Tag Archives: Clarence Thomas

national news, political news

Lynch deserves confirmation

Allow me to state once again my strong support of presidential prerogative in key appointments.

The current president, Barack Obama, has just nominated Loretta Lynch to become the nation’s next attorney general. The U.S. Senate will vote to confirm or reject the appointment. I join Republicans in wanting the next Senate, the one controlled by the GOP, to have a say in this vote.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/loretta-lynch-eric-holder-attorney-general-white-house-112705.html?ml=la

But I always shudder at the prospect of trumped-up reasons by the loyal opposition coming to the fore during these hearings.

They crop up from both sides of the aisle.

The Constitution gives the president the authority to nominate Cabinet officers. It also gives the Senate the power to “advise and consent” to the appointments. I get all of that. I understand fully the “co-equal” aspect of government, which empowers the legislative branch with as much power as the executive.

Now that I’ve laid down those cards, I want to declare that the president is elected by the entire nation. Yes, the Senate — as a body — is elected by the same voter base. But it’s the president’s call on who he wants to serve on the Cabinet.

This president has chosen a highly qualified individual. Lynch is seen by both Democrats and Republicans as a workhorse. She’s fair and dogged in her pursuit of justice.

Now we’re getting some rumblings from the far right wing of the Republican Party that at least two senators want Lynch to state whether she believes a potential executive order from the president on immigration is legal. Well, the president has made no such order, so the demand to know such a thing deals with an extreme hypothetical scenario.

I’ve never backed away from this prerogative issue. I stood behind President George H.W. Bush when he nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court for precisely the same reason I back the current president. He’s elected by Americans who were told what kind of individual would receive these appointments. Thomas was qualified to serve on the High Court when the president selected him, although the American Bar Association’s recommendation was less than sparkling. Still, he was qualified.

I have stood behind President George W. Bush’s appointments of Samuel Alito and John Roberts for all those reasons.

My belief in the Lynch appointment falls in line what I perceive as the president’s prerogative as the chief executive of the federal government.

My sincere hope is that the Senate gives Lynch a thorough but fair hearing.

national news, political news

Silencing speech at a university

Here we go again.

University students and more than likely some faculty are up in arms because someone made comments that offended them. So now they want to ban that famous someone from speaking at their campus.

Sounds familiar, right?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/bill-maher-uc-berkeley-ban-112251.html?hp=l7

The target this time is a noted liberal comedian/political pundit, Bill Maher, who recently said some things about Islam that have riled a few thousand students at the University of California-Berkeley. They are circulating petitions to get the school to rescind its invitation to Maher.

For the record, I don’t think much of Maher either as a comedian or a political commentator. He’s not particularly funny, nor is he particularly insightful — in my view.

Whatever I might think of someone, though, has nothing to do with the notion of allowing him or her to speak.

Universities are supposed to be breeding grounds for diversity of thought, opinion and perspective. Yet many of them have shown remarkable intolerance of ideas with which they disagree. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, has been disinvited by university faculty and students because of his conservative judicial philosophy, which they contend just isn’t welcome in their midst. Now it’s a liberal, Maher, who’s drawing the scorn.

It is patently wrong to deny noted individuals, regardless of philosophy, the opportunity to share their views at places of learning. Isn’t the very definition of “learning” intended to expose minds to a wide range of perspective?

Let the comedian speak his mind. Those who don’t want to hear it don’t need to attend. Those who do want to lend an ear, then do so, listen and then talk among yourselves about the merits of what the guy has to say.

Isn’t that what higher education is supposed to foster?

 

 

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Yes, Mr. Justice, racism is a serious problem

Someone, somewhere, somehow must tell Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to stop looking at the world through his own narrow prism.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s essay takes the justice to task over some remarks he made about what he described as an undeserved fixation about race in America.

Thomas, of course, is the second African-American picked to serve on the nation’s highest court. President George H.W. Bush appointed him in 1991 after the first black justice, Thurgood Marshall, retired from the bench. President Bush called Thomas “the most qualified man” in the country to take the seat, which has turned out to be more than a bit of an overstatement.

Thomas’s road to the court was strewn with obstacles. He faced charges of sexual harassment that surfaced many years after the alleged incidents occurred — and during his confirmation hearings before the Senate.

Do you remember his reference to the “high-tech lynching” he said was occurring in an effort to scuttle his nomination?

