“D.C. Circuit Court Nominee Janice Rogers Brown: Twisting the Law to Advance Her Own Radical Views,” Alliance for Justice, http://www.independentjudiciary.com/resources/docs/Janice%20Rogers%20Brown%20Twisting%20The%20Law.pdf (from Independent Judiciary).
“William Pryor: Unfit to Judge,” People for the American Way, 9 June 2003, http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=10911.
“Democrats Filibuster Pryor,” Daily Kos, 1 August 2003, http://www.dailykos.net/archives/003626.html.
“On The Unacceptability of Owen and Rogers Brown,” by Armando, Daily Kos, 19 May 2005, http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/2114/15293.
“Senators Avoid Fight Over Filibusters,” by Jim Abrams, Associated Press, 24 May 2005, http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050524/D8A9ETF00.html (from Drudge Report).
Tom Daschle, my former Senator, lost his job because of his refusal to give Bush’s judicial nominees an up-or-down vote. Other Democrats do not share his dedication.
The Nuclear Option won’t happen. Enough Democrats agreed to give up Tom Daschle’s strategy of filibustering popular judges.
Judicial nominee Priscilla Owen gets the vote she’s been awaiting for more than four years, the most immediate beneficiary of a deal worked out by Senate moderates to avoid a debilitating fight over filibusters.
The Senate was voting Tuesday to end debate on Owen, currently a Texas Supreme Court justice, clearing the way for her to gain a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans. With the threat of a filibuster by Democrats removed, she was nearly certain then to get the simple majority vote needed to give her the seat that long has eluded her, perhaps as early as Tuesday.
The agreement, crafted over the past several weeks by seven Republicans and seven Democrats, also opened the way for yes-or-no votes on two other of President Bush’s judicial picks who have been in nomination limbo for more than two years – William H. Pryor Jr. for the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Janice Rogers Brown for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Rogers Brown is the greatest victory, because the Appeals Court in D.C. is considered a stepping stone for the Supreme Court.
What did the liberal netroots say about these three before?
William Pryor
Daschle wasted time, but failed to keep him outWait for the GOP to explode in blinding rage as the Dems have successfully held their ground on the William Pryor nomination.
So I guess Democrats didn’t hold their ground yesterday.
Also:
Pryor is a leading architect of the recent “states’ rights” or “federalism” movement to limit the authority of Congress to enact laws protecting individual and other rights. He personally has been involved in key Supreme Court cases that, by narrow 5-4 majorities, have restricted the ability of Congress to protect Americans’ rights against discrimination and injury based on disability, race, and age. Worse, he has urged the Court to go even further than it has in the direction of restricting congressional authority. Just last month, for example, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, rejected Pryor’s argument that the states should be immune from lawsuits for damages brought by state employees for violation of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.
On Priscilla Owen
Proscilla Owen shaking hands with President Bush
Daschle wasted time, but failed to keep him out…For those not familiar with Judge Owen or the ongoing criticism of her, she gives new meaning to the word “conservative.” She is perhaps best known for her staunch opposition to abortion.
Now while everyone is entitled to his or her own personal views, Owen “has been at times so eager to issue conservative rulings in cases before her on the Texas Supreme Court that she has ignored statutory language and substituted her own views.” Hence the label, “unconscionable judicial activist.”
Judges are allowed to have personal views on issues. They are not supposed to allow those views to dictate their judicial decisions.
“A former lawyer for the oil and gas industry, she reflexively favors manufacturers over consumers, employers over workers and insurers over sick people. In abortion cases Justice Owen has been resourceful about finding reasons that, despite United States Supreme Court holdings and Texas case law, women should be denied the right to choose.“
on Janice Rogers Brown
Janice Rogers Brown
Daschle wasted time, but failed to keep her outJustice Brown equates democratic government with “slavery,” claims that the New Deal “inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of collectivist mentality,” calls Supreme Court decisions upholding the New Deal “the triumph of our own socialist revolution,” accuses social security recipients of “blithely cannibaliz[ing] their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system permits them to extract,” and advocates returning to the widely discredited, early 20th century Lochner era, where the Supreme Court regularly invalidated economic regulations, like workplace protections. “Where government moves in,” Justice Brown declares, “community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity
entertaining and virtue contemptible.”
I once compared the Conservative attempt to Seize the Judiciary to the end of the Vietnam War, with Conservatives as the Communists. The Judicial Branch represents Saigon. The Compromise represents a series of conventional vehicles, each one moving closer to the goal — the schwerpunkt.
It’s not the nuclear option, but the Conservatives are winning. Former Democrat Leader Daschle fought desperate to stop this and lost his job over it. Current Democrat Leader Reid hasn’t been able to maintain the same party discipline.
