The Lynch Mob of Gatherer's

[bfp]

By: Thomas Sowell


The nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court to become a federal Court of Appeals judge has brought out vicious special interest groups with their long knives — and a long record of smears and character-assassination, going back to the campaign of wholesale misrepresentations that defeated the nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987.

Leading the charge against Justice Brown, as it did against Judge Bork 16 years ago, is the grossly misnamed organization "People for the American Way." This is a far-left group with only contempt for American traditions and culture. They want judges who will dismantle the Constitution of the United States for the sake of current left-wing fashions like racial quotas and unlimited abortions.

They obviously think that the pious words in their name will conceal the brutal realities of what they are and what they do.
Judges who believe that their job is to uphold the Constitution, instead of replacing it with left-wing social engineering, are anathema to "People for the American Way." That they are spearheading the character assassination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown is completely predictable.

Because Justice Brown is black and conservative, she is being denounced as "another Clarence Thomas." Like Clarence Thomas, she is also being denounced as "unqualified" by people who have never read a word she wrote. Anyone who does read Justice Brown's opinions will discover a wealth of knowledge, a command of logic and an unflinching honesty about the law and about some efforts of her colleagues to compromise legal principles.

"Error," Justice Brown said in one dissent, "does not improve with repetition. The third time is not the charm." In another dissent, this time in a child-custody case, Justice Brown said: "Today's decision maximizes the self-interest and personal convenience of parents, but poorly serves the state's children who deserve as much stability and security as legal process can provide."

What the left-wing can never forgive her for is upholding the right of California voters to ban racial quotas. More than four and a half million Californians voted for Proposition 209, which outlawed group preferences and quotas. But liberals wanted the state Supreme Court to over-rule the voters. Janice Rogers Brown refused and instead wrote the majority opinion upholding the voters' right to make the laws under which they live.

In the country at large, the real issue behind all the sound and fury is that special interest groups like "People for the American Way" want judges to impose items in the left-wing agenda that cannot be imposed through the democratic process.

Nowhere in this country are racial quotas likely to get voter support. But such quotas exist because elected officials do not have to risk their careers by voting for quotas because they can leave that to judges.

That includes not only liberal judges but also weak-kneed "conservative" judges like Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, who on issue after issue tend to split the difference and go along to get along.

What really scares the left about Janice Rogers Brown is that she has guts as well as brains. They haven't been able to get her to weaken or to waver. Character assassination is all that the left has left.

Look to see Justice Brown portrayed as evil incarnate and a threat to the republic. Already the character assassins are throwing around words like "extremist" and a conservative "activist." The truth has not cramped their style in the past and is unlikely to do so during the current confirmation hearings.

The real question is whether the administration that nominated Justice Brown will mount a serious counter-attack or leave her out there, twisting in the wind, the way it did with Miguel Estrada and its other judicial nominees.

Have you seen anything by anybody, anywhere, defending Janice Rogers Brown? The attackers have been mobilizing for months but there is very little sign that those who nominated Justice Brown have made any timely efforts to mobilize counter forces

[Adam D]

She is a conservative extremist. Just because she's black does not exclude her from being one.

[bfp]

Originally posted by Adam D
She is a conservative extremist. Just because she's black does not exclude her from being one.

and ruth ginsberg isnt?

[bfp]

Ruth Bader-Ginsberg is a black, conservative extremist??

a white, liberal fascist extremist

[Adam D]

Originally posted by bfp
a white, liberal fascist extremist

3:4 Bush ratio

[bfp]

The preservation of a viable constitutional government is not a task for wimps." So said California's state Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. If there is any doubt about that, those doubts are sure to be erased during Justice Brown's confirmation hearings to become a member of the federal Court of Appeals in Washington.

The lynch mob atmosphere that has prevailed during confirmation hearings for judges who believe in upholding the Constitution is already in evidence among the special interest groups who are more concerned with their own political agendas than with anything as abstract as the rule of law.

Justice Brown is just the opposite. Social agendas are not her business as a judge and the integrity of the law is. "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable," she wrote in one of her opinions, where she dissented from a majority decision that she found "a little endearing." She added: "There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."

