Update: Please note response of the office of Sen. Feingold in the comments section.
George Wagner's MJS column last month reporting Sen. Russ Feingold defended the filibuster at a listening session in Milwaukee reveals a problem of Feingold's that progressives know about but rarely speak: What Bertrand Russell would describe as Feingold's "corner of madness."
That would be Feingold's tendency to take utterly insupportable positions in the name of polishing his brand as a political maverick. Certainly, it's not Feingold's intellect that leads him to the absurd.
Examples:
- Defending the filibuster in the name of deliberation
- Voting for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts because Roberts assured the Judiciary Committee that he was committed to the jurisprudence of an "umpire" and not that a rightwing activist, Roberts' past ideology apparently notwithstanding in Feingold's mind
Feingold has accomplished much in his tenure in the Senate, but he will never be a great Senator like Robert M. LaFollette because of his tendency to veer into the political idiosyncratic and irrational.
One can go on: Feingold's fighting against retraining funds for out-of-work Janesville autoworkers, raving against stimulus spending in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, supporting the Republican crazies in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and other nonsense.
Liberals [Emily Mills, for example] won't call Feingold out on these preposterous positions because of Feingold's lonely voice of opposition to the worst of the Bush-Cheney nightmare.
But if Feingold's views had prevailed, we would have Senate obstruction, an ultra-activist Roberts Court, out-of-work Americans in need of training, and an insufficiently large fiscal stimulus ... . Ohhh, yeah. This is the type of maverick whom Sarah Palin supports, and Feingold knows this to be true so, really: Knock it off, man.
Showing posts with label John Roberts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Roberts. Show all posts
Feb 4, 2010
Jun 23, 2009
Voting Rights Ruling: No Racism Anymore
Social conditions on race are what the GOP says, not the Democratic-led Congress, and certainly not empirical data.
GOP hack Chief Justice John Roberts believes racism went the way of electronic vacuum tubes and during his tenure will seek to impose this belief on any area of law that he can.
That's the political reality under which the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Section Five was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.
Passing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Congress concluded racism exists. Wrong, the GOP says.
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) opinion is being hailed and bashed. But the Court [at least five members] makes clear it disagrees with the VRA's assumption about prevailing racism.
John Nichols sees the opinion pulling the teeth from the Voting Rights Act.
NAACP's John Payton and the ACLU's Steven R. Shapiro applaud the Court for preserving the Act and are grateful the Court rules on narrow grounds, instead of eviscerating the Act as the GOP wants.
But narrow grounds are the best the GOP could get because the GOP-desired opinion won't write—there is no intellectually honest reasoning for the desired opinion that overturns section five of the Voting Rights Act.
Overturning Section Five, the Court would have made Bush v. Gore in comparison a model of rigorous reasoning and apolitical detachment.
So the GOP judges did what they could: Chief Justice Roberts offers his GOP view of racial history and implausibly reinterpretes the Voting Rights statute to mean what the Court says, laying the grounds for a future GOP challenge.
The four rule-of-law judges went along because that's the best that they could get and Roberts threw them some language about the good that the Voting Rights Act has accomplished.
As noted by Tom Goldstein in SCOTUSblog, the "case that went before the Court was a vehicle chosen expressly to pose the constitutional question" by activist lawyers who believe that contrary to what Congress said [in reauthorizing the act by votes of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate in 2006 for 25 years], there is no need for the Act.
The constitutional question at hand is whether Congress overstepped its authority in deciding the Act is still needed.
But it's Congress' conclusion that racism exists that has the GOP upset.
The Court’s opinion says that Section 5 'imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.' And that the "statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old,” and “there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions." (NYT) This ignores the mountain of data that Congress used to justify reauthorization.
The GOP Court will go along with the GOP as much as it can without completely embarrassing itself.
GOP hack Chief Justice John Roberts believes racism went the way of electronic vacuum tubes and during his tenure will seek to impose this belief on any area of law that he can.
That's the political reality under which the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Section Five was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.
Passing the Voting Rights Act in 2006, Congress concluded racism exists. Wrong, the GOP says.
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) opinion is being hailed and bashed. But the Court [at least five members] makes clear it disagrees with the VRA's assumption about prevailing racism.
John Nichols sees the opinion pulling the teeth from the Voting Rights Act.
NAACP's John Payton and the ACLU's Steven R. Shapiro applaud the Court for preserving the Act and are grateful the Court rules on narrow grounds, instead of eviscerating the Act as the GOP wants.
But narrow grounds are the best the GOP could get because the GOP-desired opinion won't write—there is no intellectually honest reasoning for the desired opinion that overturns section five of the Voting Rights Act.
Overturning Section Five, the Court would have made Bush v. Gore in comparison a model of rigorous reasoning and apolitical detachment.
So the GOP judges did what they could: Chief Justice Roberts offers his GOP view of racial history and implausibly reinterpretes the Voting Rights statute to mean what the Court says, laying the grounds for a future GOP challenge.
The four rule-of-law judges went along because that's the best that they could get and Roberts threw them some language about the good that the Voting Rights Act has accomplished.
