certainly took pains in the interview with the New Yorker to indicate smiles. Compared him to Souter. Read it… the part on Roberts is the first several grafs.
Reid is fine with the nom.
Liberal Street Fighter