Sanity Pills

The Times has a decent piece on how Alito’s nomination is the culmination of a nearly 25-year plan by the Federalist Society to reorgnaize the US court system toward conservative freakshows. The subject matter is great, but there really is hard evidence of bias. Liberal media my ass.

The article adds further proof that Alito is a wingnut and will definitely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (which, by the way, I’m starting to think won’t be such a bad thing afterall), in addition to increasing the power of the Executive Branch and the influence of corporations over all aspects of our lives (the primary reason to oppose the guy).

Judge Alito’s confirmation is also the culmination of a disciplined campaign begun by the Reagan administration to seed the lower federal judiciary with like-minded jurists who could reorient the federal courts toward a view of the Constitution much closer to its 18th-century authors’ intent, including a much less expansive view of its application to individual rights and federal power. It was a philosophy promulgated by Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration, that became the gospel of the Federalist Society and the nascent conservative legal movement.

I don’t like how the author stated as fact the original intent of the Constitution. First, that’s unknown. And second, their original intent may have been for an evolving Constitution more in line with how liberals currently view it. The author should have phrased this more explicitly to say that the intent of the Federalist Society is to reorient the Constitution to what they THINK is the original intent of the writers.

Where is the competing liberal movement???

By last week it was clear that the judge had enough votes to win confirmation. And the last gasp of resistance came in a Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday when Senator Edward M. Kennedy, joined by Senator John Kerry, both of Massachusetts, unsuccessfully tried to persuade the party to organize a filibuster.

Was clear or seemed clear? Those are two very different things, and as of this morning, Alito’s confirmation was far less set in stone than it appeared to be at the end of last week. Right now there are 37 votes (some say 39) for a filibuster, but some Dems who won’t back Alito are waffling now about whether to support a filibuster (Biden and Feinstein appear to have switched positions).

Still, on the brink of this victory, some in the conservative movement say the battle over the court has just begun. Justice O’Connor was the swing vote on many issues, but replacing her with a more dependable conservative would bring that faction of the court at most to four justices, not five, and thus not enough to truly reshape the court or overturn precedents like those upholding abortion rights.

“It has been a long time coming,” Judge Bork said, “but more needs to be done.”

Jesus Fucking Christ.

UPDATE: The unthinkable has happened. A Republican broke rank. According to Armando at DailyKos, Lincoln Chafee will not back Alito. I doubt he’d support a filibuster, but who knows. He comes from a liberal region and is currently the second most conservative Senator from New England, right behind Joe Lieberman.

UPDATE 2: Jeffords will not support cloture. I never understood why he didn’t just switch parties all the way.

Disregard my post on January 26th.

I knew it would eventually happen, Alzheimer’s has finally struck Sen. Robert Byrd. He’s supporting Alito.

Democrats Nelson and Johnson both support Alito, and Landrieu promised not to join a filibuster (I doubt Jeffords would back a filibuster either). That means there’s probably not 40 41 souls on the right side of this fight. We lose unless a handful of Repugs break ranks, but they never do that.

Alito’s in easily, and Bush will be able to brag during the State of the Union.

I like physician-assisted suicide, in fact, I think it’s pretty awesome. We should get past the abortion fight and make this the new pro-choice v. pro-life fight.

SCOTUS denied Ashcroft’s attempts to block the Oregon law.

In a stinging defeat for the administration, the justices upheld a U.S. appeals court ruling that Ashcroft’s directive was unlawful and unenforceable, and that he had overstepped his authority.

There’s a bunch of commies working at Reuters.

The decision was 6-3.

Scalia, Thomas, and Roberts dissented—-I see how it’s going to be from now on.

Bush chose the staggeringly unimpressive Harriet Miers to fill the open seat on the Supreme Court. No one is excited about her at all, except maybe those in the Bush clan (klan). She has no paper trail (usually helps but not this time) and nothing to distinguish her from thousands of other lawyers.

She is:

1.) Woefully unqualified as far as her resume compared to those of the other Justices, but she does have a vagina (I think).
2.) Nothing more than a Bush crony.
3.) Lacking clearly defined positions, which will scare the Repugs much more than the Democrats.
4.) Really hasn’t done anything at all.
5.) A graduate of a not-even-close to “great” law school. SMU is very good, but hardly the place that produces a generation’s greatest legal minds.

Take a look at what Michelle Malkin and other right-wingers are thinking. They are scared and pissed off.

There will be attacks from the Right for not being the right choice, and attacks from the Left for being just another Bush friend given way too much power (I have a feeling Michael Brown’s name will be coming up as an example in the next few weeks).

She’ll be harder to get through, and I don’t think she will. Plus, she is extremely unattractive; looks were a not insignificant dimension that made a clear majority of Americans approve of John Roberts’s nomination.

A measured response from the Right:

OK, this is the fucking last straw. The camel’s back is now officially broken.

They use the present tense, even though the event in question happened in 1982.

Kill those fucking kiddie diddling ACLU scumbags, execute every last motherfucking one of them, pull out their guts and strangle them with them, piss on their corpses, pour gasoline on them and set them on fire.

Protecting child pornographers now, are we?