As noted by Tom Goldstein in SCOTUSblog, the "case that went before the Court was a vehicle chosen expressly to pose the constitutional question" by activist lawyers who believe that contrary to what Congress said [in reauthorizing the act by votes of 390 to 33 in the House and 98 to 0 in the Senate in 2006 for 25 years], there is no need for the Act.
The constitutional question at hand is whether Congress overstepped its authority in deciding the Act is still needed.
But it's Congress' conclusion that racism exists that has the GOP upset.
The Court’s opinion says that Section 5 'imposes current burdens and must be justified by current needs.' And that the "statute’s coverage formula is based on data that is now more than 35 years old,” and “there is considerable evidence that it fails to account for current political conditions." (NYT) This ignores the mountain of data that Congress used to justify reauthorization.
The GOP Court will go along with the GOP as much as it can without completely embarrassing itself.
May 18, 2009
Jeffrey Toobin on CJ John Roberts: No More Mr. Nice Guy
Update: See today's 5-4 decision (Ashcroft and Mueller v. Iqbal, 07-1015) for yet another example of the utter disdain the GOP-Roberts wing has for liberty. See SC Turns Back Ex-Detainee’s Suit Over Prison Abuses (NYT).
As speculation continues on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, a must read by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker on Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
In September 2005 Roberts was confirmed 78-22, and the liberty-loving crowd (mainstream journalists call us the "left") figured that we were not going to be hurt as Roberts' predecessor was William Rehnquist. Can't really get worse than Rehnquist.
Not so sure now.
As speculation continues on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, a must read by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker on Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
In September 2005 Roberts was confirmed 78-22, and the liberty-loving crowd (mainstream journalists call us the "left") figured that we were not going to be hurt as Roberts' predecessor was William Rehnquist. Can't really get worse than Rehnquist.
Not so sure now.
Jan 22, 2009
Does Wisconsin Still Like the Fourth Amendment?
One repulsive feature in the liberal arguments for routine police roadblocks [advocates call them “sobriety checkpoints”] is one of omission: The absolute refusal to address why roadblocks are offensive to liberty and specifically Fourth Amendment concerns.
Instead, we are treated to 38 other states do it; the Supreme Court’s 4th amendment doctrine of the Roberts Court says it’s okay, and so on.
Whatever happened to the libertarian ethos that we must be suspicious of claims demanding that we hand over our liberty for safety and security?
And when did we start taking our cues on liberty from Chief Justice John Roberts?
From Kathleen Falk, Jim Rowan, and other liberals, there is not so much as lip service paid to Fourth Amendment concerns.
Personally, I’m voting against Kathleen Falk in her reelection bid for Dane County Executive precisely because of her disregard of Fourth Amendment liberties [and her handling of the 911 Center-Zimmermann scandal].
A comment I received on a recent piece on the topic is instructive: Oh, you just must like to smoke pot and drive and you must like drinking and driving.
Apparently, the idea that citizens just like their Fourth Amendment whole and unharmed is incomprehensible to some, to many.
You would think that those who value liberty would begin their advocacy of roadblocks by prefacing how invidious police roadblocks are to the Fourth Amendment, but .... .
But there is not so much as a rhetorical struggle when it comes to proposing roadblocks.
The pro-roadblock crowd doesn’t grabble with such concerns because liberty is no longer a worry as they drunkenly veer into the old lock-them-up, criminalize, get-tough-on-crime nostrums of the last four decades that have resulted in America leading the world in its citizens incarcerated.
“The U.S. has less than 5 percent of the world's population but almost 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment.” (NYT, Liptak, 04/27/08)
Iran? Saudi Arabia? Get in line, we’re number one in taking away our fellow citizens’ liberty but Rowen and Falk and company want a bigger lead.
But hey, what do James Madison (he’s that Bill of Rights guy after whom we named our capital) and the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London know anyway?
I say they knew and know a lot about liberty, and as for the liberals who have gone along with (and now lead the way on) this tough-on-crime, war-against-drugs, more-people-in-jail foolishness: YOU'RE THE PROBLEM!
Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Contact author at: maleon64@yahoo.com
- via mal contends
Sep 13, 2007
Bush's Hijacking of Supreme Court
Via ThinkProgress, We know that Fifteen percent is the number of Americans who can name the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, compared with 66 percent of Americans who can name “at least one of the judges on the Fox television show American Idol.”
That's the kind of thing that scares me. So, Bush can appoint a guy like John Roberts, call him a strict constructionist who upholds the Constitution, and most people will not have a clue as to the lie Bush is telling. [Not that Bush has a clue either; he just recites the lines.]
Roberts is a strict constructionist, alright: A judge who wishes to make abortion illegal, sees no great defined liberty rights in the Constitution, is a lousy scholar of Constitutional thought, and will overturn any judicial precedent if it fits with the right wing political network.
Hell, these strict constructionist guys like Roberts would even halt an election and appoint a man like George W. Bush to the presidency if they ever had the chance. I kid you not.
###
###
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)