(washingtonpost.com)

Which president submitted the first Supreme Court justice nomination to be filibustered by the Senate?

In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his plans to retire before the end of Lyndon Johnson’s administration, to ensure that Richard Nixon would not be able to appoint Warren’s successor if Nixon won the November election. Johnson nominated Associate Justice Abe Fortas to the position in the hopes that the liberal judge could garner enough votes for a confirmation. However, a filibuster resulted and when the Senate failed to invoke cloture in October, Johnson withdrew the nomination.

The first filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee was by REPUBLICANS stalling to let a conservative Republican President appoint the next Justice. Remind them of this when they sputter and fume in the next couple of years. mjh

[filibuster: From Spanish filibustero, freebooter, from French flibustier, from Dutch vrijbuiter, pirate. from vrijbuit, plunder : vrij, free; see pr- in Indo-European Roots + buit, booty (from Middle Dutch bte, of Middle Low German origin).]

Centrist Democrat a Test of GOP Hold By Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writer

As in recent elections, Democrats anxiously ponder the Senate’s political math, which does not favor them. The more Senate races tend to reflect presidential outcomes, the stronger it makes the GOP in the Senate. For example, Bush won 31 states last year. If Republicans hold all the Senate seats from those states, they will command the chamber 62 to 38, even if they lose their eight members from states that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry won last November.

Last fall, Republicans won all five southern seats from which Democrats retired, and Democrats are desperate to reelect their incumbents in tough states next year. Topping the GOP’s target list are Nelson and Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, where Bush took 63 percent of the vote last fall, only slightly lower than his 66 percent majority in Nebraska. …

Republicans say they have outside chances of ousting Democratic Sens. Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.) and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) if they recruit the right challengers. Likewise, Democrats say they see vulnerability in Republican Sens. Mike DeWine (Ohio), Conrad Burns (Mont.) and James M. Talent (Mo.).

Faced by real dangers, the U.S. defense establishment loses itself in fantasy By William Pfaff

[T]he Defense Department, which has been unable to supply troops with simple body and vehicle armor in adequate quantities, is preoccupied with new nuclear weapons and space wars.

It wants vast new expenditures on projects with no relevance to present realities. The Pentagon and the Energy Department ask for new and “more usable” nuclear weapons, including earth-penetrating “bunker-busters.” The need is highly debatable and the political costs of developing new nuclear weapons enormous.

The Air Force makes it known that it wants a national security directive to “establish and maintain space superiority,” a project on which it seems already to have spent billions, and on which it wants to spend more, up to an estimated trillion dollars (and beyond, as experience of such estimates overwhelmingly suggest).

Quite beyond the project’s feasibility, cost, foreign policy implications, and likelihood to inspire countermeasures by other nations, it is another demand for a military capability irrelevant to the present and realistically foreseeable future security needs of the country.

On May 9, a lost civilian light plane entering Washington airspace produced a disgracefully panicked evacuation of Congress, the White House, and most of the rest of official Washington. We are urged to control outer space, but an errant light plane terrorizes Washington. The one is costly fantasy. The other is reality. …

This occurs at the same time American military forces still are unable to pacify Iraq or Afghanistan, agricultural societies of less than 25 million people each, both largely in ruins. The billions Washington already has spent on reconstruction have yet to produce reliable electric power, clean water or a functioning sewer system in Baghdad itself.

The creation of an official capability for reconstructing 25 countries, at a time when anonymous senior army officers are quoted as saying that the United States could be defeated in Iraq, is the most egregious Washington example of a pathological disconnection from reality.

However, it is a logical bureaucratic response to the announced administration intention to overturn tyrants and spread liberty throughout the world. It serves also as its reductio ad absurdum. …

One is inclined to dismiss all this as product of institutional delusion or bureaucratic make-work. However, it responds to the expressed interests of the president, and as one of his associates said after his re-election, “we make reality.” This was in response to a question about “realism.”

The remark unknowingly echoed one of Hannah Arendt’s acute observations about totalitarianism. One of the most significant aspects of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century was that they “made reality” out of fictions.

