Jack & Jill Politics

Courts, A Political Fight By Different Means

by BooMan
Mon Mar 15th, 2010 at 10:32:07 AM EST
Do you want proof that the two parties operate with two separate rulebooks?

Earlier this month, Republicans required a cloture vote on Barbara Keenan, a nominee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. After that vote, Keenan was confirmed by a 99-0 tally.

By contrast, more than half of Bush's judicial nominees were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent. Democrats consented to their confirmation without requiring time to be spent on a roll-call vote on the Senate floor.

Republicans counter that if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House believed judges to be a priority, they would use their clout to push them through. Reid controls the Senate calendar.

But a spokesman for Reid, Jim Manley, rejected that notion, saying the necessary cloture votes would chew up time on a Senate calendar already under duress from healthcare and jobs bills.

You can blame the Democrats for not employing the kind of obstruction during the Bush years that the Republicans are employing now, but that is the wrong way of thinking about this. The Democrats behaved as a minority party should behave. They chose a few judges to make a stand on, but they didn't waste time on most of them. If they were going to be confirmed, the Democrats didn't prevent them from getting a vote or force delays for delay's sake.

Our current problem with judicial nominees is a legacy of the civil rights era as well as the emergence of the feminist movement. Because Congress was incapable of doing what was right on Jim Crow and women's rights, the courts intervened. As a result, the appointment of judges became completely politicized, with both parties wanting to know how judges would rule on hot button issues before agreeing to confirm them. Of course, this didn't happen right away:

The confirmation process is less about the Supreme Court (let alone the nominee) than about the politics of the moment as reflected, however clumsily, in the questions the senators choose to ask. The transcript of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing is really a document of social and political history. For example, John Paul Stevens, nominated to the court in December 1975, nearly three years after the court's decision in Roe v. Wade, was the first post-Roe nominee, yet he was not asked a single question about abortion. That shows us that abortion was simply not a hot-button political issue in the mid-'70s—it was still waiting quietly in the wings for eventual capture by the right.

Obviously times have changed.

When John Paul Stevens was nominated by a Republican president, a Democratic Senate confirmed him in 16 days. Byron White took only 12.

It used to be that judicial nominees were vetted for character and qualifications, but not too much for ideology. That worked as long as the courts didn't attempt to resolve pressing social problems that Congress was incapable of addressing themselves. That's what the Republicans mean when they talk about activist judges “legislating from the bench.” In a real sense, that is what the court did on the desegregation of schools and abortion rights. In an ideal world, Congress would have taken the lead on those issues. Unfortunately, the world couldn't wait.

So, now we have this system where the courts are little more than a way to fight political battles by other means. And, in that fight, the Republicans are much more motivated and focused than the Democrats.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2010/3/15/10…

does anyone watch The Forgotten?

is it cancelled?

if so, great ending.

Donna Brazile Urges Primaries For Dems Who Vote Against Health Care Reform

A leading Democratic consultant who serves in an official capacity with the Democratic National Committee has come out in favor of primary challenges to Democratic lawmakers who help kill the president's health care bill.

Donna Brazile, who is the Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the DNC and a top-ranking strategist within the party, said on Monday that Democrats who “decide to defeat” the health care bill “deserve to get a primary challenge” in future elections.

The one-time Al Gore presidential campaign manager told the Huffington Post that while at home in Louisiana she had “decided to stop pretending that I will go back to support anyone not backing health reform.”

Brazile declined to elaborate, but made her view clear in a tweet she wrote shortly after President Barack Obama made an impassioned health care speech in Ohio on Monday.

DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan said that Brazile's call to support primary candidates for Democrats who vote against health care was not committee policy. Indeed, as former DNC Chair Howard Dean noted to the Huffington Post, the committee is prohibited under its bylaws from “being involved in a primary challenge.”

Nevertheless it is a telling illustration of just how high emotions are running in this crucial late-stage portion of the health care reform debate. Until now, the main voices calling for primaries for Democrats who withhold their support for reform have been progressive organization and union groups.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/15/democr…

Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Durbin Perform in the Nixon Kabuki Theater! Hotlist
by doubleaseven [Subscribe]
Digg this! Share this on Twitter – Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Durbin Perform in the Nixon Kabuki Theater!Tweet this submit to reddit Share This
Mon Mar 15, 2010 at 12:36:59 PM PDT

“In the end, trust begets competition, competition begets a public
option, and a public option begets the necessary ingredient that enables
every single American to afford health care. Without trust, Americans
will remain screwed.” [http://tinyurl.com/...]

* doubleaseven's diary :: ::
*

“Barack Obama says he supports a public option but claims there aren’t 51 votes in the Senate to pass it in reconciliation. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin says he would aggressively whip the 51 votes for the public option if Nancy Pelosi would send him a House reconciliation bill that includes a public option. Nancy Pelosi says she won’t include a public option in House reconciliation bill because there aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass it. It’s looking more and more like a game of 3-Card Monty.”

