archived: 11 - 17 Sep, 2005 Back Next
UPDATED: September 15, 2005
ROBERTS EVASIVE
Senate Democrats have been hammering questions at Roberts as he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
If confirmed, Roberts will be the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. One would expect that a person nominated for one of the most important posts in government would have a basic understanding of the constitutional law that they will apply.
Perhaps the most important constitutional right is that of freedom of speech. Roberts admitted in testimony before the Judiciary Committee today that he does not have an understanding of 1st Amendment law:
In a third day of questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, John Roberts admitted that he was not "up to speed" on First Amendment precedents.
In an exchange on First Amendments issues with Senator Patrick Leahy, a leading Democrat, Roberts revealed, "Senator, I haven't dealt with a lot of First Amendment access cases." The only one he could cite had to do with media access to prisons. He also said he was "not terribly familiar with the precise legal standards or how they have developed" recently.
He did add, however, that "I do start with a general principle in this area. And I think it was Justice Brandeis who talked about, you know, sunlight being the best disinfectant." -- Editor & Publisher
Is Roberts being candid with the American people? Consider the following:
U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has not established a recognizable First Amendment jurisprudence record since being confirmed for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in May 2003. But Roberts has handled many First Amendment cases in both the private and public sectors — in the private area as an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based firm Hogan & Hartson and in the public sector as deputy solicitor general of the United States.
In his position as an advocate, he has argued both sides in different First Amendment cases, including both freedom of expression and freedom of religion cases. Given an advocate’s duty to represent one’s client zealously, positions taken in those cases may not reflect Roberts’ personal views on the First Amendment.
What is discernible is that he has had the opportunity to study and reflect on many First Amendment arguments. – First Amendment Center
More particularly, Roberts authored legal memorandums as a White House aide in the Reagan Administration:
On First Amendment issues, several memos showed that Roberts believed that the media's rights are limited. In an Aug. 28, 1985, memo to Fielding, Roberts suggested that the White House stay out of a debate over whether to change the rules governing what could happen when a public figure sued a media organization for libel. At issue was a proposal that Schumer, then a congressman, made to the White House that would bar punitive damages in libel cases, so that public figures could only win a declaration that they had been wronged.
Roberts wrote that he didn't think the White House should take sides in ''the raging debate about whether the current state of libel law threatens the media (because of the cost of defense and the rare large verdict) or public figures (because of the near-impossibility of prevailing under the [current law])." But in his personal opinion, ''a legislative trade-off relaxing the requirements for public figures to prevail . . . in exchange for eliminating punitive damages would satisfy the First Amendment." – Boston Globe
Roberts is simply not being candid with the Judiciary Committee. Americans deserve better.
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COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM
Latest quotes from Bush’s compassionate conservatives:
“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." -- Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA), Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
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"If I'm Karl [Rove], do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" – New York Times (Black supporter of Bush and friend of Rove who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.)
Perhaps the better question is if we want a President who treated black Americans in these circumstances as if they lived in Rwanda.
DOCTRINE MEETS
REALITY
[Authored by
Jay Greene*]
Poor FEMA and Brown, it's head, have been taking lumps on the question of preparedness and timely response, as have Bush and Chertoff, the latter being Brown's immediate boss. That discussion is necessary but I approach the matter from a slightly different perspective: what is the proper role of the Federal government in the United States of the 21st century?
The "proper" role of the Federal government is a question with which every generation has wrestled since the founding of the Republic and ever since the New Deal the orthodox "conservative" view has been the Feds have no power to regulate commerce and cannot spend federal funds on social programs. For shorthand, I call this the National Association of Manufacturers' position, a self serving and highly selective position, for it was always OK for the Feds to bail out industries roughly handled by market forces and it was always OK for the Feds to subsidize large manufacturers (and smaller, via a trickle down effect) through defense spending and such radical programs as the Highway Act in 1958 were OK also.