He now has said that growing up in Savannah, Ga., he didn’t feel racism and asserts, astoundingly, that it somehow wasn’t a problem in the South.

Umm, yes it was, sir.

Here is what he told a university audience on Tuesday:

“My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Ga., to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up.

“Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out.”

Then he said this: “The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites. The absolute worst I have ever been treated.”

That all might have been true in young Clarence’s case. Who am I to dispute someone else’s personal recollection?

That doesn’t translate to others’ experiences. Many millions of African-Americans have endured so much hatred and bigotry on the basis of their race that it defies my imagination to believe that one prominent black American could be so dismissive of the pain brought to so many others.

As Blow asks in his column, Thomas either suffers from serious amnesia or is “contemporaneously oblivious.”

The one justice who never speaks during oral arguments before the Supreme Court has spoken out now. He’s said a mouthful.

Unbelievable.

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‘Court-packing scheme’ is specious argument

The National Review Online is supposed to be a respected publication.

The editorial attached to this post, however, suggests that the folks who run the publication fail to understand a key component of the U.S. Constitution. It’s the part that gives the president of the United States the authority to make critical executive and judicial branch appointments.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364556/nuclear-fallout-editors

The NRO is upset with Senate Democrats’ decision to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” as it relates to the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took the highly risky step as a way to allow President Obama to have his appointments cleared from a Senate that had obstructed them through the use of the filibuster. It once took 60 votes out of 100 to break a filibuster. It now takes just 51 votes. The rule change involves all appointments except those involving the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Senate has nuked itself.

The NRO, though, says that the filibuster is secondary to what it says is the real reason for the action. “The filibuster is a minor issue; the major issue is that President Obama is engaged in a court-packing scheme to protect his dubious agenda, and Harry Reid’s Senate is conspiring with him to do so,” the NRO writes.

A number of judicial appointments have been blocked by Senate Republicans that have nothing to do with the qualifications of the men and women selected. Obama seeks to fill them because, well, he is the president and the Constitution gives the person in that office the authority to act. Yes, the Constitution also gives the Senate the right to “advise and consent” to the nominations. That role, though, should be on the basis of whether someone is qualified for the job.

I’ve long believed strongly in presidential prerogative. I’ve also believed that presidents who win elections have earned the right to pick whomever they wish to key positions. This might surprise some readers of this blog, but I supported the nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991 of one Clarence Thomas, despite the uproar that arose from his selection when a woman accused him of sexual harassment.

The complaint was never proved. Thomas was qualified to serve on the highest court. Was he the kind of judge I would have picked? No. That job, though, fell to the man who was elected president in 1988, George H.W. Bush. Therefore, the president had earned the right to seat someone of his choosing on the court.

Barack Obama has precisely the same right as any of the men who’ve served before him. The Senate shouldn’t serve as a place where these nominations are stopped because of some trumped-up scheme manufactured by his political opponents.

Court-packing? Give me a break. President Obama’s job involves making appointments. Let him do that job and let the people he selects be examined on the basis of their qualifications.

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Conflict of interest on high court?

Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a longtime political activist.

The latest news of her political activism makes me wonder: Does this married couple ever talk about their day when they’re home at night? Ever?

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/29/groundswell-ginni-thomas-and-continued-conflict/195117

Conflicts of interest are nothing new in Washington, or in Austin, or even in Amarillo for that matter. It is troubling in the extreme, though, when a sitting justice is married to someone with such a heavy-hitting role in political causes that might become the subject of, say, appeals before that very court.

Mrs. Thomas’s role in these endeavors is troubling to be sure.

The government watchdog group Common Cause questioned whether Justice Thomas should have taken part in the landmark Citizens United case that enabled corporations to make unlimited campaign donations because, according to Mother Jones magazine, the justice well could have taken part in Citizens United strategy sessions before it made its case before the court.

Ginni Thomas has been involved with groups opposing the Affordable Care Act. Her husband voted with the minority that sought to repeal a key portion of the law.

It’s fine for the spouse of a high-ranking public official to be involved politically. It’s quite a different matter, though, when a perception emerges that the spouse’s involvement might affect the public official’s performance of his or her duty.

Justice Elena Kagan once was solicitor general of the United States, meaning she argued the government’s position before the court. One of the cases she argued had to do with Arizona’s strict immigration law. How did she vote when the case came before the court? She didn’t. Justice Kagan recused herself.

Justice Thomas should do the same whenever cases connected to political causes involving his wife come before the court.