Justice Brown has repudiated the notion of judges acting as if they were, in her words, "philosopher kings." Yet such expansive conceptions of the role of judges is what has enabled courts to enact so much of the liberal agenda over the past two generations, when the voting public would never have stood for such things as racial quotas or the creation of new "rights" for criminals out of thin air, if this had been done by elected officials.
Liberal-left activist groups with pretty names like the People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People all understand that much of what they want cannot be enacted into law by legislators who have to face the voters at the next election. It can only be enacted into law from the judicial bench by judges with lifetime jobs, pretending to "interpret" the law when in fact they are creating law.

Judges who oppose having courts engaging in social engineering are likely to find their own nominations opposed by liberal special interest groups, whether their names are Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas or Janice Rogers Brown. And, since the real reasons for opposition to such judges cannot be admitted publicly, phony reasons have to be concocted - and repeated endlessly through the media until they become "well-known facts."

With Judge Bork, one of the claims was that he was against civil rights for minorities. Yet the people who made that charge could not find a single example where someone from a minority had ever lost a civil rights case in Bork's court.

Robert Bork had been on the same side as the NAACP in numerous cases when he was Solicitor General. But the facts did not matter. Stopping Judge Bork from being on the Supreme Court did.

Charges against Clarence Thomas were even dirtier - and just as unsubstantiated. The same Congressional critics who demanded that the Senate "get to the bottom of this" in response to sexual charges refused to vote for a subpoena that could have brought out facts about the credibility of the witness who made the charges.

Getting to the bottom of this was the last thing they wanted. They wanted to keep Judge Thomas off the Supreme Court. That they failed was due primarily to his own defiant defense and to the women who had once worked for him who came to testify for him.

The character assassins have perfected their art over the years - the dramatic demonstrations staged for the media, the damning charges, the strident rhetoric, the sly innuendo. The question is whether the administration that nominates people for judicial appointments is similarly skilled and similarly dedicated to defending them in the arena of public opinion.

The Reagan administration was completely blindsided by the attack on Judge Bork and never managed to get an effective response off the ground. Clarence Thomas and his former employees saved his nomination without much help from the administration that nominated him.

Is there any game plan in the White House or the Justice Department to get the truth out about Justice Janice Rogers Brown or will the lies have a field day? If there is a plan, there is still no sign of it at this eleventh hour

was there to be discussion on Justice Brown or just name calling?

here is some commentary on Justice Brown

from a left leaning source: http://www.talkleft.com/archives/003427.html

from a right leaning source:
http://www.intellectualconservative....ticle2772.html

very brief CV:
http://www.appellatelaw.com/ca/judges/janicebrown.htm

another:
http://www.appellatelaw.com/ca/judges/janicebrown.htm


she appears to be pro-life, anti-crime, pro-death penalty, pro-second amendment, anti-affirmative action. Feel free to agree or disagree with the value of those positions - but - as near as I can tell those points accurately represent her legal position.

so now - why should she not be considered for elevation?

[bfp]

my point is that you're a race traitor if you're black and belong to the republican party. period. if a black woman becomes judge of the supreme court with an R after her name, she is a slave, in the eyes of the democratic base of course. if thats not racist, i do not know what is.

example: there is a cartoon flooding newspapers as of late showing her in a clown suit, with clarence thomas, colin powell, and condi rice golf clapping, welcoming her to the supreme court.

[Adam D]

Originally posted by xiannaix
here is some commentary on Justice Brown

from a left leaning source: http://www.talkleft.com/archives/003427.html

from a right leaning source:
http://www.intellectualconservative....ticle2772.html

very brief CV:
http://www.appellatelaw.com/ca/judges/janicebrown.htm

another:
http://www.appellatelaw.com/ca/judges/janicebrown.htm


she appears to be pro-life, anti-crime, pro-death penalty, pro-second amendment, anti-affirmative action. Feel free to agree or disagree with the value of those positions - but - as near as I can tell those points accurately represent her legal position.

so now - why should she not be considered for elevation?

She's more than welcome to be considered for appointment. People are welcome to disagree with the idea of her appointment.

Originally posted by Adam D
She's more than welcome to be considered for appointment. People are welcome to disagree with the idea of her appointment.

