CNN.com – Bush: Stop ‘ugly politics’ over judicial nominees – Nov. 13, 2003

President Bush called for a stop to the ”ugly politics.”

”It’s wrong and it’s shameful, and it’s hurting the system,” he told reporters.

What’s wrong with this picture? First, only one of these nominees has been blocked. Not depicted is William Pryor who is virulently anti-choice. See the photos of Bush signing anti-choice legislation for the true image of our theocracy. mjh

Democrats said that 98 percent of Bush’s nominees have been confirmed, and that the filibuster is a long-standing Senate rule to block ideological nominees who are out of the mainstream.

Democrats also said Republicans used filibusters to block far more of President Clinton’s judicial nominations, and accuse Republicans of making a big deal of the Democratic filibusters to make the Democratic Party look bad. …

“Well, here we go, more complaining and more upset from the other side,” said Barbara Boxer, D-California, on the floor of the Senate. “They just didn’t get 100 percent of what they wanted. They only got 98 percent. The score, 168 to 4. You can print other charts, but here’s the truth.”

“This is a phony filibuster on a phony issue,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said Wednesday, on CNN’s Judy Woodruff’s “Inside Politics.”

Leahy, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, said Republicans used Senate rules to torpedo 63 judicial nominations made by President Clinton.

The Radical Right gets self-righteous when challenged. They contribute mightily to politics turning “ugly”. One of Bush’s greatest lies of the 2000 campaign was the he is “a uniter, not a divider.” BUllSHit! mjh

washingtonpost.com: Alabama Chief Justice Removed From Office

”To acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics,” [former Alabama Chief Justice Roy] Moore testified.

That quote is precisely why Moore cannot dispense justice. An atheist brought before him on any charges would have to be guilty. Moore is wrong.

It is interesting to note Alabama Attorney General William Pryor’s role as prosecutor of Moore. Prior is up for a federal judicial position and is one of the very few Bush nominees Democrats have blocked for his deep religious convictions and strong anti-abortion expressions. His role here supports his contention that he will always support the law, and not just “god’s law” like Moore. mjh

The prosecutor, Attorney General Bill Pryor, on Wednesday termed Moore’s defiance “utterly unrepentant behavior” that warranted removal from office. …

It was as a circuit court judge in Gadsden in the 1990s that Moore became known as the “Ten Commandments Judge” after he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for opening court sessions with prayer and for displaying a hand carved Ten Commandments display behind his bench.

He said Wednesday that when he ran for chief justice in 2000, his entire campaign was based on “restoring the moral foundation of law.” He added that it took him eight months to personally design the monument, which he helped move into the judicial building in the middle of the night on July 31, 2001.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: What Would Demos Do? by James Ridgeway

Of the nine candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, four supported the war: Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards, and Lieberman. Kucinich, Moseley Braun, Sharpton, and Dean were opposed. Clark went back and forth but said on several recent occasions that he opposes it.

Here’s a glimmer — and it’s only a glimmer, because most of them are so annoyingly vague — of the direction of their proposed policies:

Buster & His Friends 11/12/03

Mark Fiore has a talent for making fun of situations that deep-down are really tragic. Duhbya and Company are ramping up nuclear proliferation. mjh

Bush grows increasingly distant from women’s issues By Myriam Marquez, ORLANDO SENTINEL

Look at all that gloating testosterone. If ever there was an image that testifies to President Bush’s growing disconnect with women voters, it’s the bill-signing ceremony last week to ban a type of late-term abortion that Republicans have dubbed partial-birth abortion.

There was the president surrounded by smiling white men, all members of Congress. Not one woman in the bunch, even though this law will affect women with problem pregnancies first and foremost.

Where were women from Feminists for Life or other female-led groups that sought this ban? In their place – in the audience. …

The bill signing had Bush aide Karl Rove’s decidedly ham-handed imprints all over it. Rove is the darling of the religious right, and it looks as if the Bush administration has made a calculation to turn off independents and even some Democratic women who gave Bush their vote in 2000. Such a strategy seeks to capture about 4 million religious conservatives who stayed away in the last presidential election.

ABQjournal: Bush’s Abortion Ban Targets Pro-Choice
By Giovanna H. Rossi
Executive Director, NARAL Pro-Choice New Mexico

With the simple stroke of his pen last week, President Bush became the first president in American history to threaten doctors with jail terms for giving women sound medical advice.

The so-called ”Partial-Birth Abortion” Ban Act of 2003 signed Wednesday substitutes the ideology of anti-choice politicians for the judgment of medical professionals. In signing this deceptive legislation, President Bush has moved one step closer to ending a women’s freedom to choose.
Continue reading Eroding rights and freedoms →

F.B.I.’s Reach Into Records Is Set to Grow By ERIC LICHTBLAU, NYTimes

A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.’s power to demand financial records, without a judge’s approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday. …

Officials said the measure, which is tucked away in the intelligence community’s authorization bill for 2004, gives agents greater flexibility and speed in seeking to trace the financial assets of people suspected of terrorism and espionage. It mirrors a proposal that President Bush outlined in a speech two months ago to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases.

Critics said the measure would give the federal government greater power to pry into people’s private lives.

“This dramatically expands the government’s authority to get private business records,” said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get.”