That’s it, ACLU, you have now officially left the human race and you had damn well better not ever show up in my immediate vicinity or I will fucking kill you in the most excruciatingly painful way that I can think of and I’ve got a pretty creative imagination, just in case you were wondering.

Burn, motherfuckers, BURN!

That reminds me, I think it’s time to renew my ACLU membership.

Do people really think that because the ACLU provides a damn amicus brief in support of one group’s LEGAL argument, that they support the actions and views of that group? Those on the Right do, once again showing that they can’t comprehend too much. Small minds = Small ideas.

UPDATE: Those on the Right love to play with words, trying to show off how dumb they are. For example, there are these nicknames for the ACLU:

AIDS-infected Cunt-Lickers Union
Ass Crack Lickers’ Union
Anti-American Crap Lickers Union
Anti-theist Criminal Lewdfucker Union

Why don’t they mess with ‘Union’?

The faux outrage is hilarious.

Apparently, during an informal meeting with some senators, Roberts said that he would recuse himself from cases where the law was in conflict with his Catholic faith. Light of Reason goes into the many reasons why this should disqualify him.

Democrats should hammer at this constantly. But they won’t, for fear of pissing of the “values voters.”

Obviously, this guy is probably gonna overturn Roe, and worse, he’s gonna kowtow to the corporate interests. However, I think this is good in a couple ways.

First, based on my limited understanding, this guy is a traditional conservative (like Rhenquist) not a movement conservative (like Scalia and Thomas). As such, it seems unlikely that we are gonna see a complete rollback of the New Deal. Instead, we are likely to get the death (or near death) of Roe, some anti environment pro-corporatist stuff, but nothing earth shattering. In many ways, it could be a lot worse. Also, since this guy has little to no record, it is possible that he may be more moderate than it appears (like Souter).

Second, and more importantly in my book, even if this guy turns out to be a progressive’s worst nightmare, I think the results will teach a lesson to the millions of Americans who don’t vote or who vote based on factors such as “likability.” These people need to realize that according to their voting criteria, they no longer will have access to abortions because (horror of horrors) Al Gore and John Kerry are boring. Thats right folks, John Kerry voted for the 87 billion before he voted against it, so corporations are free to pollute at will.

Third, i think that once Roe is effectively eviscerated, the democrats will have a great issue to energize voters (60% of whom favor legal abortion) with.

I don’t know much about John Roberts other than he is a hardcore right winger with lots of lawyerly civility and charm. I’ve worked with lawyers like him all my life. They reek of class and make you feel as if you are one of the most important people in the world when you are retaining them. They know the best head waiters at the best restaurants by their first name. You walk away sated and wonder how such charming people could be so socially and morally repugnant and selfish.

He will pull the court to the right and will probably be the 5th vote to overturn Roe. On other issues, it’s cloudy but I suspect he will be a reliable vote for reaction (political, social and economic) that the Bush administration will see easily confirmed.

My point is that this is a lost fight and has been since the fraudulent Ohio and Florida returns were certified in November, 2004. I will invest no effort to the attempt to derail his nomination. It’s a waste of time. It is also just the beginning of a thorough gutting of what traditional legal thought and analysis is left on the Supreme Court. The next nominee will be more blatantly reptilian and the argument for that nominee’s confirmation will be that Bush has already nominated a “mainstream values guy” and he is now entitled to an ideologue of his choice.

All of you invest your better moral and political powder in fighting smaller battles that have a chance of winning such as ridding Massachusetts of its current governor in 2006 and making sure that the neo-fascist religious right doesn’t succeed in getting an anti-gay marriage amendment initiative on the state ballot.

According to Drudge, Bush has a Supreme Court Nominee, and will announce his pick at 9pm tonight.

There is a decent amount of speculation that Bush will nominate a woman, no doubt a far-right anti-Choice extremist, including stories that Laura Bush has pressured him (read: withheld sex) to pick a woman. This is purely a political pick, which is disgusting when one thinks about the importance of the decision. His popularity is waning, especially in regards to Iraq, so he needs to regain the support of the moderate and conservative women (read: dumb bitches) who put him in the White House.

Although his choice will be a very political one, the timing of the choice is one of the most crass political moves this country has ever seen.

The only reason his choice will come soon is to save Karl Rove. There’s no way that news outlets can defend covering Karl Rove when there is a new Supreme Court nominee. I think it might be too late to save Rove though, especially with only 15% of the public wanting to keep Rove in the White House if he leaked an agent’s name (which he fucking did, no two ways about it).

Here’s hoping the American public isn’t as easily manipulated as they usually are.

Rehnquist has fucking lost it, he will stay on the Supreme Court. I’m not happy, but somewhat relieved that Idiot Bush won’t have two slots to fill.

The only silver lining is Scalia’s (or Thomas’) Chief Justice promotion won’t be happening… for now.

UPDATE: Dick Morris, on Fox News as the “Democratic” point of view to lend credibility to Fox’s shameless “Fair and Balanced” claim, gives his two cents:

Rehnquist has to go… If he has any sense of responsibility to the Republican party, he has got to give George Bush some wiggle room.

Go back to your prostitutes, DICK.