Might you explain why you view her as a "consevative extremist" - and actually while you're at it - could you define "conservative exremist?"

[bfp]

here is the offensive cartoon of janice rogers brown

Cartoon

[Adam D]

Originally posted by xiannaix
Might you explain why you view her as a "consevative extremist" - and actually while you're at it - could you define "conservative exremist?"

Calling somebody an extremist is a matter of perspective, I suppose. I think what qualifies somebody as an extremist is someone who takes a hardline, fundamental approach to their views. As far as her views, I'd have to do some research to illustrate what I think about her, but I don't have time at the moment because I have to be in class in a few minutes.

Originally posted by Adam D
Calling somebody an extremist is a matter of perspective, I suppose. I think what qualifies somebody as an extremist is someone who takes a hardline, fundamental approach to their views. As far as her views, I'd have to do some research to illustrate what I think about her, but I don't have time at the moment because I have to be in class in a few minutes.

Hardline and fundamental approach to which issues? Is this a good or a bad thing? I certainly would want a Justice who took this approach in defending say my right to free speach or protection from unlawul search or seizure.

Curious about your opinion regarding Brown though Adam -

[bfp]

Senator Charles Schumer went on television on October 22nd to announce that he was prepared to urge his fellow Democrats to filibuster, in order to prevent a Senate vote on the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to become a federal judge on the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.


In other words, Senator Schumer is prepared to deny other Senators the right to vote yes or no on Justice Brown. He has turned the Senate's Constitutional duty to "advise and consent" on judicial nominees into the Senate minority's ability to delay and obstruct.

Such extremist tactics are especially ironic from those who have tried to portray Justice Brown as an "extremist" right-winger who would be dangerous on the federal bench. The fact that Justice Brown received a 76 percent vote of approval from California voters in an election to confirm her appointment to the state Supreme Court hardly fits the label that Senator Schumer and other liberal Democrats are trying to pin on her.

California voters are hardly known for being on the far right. Yet they gave Janice Rogers Brown the highest vote of approval among the four justices on the same ballot.

The truth carries little weight -- if any -- in political efforts to block judicial nominees. What matters is whether enough special interest groups are determined to block that person.

Many liberal-left organizations are determined to prevent Janice Rogers Brown from becoming a member of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in part because they are alarmed that she might move on up from there to the U.S. Supreme Court. If a few lies are all it takes to prevent that, they are more than willing to lie.

Why this bitter determination to prevent Justice Brown's nomination from even being voted on?

One reason is that Justice Brown's televised confirmation hearings showed her to be a very thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate black woman with a personality that would appeal to many of those watching her on C-SPAN. It could be hard for some Senators to go against public opinion and vote against her.





To people like shameless Schumer, the obvious answer is to prevent any vote at all.

Although Justice Brown has had more than 700 cases during her nine years as an appellate judge in California, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee kept emphasizing things she had said in various speeches to college students and others, while her supporters kept trying to keep the focus on what she did in her day job as a judge.

Liberal emphasis on judges' personal opinions on political issues helps create the impression that judges are deciding the social merits or demerits of policies like affirmative action, abortion, gun control and the like.

Liberal judges often do. But the whole point of the judicial philosophy of people like Janice Rogers Brown is that the political merits of policies are none of a judge's business. The judge is to decide what is legal, according to the written laws and the Constitution, not what the judge happens to like personally or politically.

Justice Brown's long history in hundreds of cases shows that this is in fact what she has lived by. Liberals seize upon cases in which her votes went against their pet policies like affirmative action or teenage abortions without parental notification.

In other cases, however, Justice Brown voted against policies favored by conservatives, leading to protests by the National Rifle Association and conservative newspapers. Although Janice Rogers Brown's own personal views are conservative, she ruled on these cases on the basis of the written law, not what she herself preferred.

Liberal-left hostility to Justice Brown is based on the very opposite of what they claim. Much of the liberal agenda can only be imposed by judges because elected officials cannot keep bucking public opinion. A judge who opposes judicial policy-making is a serious danger to their agenda and they will try to stop such nominees at all costs. Hence the lynch-mob atmosphere and the filibuster threat.