Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1121 Editor's Choice: 15
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What nonsense. What paranoid, delusional idiocy.
[Read the article: What -- or who -- ended Rachel Paulose's stint as U.S. attorney?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Federalist Society is actually the opposite of its name: anti-Federalist. For those not knowledgable of the legal history preceeding and eventuating in the US Constitution, the anti-Federalists were opposed to its ratification for various paranoid reasons, one being antipathy to a strong central, Federal gov't. They were the equivalent of today's "states' rights" advocates--leaders in which ideological camp are such as the KKK and the Neo-Confederates, which latter have continued to fight the Civil War, and want to reestablish the Confederacy. Many such individuals and their shadow groups want not only to repeal all amendmets to the Constitution back to the first ten, but also to eliminate the Constitution and return to the Articles of Confederation--which were replaced because they failed.
So, the Federalist Society is just another one of those run-of-the-mill "mainstream" collections of extreme right-wing crackpot ideologues. Among those are Ted Olson, who handled Bush's bogus 2000 election case before the Supreme Court--by ignoring the stipulation in the Constitution that such election issues are the exclusive province of CONGRESS. And the happy-go-lucky Robert Bork, who for a time campaigned for an amendment to the Constitution which would allow Congress to overturn the Supreme Court--a power it has always had, already, as a co-equal check against the other two branches.
Another member is the staunch "states rights" advocate/Supreme Court resident rant Scalia--who put aside his staunch "states rights" position in order to stop the uncompleted vote-counting in FL in 2000--unprecedented in history--and accept Bush's bogus case for hearing by the Court, and thereby unconstitutionally usurping the exclusive authority of CONGRESS to address and resolve the issue.
And another is affirmative action beneficiary Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative action now that he doesn't need it. Thomas is the first Supreme Court justice to interpret the Constitution through the views of the anti-Federalists--the views, that is, of those who opposed ratification of the Constituton, and who, in addition, held the LOSING argument. The tradition in law as practiced by the Judiciary--and in democarcy more generally--is that the LOSING argument is NOT the law.
Last but not least, the Federalist Society's main declared goal is to "repeal the New Deal"--Federal protections of We the people, in particular minorities and regular folks, from abuses and oppressions by their state gov'ts, and the wealthy and powerful who hav traditionally bought them, and bent them to their whim and will.
Yeah, just another non-controversial, happy-go-lucky, run-of-the-mill "mainstream" organization--"mainstream" according to those who don't know the difference between moderate--mainstream--and the extreme right-wing collection of anti-American bigots and fanatics traditionally termed "lunatic fringe" who put aside their sheets and hoods, donned suits and ties, and wnet to law school in order to try a new approach to reimposing their minority view onto the majority.
-- JNagarya
Notice the rhetorical devices here. Without the slightest attempt at any justification for the slur, the Federalist Society is compared to the Klan and a desire to restore the Confederacy. Ted Olson is not mentioned as the respected former United States Solicitor General; rather, he is denigrated as an attorney who dared to represent a future President of the United States before the Supreme Court. How dare he! Robert Bork is not the brilliant scholar and former Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (with a remarkable record of almost never having been reversed); rather he is ridiculed for one bit of writing on a point of Constitutional theory. Then there were the obligatory slanders of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. (How did the writer fail to remember to slander Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito?) There's really no accounting for any of this. It seems to matter not what all of these men have accomplished, what their academic and judicial records were, what resoned arguments they posed. They are "right-wing crackpots."
Then there's the canard, the false analogy between "The Federalist Society" of today and "The Federalist Party" of about 1789 to 1820. To put it simply, The Federalist Society believes in, and hopes to advance the study of, American federalism. How hard was that?
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Exactly what right-wing policy initiatives is the Federalist Society responsible for? Which candidates have they endorsed? What campaign funding has it done?
[Read the article: What -- or who -- ended Rachel Paulose's stint as U.S. attorney?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Beyond any doubt, and by any metric you might like to choose, the Federalist Society is LESS political than, say, the avowedly non-partisan ACLU.
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Watergate, Goldwater... and Al Gore.
[Read the article: The Republicans who would've impeached Bush?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember, after the Nixon resignation, learning that Senator Barry Goldwater had gone to the White House to tell President Nixon that he had lost the Congress. Nixon immediatley thereafter resigned.
I thought of Goldwater in particular when former Senator and then-V.P. Al Gore led that weird all-Democrat "We're all behind the President" photo-op on the White House lawn (orchestrated by the Clinton team) that looked like a 40th reunion of the St. Alban's choir. Not one of Gore's better moments, but a revealing one to be sure, as was Goldwater's moment.
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Trial lawyer politics
[Read the article: John Edwards hits his stride]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, political campaigns look like hard science compared to what Edwards did in courtrooms. In politics, Edwards will have to explain, to skeptical experts (in the form of opposition research teams and an inquiring press), what he wants to do in terms of health care spending, taxes, military affairs, tort reform, etc.
In his malpractice trials in North Carolina, Edwards was able to parlay phony expert opinion testimony into big verdicts. And became a millionaire in the process. You can't do that in a Presidential campaign.
I always wonder about all of the high-profile Republican vitriol aimed at Hillary, because Edwards is by far the most loathsome of the Democrats.