“It’s all Kabuki theater to cover up the truth that President Obama made a backroom deal with the for-profit hospital industry that the final health care bill would not include a national public option.”

If this reporting is accurate, the President has misled (lied?) the Public by his frequently repeated statement that he believes that Public Option is the best way to lower costs, foster competition and keep the insurance companies honest but would consider input about other alternatives if they are achieve results equal to or better than the Public Option. Do notice that the author is an attorney – so false reporting is unlikely.

After reading the article which of the three is applicable and desirable from your point of view.

1. Is this case of misleading (lying?) a prosecutable offense?

2. If true does it warrant impeachment by the Congress?

3. If neither 1 nor 2 apply or not carried out, should Obama and his team wear ribbons of shame, i.e. publicly apologize and show contrition? In addition, the President and Congressional leadership remedy this sabotage by either including the Public Option in the Reconciliation Package or pass a law adding the Public Option.

First is preferable, but can only occur if the issue gets acknowledged in time. I am a little surprised that the story has not been picked up by the media. Perhaps because it was published on Saturday. Or the reporting is false, unlikely considering the author is an attorney.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/15/846441/…

They need “leadership talks” to figure out how to portray Black women in a positive light?

I'm with you Morphus, Major Side-Eye happily delivered & I'll throw in an enthusiastic Psssshh, Yeah Right!!

“No one can stand in my way of destroying BllaacCK Peeeple!”
– Mistress Leevil http://vimeo.com/648473

I smell burnt toast.

Why Arlen Spector is a piece of trash?
http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/03/11/reinve…

Things that effect the economy
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/03/krugman-time-to-take-stand-on-china.html” rel=”nofollow”>Krugman: “Time to take a stand” on China Currency Manipulation
His solution is not novel and comes out of the Treasury.

Health Care Home Stretch: The Base that Roared
Posted by Al Giordano – March 15, 2010 at 5:08 pm

When we last weighed in on the Congressional machinations in Washington over health care reform around the new year, there was more heat than light coming not only from the right but from some loud and shrill corners that called themselves “the left,” many even claiming to represent “the base” of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

Two and a half months later, the situation has evolved to a very unique occurrence in progressive American politics: the authentic base rejected those grandstanders who wanted to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (the “bill killers” have pretty much wilted from their 15 minutes of overexposure), and has rallied around the cause of health care.

The US left (if such a thing has even existed in recent decades) for once in a lifetime did not fall for the orgy of petty bickering that led to so many previous epic fails, and what we see now is a convergence of forces, from the grassroots up, that can be defined as A. Pragmatic, in its multiple expressions in favor of advancing the ball down the field, and in rejecting the calls for “all or nothing” that had so defined many squandered US progressive political efforts over the past 30 or 40 years, and, B. Disciplined, including in the miraculous appearance of organizing to insist on discipline in the ranks of anyone who traffics in the term “progressive” to promote themselves.

I don’t know how it came to be, for so many years, that pragmatism and discipline were considered dirty words in many US activist circles. But the truth is, political battles have never been won without pragmatism and discipline.

Perhaps another time we can offer some historical thoughts on how it is that so many activists in the US came to see pragmatism as being “not pure” or not radical enough, and discipline as representing a loss of individuality and autonomy instead of an individual and autonomous choice to work together with others in strategic action.

I’d rather marvel, for now, at what has recently happened North of the Border to bring pragmatism and discipline back in vogue.

First, the evidence:

The national progressive group MoveOn (one that not too long ago would sometimes have the activist vice of allowing the perfect to be enemy of the good) recently polled its members with this question: “Should MoveOn support or oppose the final health care bill if it looks like the plan recently proposed by President Obama?” The result was that 83 percent support the bill to just 17 percent against it.

Among the authentic base, the tide has also turned against the longstanding tendency of holier-than-thou “purity troll” advocacy, as was recently evident in the cases of two Democratic US Representatives that had voted against health care on the first round because, they said, it did not go far enough. US Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) imploded and had to resign (yes, there were other more, ahem, prurient reasons for it, but he himself, at one point, claimed that the root of his meltdown was his vote against health care).

And now it is US Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in the hot seat.

You know the earth has shifted under Kucinich – long a proponent of a single payer health care system, for which the votes simply do not exist in Congress at present to achieve – when former supporters like Lisa Baskin of Massachusetts are posting this message on their Facebook pages:

“I have voted for, sent money to and agreed with Dennis Kucinich in the past. Now I want him to vote YES for the healthcare bill, imperfect as it is. Join me, Call Congressman Kucinich. Ask him to vote Yes.
Phone (202) 225-5871”

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3856/…