It's really a form attack sheet. All they have to do is place your name in the blank space. These tactics, I think, are unfair and sometimes have been dishonest.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL) has been the point man in the GOP assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. He can hardly criticize everything that he has been doing to this point.
Here are some other things Sessions won't be talking about today:
Frankly -- but activism by a growing number of judges threatens our judiciary. And frankly, that's what I'm hearing, as I talk to my constituents and hear from the American people.
Activism is when a judge allows his personal views on a policy issue to infect his judgment. Activist rulings not based on statutes or the Constitution, but reflect whatever a judge may think is decent or public policy.
This should not be. But even some members of our body have encouraged this thinking. Indeed, Judge Roberts, one senator in recent weeks, demanded to know whose side you're on before he voted. His statement provides a direct glance, I think, into the philosophy of activism.
When we have an activist judiciary, the personal views of a judge become everything. Who the judge is and whose side the judge is on, not the law and the facts, will determine the outcome of a case.
Since judges hold their offices for as long as they live or choose to serve and are unaccountable to the citizenry, activist rulings strike at the heart of democracy. Five members of the court may effectively become a continuing constitutional convention on important questions such as taking of private property, the definition of marriage, the pledge of allegiance or a moment of silence before a school day.
You see, Sessions is a fan of right wing judicial activism. He won't be criticzing "judicial activism" today. As E.J. Dionne wrote:
This week's hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court represent the opening skirmish in a long-term struggle to challenge the escalating activism of an increasingly conservative judiciary.
. . . Her restrained record as a lower-court judge has made it impossible to cast her credibly as a liberal judicial activist. "They haven't laid a glove on her," said Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), her leading Senate supporter.
Yet none of this diminishes the importance of the Senate drama that opens today, because the argument that began 40 years ago over the political and philosophical direction of the judiciary has reached a critical moment. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, conservatives have finally established a majority on the court that is beginning to work its will.
. . . If you wonder what judicial activism looks like, consider one of the court's final moves in its spring term. . . . Rather than decide the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable exercise of judicial overreach. It postponed its decision, called for new briefs and scheduled a hearing this September on the broader question of whether corporations should be allowed to spend money to elect or defeat particular candidates.
. . . What the court was saying was that it wanted to revisit a 19-year-old precedent that barred such corporate interference in the electoral process. That 1990 ruling upheld what has been the law of the land since 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act banned independent expenditures by both corporations and labor unions.
. . . So when conservatives try to paint Sotomayor as some sort of radical, consider that the real radicals are those who now hold a majority on the Supreme Court. In this battle, it is she, not her critics, who represents moderation and judicial restraint.
UPDATE: Here comes Sessions, promising "fairness." Says the hearings are criticial for 4 reasons: (1) the power of the Supreme Court; (2) his schpiel about "activism", but quite muted; etc, etc.
Now he attacks "empathy" and President Obama. "Liberal activist judges." Here it comes. Will Democrats respond? Watch Sheldon Whitehouse. He may be the designated rebutter of this nonsense.
UPDATE - Sessions plays the Angry White Southern Male to a tee - even attacks Sotomayor for being Puerto Rican - his attack on the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund was blatant bigotry.
He lived up to all my expectations.
Speaking for me only
