Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Ted Kennedy's thoughts on a Stanford Frat boy.
"Justice Rehnquist is outside the mainstream of American constitutional law and American values and he does not deserve to be chief justice of the United States," Kennedy told a packed hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee" (1986).
Demos (and DINOs) who love Judicial Review might recall that Rehnquist (and the SCOTUS majority) opposed an additional recount in Bush/Gore 2000. Rehnquist also wrote the opinion in favor of California's unconstitutional Three Strikes Bill. Although Rehnquist was known as a rightist and Nixonian even in '86 (and possible racist), he was confirmed by the Senate, 65-33, including 16 democrats (and Scalia was approved by the entire Senate, 98-0--including all Democrats, even "liberals" such as Kennedy, Gore, Hart, Dodd, Biden, and Leahy)
Bugliosi on Rehnquist
More on Rehnquist:
""""When the Founding Fathers were framing the Constitution, they considered giving the Senate the power to appoint judges. Instead, a compromise was struck: the President would make the choices with the "advice and consent" of the Senate. Throughout the 19th century, this was taken to mean that the Senate could balk on ideological grounds, and indeed, the Senate refused to confirm some 20 Supreme Court nominations. But in the past 50 years, the only serious challenges (such as the rejection of Nixon Appointees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell) have occurred when political objections were linked to questions of fitness and competence. Some liberals feel that it is time for the Senate to reassert < its political prerogatives. In that case, Scalia and Rehnquist make inviting targets. "My own view is that the Senate's role is to be a partner in the appointment process and examine the views of the nominees, at least when the President is so self-consciously trying to shape the court," asserts Yale Law School Professor Paul Gewirtz. Democrat Alan Cranston of California, who voted against Rehnquist's confirmation as a Justice in 1971, last week asked, "Can a man who has an extreme right-wing ideology manage the court in a fair and balanced way?"""""
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Custom Search
7 comments:
Uh oh, BonBon the Subluxanator "misses" people he never knew and knows nothing about.
Btw, Subluxanator (and McBabooshka), be assured Sen. Kennedy--never a pal of WASPS, or, dare we say, ZionCo--had a Padre at his side when he passed, who knew Aquinas's Summa backwards and forwards.
Maybe I can have my Demo pals pull up your vote for Reagan, Subluxanator. Reagan--the guy who put in Rehnquist and Scalia, and more or less created the modern jackbooted SCOTUS.
I thought Reinquist was a good judge, someone who tried to apply the framers' intent.
Kennedy said some strange things, mostly while he was drunk, no?
Au contraire. Rehnquist routinely blessed religious fundamentalism, corporations, the GOP, and the US Military. He was not respectful of the First Amendment, or of precedent. If you approve of Nixon and Reagan, yes, Rehnquist was your type of guy.
Rehnquist was a complete hawk on 'Nam, a pal of J-Edgar. Even Goldwater had some words for him. I don't care for Goldwater either, but at times he had a sort of Ayn Rand like distrust of the military (even a GOP led military). Sad-- a bizarre creature like Rand seems like the voice of Reason between the hysteria cases of right and left.
Ted Kennedy's opposition to Rehnquist impressed me somewhat (though TK had no problem blessing Scalia, as did the rest of the "Dems"). Fightin' Irish sort of thing. That said, TK was a fairly corrupt and ineffectual bureaucrat--then most politicians are. His health care work--at least in favor of "public option" is OK, but fairly standard issue Big Govt liberalism.
Most Americans don't know the real truth on the Kennedy bros (like that they were rightists, until about '65, when RFK--one time supporter of McCarthy-- moves a bit towards labor, civil rights etc). OK, they weren't Nixons, but hardly the model of progressive politics that the naive left take them to be.
Kennedy's opinion that health care is a right the framers would no doubt disagree. Overall, his theories, if he had any, are manifestly erroneous.
That chameleon, like a true catholic, eventually approved of partial birth abortion. What happened with Rowe?
That's right, you're not Rowe. Scuzi.
Jefferson at times supported liberal programs. He approved of estate taxes, for instance, and controls on finance. I can't believe Jeff. would approve of the hysterical anti-abortion people, given his secularism, either.
And Ben Franklin founded the Post Office, didn't he? And he contributed to the abolitionists of the time. Franklin was probably the most "liberal" of the framers.
Kennedy opposed abortion initially from what I read. Later, he sort of gave some half-hearted support for Roe vs Wade. He didn't seem gung-ho pro-choice-.
I support first-trimester, though agree there are issues with late-term or partial birth, but in emergency the bio-mom should have the right to terminate.
Rowe did almost make me laugh via his quote of Sam Kinison: "Ted Kennedy was the Shemp of the Kennedys." Heh heh.
Actually, Jefferson was pro-life as the other framers were. It's only natural given the biblical education they received. I have the quote on Jefferson, have been meaning to get to it and write a post.
Many humans receive a biblical education and then become secularist or agnostic, even atheist, or join other faiths.
You forget that most of the Framers--even supposed conservatives like Adams-- were sympathetic to the French republicans--men like Voltaire, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Rousseau. Not fundamentalists. There were some fundies (like the southern boys and anti-Federalists), but the leaders were not. They weren't moral majority types.
For that matter, it's rather difficult to make those sorts of generalizations--TJ would have thought this or that, or sided with X or Y etc. And really, as much as I respect Jefferson--or his writing at least--he's no model of human perfection. Like his mentor Locke, he scores pretty high on the Hypocrisy-o-Meter.
Post a Comment