The conservative case against Alberto Gonzales by Ken Herman, Cox News Service

The conservative case against Gonzales is based on his Texas Supreme Court record and comments he has made. The topics include a menu of conservative hot-button issues, including abortion, property rights, judicial activism and affirmative action.

On those topics, Gonzales has cast votes and said things that are cause for concern among some conservatives who have long waited for the day when one of their own could replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s most pivotal swing vote in many cases. …

In addition to Gonzales’ decisions while a Bush appointee on the Texas Supreme Court, Weyrich is troubled by something he heard from Gonzales at a meeting of conservatives.

A questioner asked Gonzales to choose between two legal concepts: “stare decisis” and original intent.

Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided,” and, to some, is a code word for judicial activism. In the legal world, “original intent” means looking to the framers’ original intent as the basis for rulings. It can be a code word similar to “strict constructionist.”

Weyrich said Gonzales came down on the side of stare decisis, fighting words for good conservatives.

“That’s very troubling to somebody who feels as I do that the Supreme Court has bent the Constitution way out of whack,” Weyrich said.

Some conservatives also find cause for concern in Gonzales’ handling of cases while on the Texas Supreme Court and his comment that he benefited from affirmative action.

Conservative concern about Gonzales’ feelings on abortion arise from a February 2000 Texas Supreme Court case in which Gonzales sided with a majority in granting latitude for a teen seeking judicial approval to bypass a state law, signed by then-Gov. Bush, requiring parental notification prior to an abortion. …

Opinions followed in June 2000, evidencing a nasty 6-3 split, with the majority – including Gonzales – ruling that the legislature meant for it to be fairly easy for a teen to get judicial approval for an abortion without parental notification.

Gonzales, in a concurring opinion, said narrow interpretation of the bypass provision “would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”

“While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the court’s decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view on the decisions of the legislature,” Gonzales wrote.

Then-Justice Priscilla Owen, now a Bush appointee on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote that the majority “manufactured reasons to justify its action.”

In 2001, as Gonzales was floated as a possible Supreme Court justice, Terence P. Jeffrey, editor of the conservative publication Human Events and former presidential campaign manager for Pat Buchanan, blasted Gonzales’ role in the abortion case.

“In the process of approving Baby Doe’s abortion, Gonzales demonstrated that he is a judicial activist of the worst sort,” Jeffrey wrote, adding that putting Gonzales on the Supreme Court “would be an uncharacteristic blunder [mjh: snicker] for Bush, and could permanently mar his presidency.”

Another Texas Supreme Court case has left some conservatives concerned about Gonzales’ loyalty to the concept of private property, a key tenet of modern conservatism in its battle against big government. …

In another 2000 case, Gonzales also was in the majority in siding with a governmental entity in a battle with private citizens. …

Overall, according to a report by Austin-based Texas Watch, a non-profit watchdog group, Gonzales’ votes on the state Supreme Court “positioned himself in the middle of the court and as a swing voter in an overall conservative court.”
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High court politics split right, Latinos By Dan Balz, Washington Post

[A] fierce battle has erupted over Gonzales, the former White House counsel and Texas Supreme Court justice. It pits the ideological priorities of social and religious conservatives, who think Gonzales is insufficiently opposed to abortion, against the aspiration of the Latino community to see the first Hispanic named to the high court.

Bush has skillfully balanced his appeals to both groups throughout his career as an elected official, but he faces the prospect of disappointing one side, with potentially serious repercussions for his party.

Nothing prevents Bush from trying to skirt the conflict by naming another Latino who would be more acceptable to the right than Gonzales, such as Emilio Garza, a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the uproar over Gonzales, longtime friend and confidant of the president, has heightened the political stakes of Bush’s decision and has alarmed some senior GOP strategists. …

Republicans offered differing views about what Bush’s choice may do to his coalition. Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group formed to support Bush judicial nominations, questioned whether a conservative nominee would alienate moderates. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “The worst thing the president could do for his party’s 2006 election hopes — and especially for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania — is to go with a nominee who is seen as less principled by conservatives. That would completely dry up the funding. That would completely dry up the enthusiasm.”
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Texas Hispanics drawing support for court seat
Factions line up for two Texas Hispanics
By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

[Federal appeals Judge Emilio] Garza, of San Antonio, tops the list of acceptable Hispanic nominees for right-wing activists in part because of what they view as his like-minded approach to legal issues involving religion and abortion. …

[L]egal experts have already combed through the written opinions and public statements of Gonzales and Garza. The consensus: Garza comes across as a hard-line conservative on issues like abortion and the intersection of government and religion. Gonzales appears more flexible on those issues, though still firmly in the conservative camp.

The Right’s Moment, Years in the Making

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an adviser to Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist, said that starting with the election of 1968, “the left discovered it could no longer hold the presidency, so it turned to Congress for protection.” After Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, “the left turned to the courts. This is all they have left.”

Possible Nominees to the Supreme Court
The Washington Post
Friday, July 1, 2005; 11:12 AM

Here is a list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court.

More Files Being Classified; Fewer Pages Being Declassified
From Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Mostly because of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government reports, the number of documents being classified in the U.S. jumped 10% last year, to 15.6 million.

The Information Security Oversight Office included the numbers in its latest annual report to the president.

Meanwhile, the number of pages that the government declassified continued to drop. Last year, 28.4 million pages were declassified.

That was a drop of 34% from the previous year.

The increase in the number of documents being classified has raised concerns that the government is being too secretive.

The report notes that over-classification of documents has been an issue for decades.

“It cannot be said conclusively from this report’s data that recent increases in the number of classification decisions were due substantially to the phenomenon of over-classification,” the Information Security Oversight Office report says.

