For years a major charge against Bush has been his packing of the Federal courts with conservative GOP flunkies and ideological robots. Liberal blogs were covering this long before newspapers thought there was anything the least bit hinky about Bush's picks despite their records of racism, political hackery, and statements by nearly all of them that the Constitution was, you know, just a piece of paper. An odd stance for a Federal judicial nominee whose job it will be to interpret that "piece of paper" you might think, but few newspaper editors thought that issue was worth covering. During Bush's whole first term, about the only good thing the Dems did was keep Bush from packing the benches with the worst of his neocon hacks, a valiant and fairly successful effort that was all but ignored by the nation's media.
Well, now that it's way too late to matter the Washington Post has finally looked around and noticed that, gee, there are a lot of Bush appointees on our Federal courts who ignore the law and replace it with Republican dogma just to embarrass Democrats. Jeffrey Smith writes that GOP judges seem to go out of their way to reverse decisions made by Democratic judges on appellate courts.
[C]riminal defendants, including some on death row, remain in federal prisons for the same reason: After initial appellate verdicts that their convictions or sentences were unjust, the last word came from Bush's judicial picks on the 6th Circuit. Acting in cooperation with other Republican appointees on the court, they have repeatedly organized full-court rehearings to overturn rulings by panels dominated by Democratic appointees.
Although the impact of Bush's judicial appointments is most often noticed at the Supreme Court, it has played out much more frequently and more importantly here and in the nation's 12 other appellate courts, where his appointees and their liberal counterparts are waging often-bitter ideological battles. After Bush's eight years in office, Republican-appointed majorities firmly control the outcomes in 10 of these courts, compared with seven after President Bill Clinton's tenure. They also now share equal representation with Democratic appointees on two additional courts.
(emphasis added)
In a companion opinion piece, Smith more or less calls it like it is - and has been for a while - discovering in the process that Bush is *gasp*shock* a liar.
President Bush said in 2001 that he would not impose an ideological litmus test for his appointees. He said he would demand only their understanding that "the role of a judge is to interpret the law, not to legislate from the bench." But scholars say that despite these protestations, there has been a discernible pattern in both the backgrounds and the rulings of the judges Bush picked.
Go figure. Who could have predicted that? And guess what kind of lawyers they were? Go on. Guess.
As a result of Bush's 311 appointments to federal district courts and the appellate bench, judges across the country are more male, more white and slightly more Hispanic than those in place at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. A third of the nominees during Bush's first term had "a history of working as lawyers and lobbyists on behalf of the oil, gas and energy industries," according to a study by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Golly whiz. What a surprise. Who could have predicted that?
Well, practically anybody who didn't work on the Post or the NYT or in teevee news, etc. IOW, anybody who wasn't slavering at Bush's feet, lapping up his swill and pretending it was egg creme. Sometimes late isn't better than never. Sometime late is the same as never.
And stupid is stupid no matter who it is.
Meanwhile Obama has a golden opportunity waiting to reverse all Bush's ideological claptrap appointments and return the Federal bench to doing, you know, like, law.
The change will be most striking on the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, long a conservative bastion and an influential voice on national security cases, where four vacancies will lead to a clear Democratic majority. Democrats are expected to soon gain a narrower plurality on the New York-based 2nd Circuit, vital for business and terrorism cases, a more even split on the influential D.C. appeals court and control of the 3rd Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Although Republican control will probably persist on a majority of appellate courts for at least several years, some experts say that by the end of Obama's term, he and the Democratic Congress will flip the 56 percent majority Republican nominees now exert over those highly influential bodies.
"Obama has a huge opportunity," said Arthur Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who is an authority on federal courts. "In a very short time, significant segments of the appellate courts, which are the final authority in all but a tiny handful of cases, will be dominated by Democratic nominees."
Let's hope he makes the most of it by returning the rule of law to our country, where it's been a bad joke or a travesty for way too long.
That's assuming, of course, the Democrats have the spine to keep the Pubs from blocking every appointment of any judge to the left of Roy Bean. Not something that one can consider automatic.
Comments