Bush’s Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of “political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees. …

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides. …

Through more than four years in the White House, the signature of Bush’s leadership has been that he does not panic in the face of bad poll numbers. Yet many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbyist corridor of K Street worry about a season of drift and complain that the White House has not listened to their concerns. …

“There is a growing sense of frustration with the president and the White House, quite frankly,” said an influential Republican member of Congress. “The term I hear most often is ‘tin ear,’ ” especially when it comes to pushing Social Security so aggressively at a time when the public is worried more about jobs and gasoline prices. “We could not have a worse message at a worse time.” …

In the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken last month, 47 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s performance, tying the lowest marks he ever received in that survey, back in mid-2004, when Democrats were airing tens of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign attack ads.

Similarly, just 31 percent approved of his handling of Social Security, an all-time low in the Post-ABC poll, while only 40 percent gave him good marks for his stewardship of the economy and 42 percent for his management of Iraq, both ratings close to the lowest ever recorded in those areas. Other surveys have recorded similar findings, with Bush’s approval rating as low as 43 percent.

American Civil Liberties Union:

For more than a decade, numerous members of Congress have tried to amend the U.S. Constitution to give the government the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. We have fought back hard with coalitions of veterans, religious leaders and other Americans who believe that such a constitutional amendment would undermine the very principles for which the American flag stands.

Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has strongly opposed the proposed amendment. “The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous,” he said. “I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.”

[Lifted from Whiskey Bar: Rush to Judgment, where there are still more. Well done, Billmon.]

We have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods, which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.

Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh TV Show
October 5, 1995

I warned you about this ever-broadening interpretation of the so-called right to privacy. It’s not a ‘right’ specifically enumerated in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh.com
August 22nd, 2003

Let’s be clear about something, folks. All these so-called human rights groups like People for the American Way and so forth, ACLU, all these Democrats, they claim to be standing up for human dignity and human rights. Well, like hell they are.

Rush Limbaugh
Truth Detector
January 5, 2005

Limbaugh has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation and argues that the case threatens the privacy rights of all Floridians — a point which has drawn the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Associated Press
Florida Supreme Court refuses
to hear Rush Limbaugh appeal
April 28, 2005

Breaking the Rules to Destroy Our Courts
Remarks as prepared by former Vice President Al Gore

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist # 78, wrote that the “independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill-humors which the arts of designing men… have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community.”

When James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights, he explained that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves… the guardians of [these] rights, … an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislature or executive.” …

[T]he Republican leader of the House of Representatives responded to rulings in the Terri Schiavo case, by saying ominously: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to pay for their behavior.”

When the outrage following this comment worsened Rep. DeLay’s problems during the House Ethics scandal, he claimed that his words had been chosen badly, but in the next breath, he issued new threats against the same courts: “We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse.”

In previous remarks on the subject, DeLay has said, “Judges need to be intimidated,” adding that if they don’t behave, “we’re going to go after them in a big way.”

Moreover, a whole host of prominent Republicans have been making similar threats on a regular basis.

A Republican Congressman from Iowa added: “When their budget starts to dry up, we’ll get their attention. If we’re going to preserve the Constitution, we must get them in line.”

A Republican Senator from Texas directly connected the “spate of courthouse violence lately” to his view that unpopular decisions might be the explanation. “I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions, yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds and builds to the point where some people engage in violence.”

One of the best-known conservative political commentators has openly recommended that “liberals should be physically intimidated.”

The spokesman for the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said: “There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary.” Misunderstanding?

The Chief of Staff for another Republican senator called for “mass impeachment” by using the bizarre right-wing theory that the president can declare that any judge is no longer exhibiting “good behavior,” adding that, “then the judge’s term has simply come to an end. The President gives them a call and says: ‘Clean out your desk. The Capitol police will be in to help you find your way home.'”

The elected and appointed Republican officials who made these dangerous statements are reflecting an even more broadly-held belief system of grassroots extremist organizations that have made the destruction of judicial independence the centerpiece of their political agenda.

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, who hosted a speech by the Senate Majority Leader last Sunday, has said, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench.” Explaining that during his meeting with Republican leaders, the leaders discussed stripping funding from certain courts, Perkins said, “What they’re thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and recreating them the next day, but also de-funding them.” Congress could use its appropriations authority to just “take away the bench, all of its staff, and he’s just sitting out there with nothing to do.”

Another influential leader of one of these groups, James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, focused his anger on the 9th circuit court of appeals: “Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

Edwin Vieira (at the “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference) said his “bottom line” for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Stalin: “He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem.'”

Through their words and threats, these Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges may well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of Congressional retribution, or worse.

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God’s will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against “people of faith.” How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, “A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction.”