Before anyone says something about the world changing on 9-11, please note that one of the first executive orders Bush made sealed presidential papers for years longer than before. One of the first meetings held in the White House was on energy policy. The White House went to court to keep the list of attendees secret. These guys are not secretive for patriotic reasons. They learned a lot from Dick Nixon and Ronnie Raygun. mjh

Tortured democracy by Sharon Kayne

Torturing terror suspects has even been justified by pointing out that these are people who would do the same to us. Therein lies the greatest tragedy. When we treat terrorists as they treat us, we become terrorists ourselves.

We claim to be fighting a war on terror, but what we’re really fighting is a war of fear. We have allowed the Sept. 11 hijackers to pull us down to their level. We’ve allowed ourselves to be led astray, to cast off our humanity, our lofty ideals — our very souls — by the fear that such men could attack us again. This fear allows us to rationalize treating others in ways we cannot imagine being treated ourselves. It allows us to rationalize turning our backs on the very doctrines that make this country great.

Our government has not only committed war crimes in our name and with our money, but with our tacit consent as well. Where is our outrage? Our moral indignation? Perhaps, as a country, we lost it just as Sen. Durbin did — when we lost our nerve. When we forfeit our duty to stand up and speak out, we forfeit our right to live free ourselves. This is what we should truly fear.

ZNet |Iraq | Covering up Napalm in Iraq by Mike Whitney

Two weeks ago the UK Independent ran an article which confirmed that the US had “lied to Britain over the use of napalm in Iraq”. (6-17-05) Since then, not one American newspaper or TV station has picked up the story even though the Pentagon has verified the claims. This is the extent to which the American “free press” is yoked to the center of power in Washington. …

“Despite persistent rumors of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm” the Pentagon insisted that “US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.” (UK Independent)

The Pentagon lied.

Defense Minister, Adam Ingram, admitted that the US had misled the British high-command about the use of napalm, but he would not comment on the extent of the cover up. The use of firebombs puts the US in breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons (CCW) and is a violation the Geneva Protocol against the use of white phosphorous, “since its use causes indiscriminate and extreme injuries especially when deployed in an urban area.”
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The New Napalm in Iraq (News) Barb Jacobs

On its website, the US State Department denies reports that napalm-like weapons were used in Fallujah, but confirms that “Mark-77 firebombs … were used against enemy positions in 2003,” and maintains that it has not used any illegal weapons in Iraq.

The Independent says the US has sidestepped the UN Convention on Certain Chemical Weapons, which banned the use of incendiary weapons against civilians, by claiming the firebombs were used only against military targets. Then again, the US didn’t really have to get around it, as it’s not a party to the convention anyway.
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US misled UK over Iraq fire bombs

US Marines dropped 30 Mark 77 fire bombs between March 31 and April 2 2003 “against military targets away from civilian areas”. In a letter to Michael Ancram, shadow defence secretary, Mr Reid also says: “The MK77 does not have the same composition as napalm, although it has similar destructive characteristics.”

He adds the Pentagon had also told the government that “owing to the limited accuracy of the MK77, it is not generally used in urban terrain or in areas where civilians are congregated”. Mr Reid points out Britain is bound by convention not to use incendiary weapons against military targets located within concentrations of civilians.

He continues: “US policy in relation to international conventions is a matter for the US government, but all of our allies are aware of their obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Mr Ancram said the issue raised questions “about the quality of our communications with our US allies”, and has asked Mr Reid to explain. …

When reports surfaced, the Pentagon separated “napalm” from “firebombs”. According to GlobalSecurity.org, MK77s “function identical to earlier MK77 napalm weapons” using kerosene rather than benzene.

Counterbias: More Democratic Treason by Ted Baiamonte, R E P U B L I C A N V I E W

So why do liberals hate America? The answer is simple: America, since the Revolution, has been mostly about freedom from government and therefore about freedom from Democrats. Throughout American History the Democrats have always been for less and less freedom from government despite the hundred million or so dead bodies government has caused during that period. One has to consider that their philosophical illegitimacy is what makes their loyalty so questionable and their style so nasty and seemingly treasonous. They want to belong here but the facts always paint them as anti-American. In a way you have to feel sorry for the painful position in which they find themselves, but you also have to wonder why it is that they seem to have an absolute inability to learn to think?

Let’s think about Baiamonte’s observations. Democrats/liberals love government and yet are at the same time disloyal and treasonous (treason is a betrayal of government). Mr Baiamonte loves freedom from government, and is a Republican, the party that gave us the USA Patriot Act.

Above all, ask yourself this Fourth of July what makes liberals anti-American? That we speak freely. Welcome to 1984. mjh

PS: I look forward to responses from red-blooded Republicans denouncing the evil lies of Baiamonte — lies designed to vilify and quash any dissent. I won’t be holding my breath.

Google Search: Ted Baiamonte

Time to disclose sources in U.S. press freedom case By Claudia Parsons

Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, a career diplomat engaged by the Bush administration to investigate whether Iraq had sought nuclear weapons, accused the White House of being responsible for the leak. He said officials did so because Wilson had publicly disputed a claim by President Bush about Iraq’s attempts to secure such weapons.

Interviewed by CNN this week, Novak declined to say whether he had cooperated with investigators in the case.

William Safire wrote in The New York Times this week that Novak, known for writing opinion columns favorable to the Bush administration, owed fellow journalists an explanation for how his sources “managed to get the prosecutor off his back.”

The key issue is that toady Novak helped someone in the Bush administration commit a federal crime. And, yet, other reporters are being prosecuted, not him. Why not? Has he spilled the beans in secret (cowardly for a journalist) or has he been given special treatment for his loyalty to Duhbya? mjh