When Reagan took office in 1981 he brought with him a new breed of conservatives, more consistent in their views and relying on their strict reading of the Constitution's allocation of specific powers to the Federal government and reserving all unspecified powers to the states. Many of these same people, or their intellectual progeny, accompanied Bush to Washington in 2001 and one of the agencies they took a hard look at was FEMA. Early on they decided, because it comported with their doctrines, the states and local communities should play a larger, and FEMA a lesser, role in disaster relief and recovery. This shift was adopted both by reducing FEMA's budget and packing it with political appointees in the upper levels with zero disaster relief experience. The present head of FEMA was a lawyer for an equestrian association. (Interestingly, his comments as Katrina hit were the same as Chertoff's and Bush's (and I paraphrase) "We had no reason to expect a storm of this magnitude and levee failure" which is a manifest untruth.)
Republican doctrinal orthodoxy determined that FEMA would fail to meet its legislatively mandated responsibilities. The doctrine requires a reduced Federal and an enhanced state role in such matters, even when reality demands that level of response most capable of meeting the challenge, i.e. the U. S. Government, as the entity in the best position to marshal all the resources needed for a calamity of this magnitude.
So, instead of "conservatives" being, as they would like us to believe, men not only reverencing the strict requirements of the Constitution but also practical men who can get things done (as opposed to wooly liberals, for whom the only answer is to throw money, Federal money, at the problem) we find conservative doctrine falling flat on its face. In the response to Katrina, we have a tragic example of doctrine meeting reality, and how reality always trumps doctrine. In this case, thousands have died needlessly and the men most responsible will not have to answer for it. Brown will be cashiered but he was never a policy maker, only the loyal retainer put in the agency to carry out the policies of men wedded to doctrine.
Nor, sadly, will this glaring example quiet future rhetoric about "strict construction" and limiting the role of the Federal government. Reality has no place at the table when matters of high doctrine are being discussed. The difficulty with that philosophy is that reality will shoulder its way to the table, breaking some china as it does.
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* Jay Greene is a frequent contributor to TPJ. Junkie considers his article “Deadwood Act” to be one of the finest pieces ever to appear in TPJ. Greene is retired, but he held top management posts in the steamship industry and international trade on the Pacific Coast.
Green’s article was written prior to Brown being “recalled” to Washington to prepare for other potential national disasters.
TPJ recently published a Republican “first” – the first straight five years of rising poverty in the United States. – TPJ, FIRST TIME
Bush and the radical Republicans achieve another “milestone” – rising infant mortality rates in the United States ending fifty years of declining rates. Despite being one of the richest countries in the world and spending more than other countries on health care:
Key US health indicators are far below those that might be anticipated on the basis of national wealth. Infant mortality trends are especially troublesome. Since 2000 a half century of sustained decline in infant death rates first slowed and then reversed. The infant mortality rate is now higher for the United States than for many other industrial countries.
Malaysia—a country with an average income one-quarter that of the United States—has achieved the same infant mortality rate as the United States (figure 1). And the Indian state of Kerala has an urban infant death rate lower than that for African Americans in Washington, DC.
Wide differences in health across socio – economic groups partly explain the poorer health outcomes in the United States than in other industrial countries.
From the cradle to the grave the health of US citizens shows extreme divergence. For example, racial and ethnic health disparities are persistent—a result of differences in insurance coverage, income, language and education, among other factors (figure 2). African American mothers are twice as likely as white mothers to give birth to a low birthweight baby. Their children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday. Income differences are closely correlated with health differences. A baby boy from a family in the top 5% of the US income distribution will enjoy a life span 25% longer than a boy born in the bottom 5%.
Many factors contribute to health inequalities. One important driver is the coverage of healthcare provision. The United States is the only wealthy country with no universal health insurance system. Its mix of employer-based private insurance and public coverage has never reached all Americans. While more than half the population have health insurance coverage through their employers and almost all the elderly are covered through Medicare, more than one in six non-elderly Americans (45 million) lacked health insurance in 2003. Over a third (36%) of families living below the poverty line are uninsured. Hispanic Americans (34%) are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as white Americans (13%), and 21% of African Americans have no health insurance. – Human Development Report
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A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
This picture is priceless – and so very true!
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Now, read “Al Gore” in THEM DEMS
Last Update: 03/27/2006
