More Less To Like Stuff About Bush's Nominee
More revelations about President Brain-Dead's choice to take Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court are detailed in this Washington Post story. It appears that John Roberts was a significant player in the Reagan administration, and that he helped guide some of that silly fool's policy decisions. Excerpt:
Newly released documents show that John G. Roberts Jr. was a significant backstage player in the legal policy debates of the early Reagan administration, confidently debating older Justice Department officials and supplying them with arguments and information that they used to wage a bureaucratic struggle for the president's agenda.
Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases; he argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs; and he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.
Nice intro. Now we see why the White House was reluctant to release this information.
Much of Roberts's time at the Justice Department was taken up by the debate over GOP-sponsored bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases. He wrote repeatedly in opposition to the view, advanced by then-Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson, that the bills were unconstitutional. He scrawled "NO!" in the margins of an April 12, 1982, note Olson sent to Smith. In the memo, Olson observed that opposing the bills would "be perceived as a courageous and highly principled position, especially in the press."
Roberts drew a bracket around the paragraph, underlined the words "especially in the press," and wrote in the margin: "Real courage would be to read the Constitution as it should be read and not kowtow to the Tribes, Lewises and Brinks!"
The three appear to be to Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis and then-American Bar Association President David R. Brink, who opposed the bills. Roberts added skeptical margin notes again when Olson wrote that the bills were unnecessary because the court now had more Republican-appointed members than it had in the 1960s, and was moving to the right as a result.
Roberts underlined the name of one of the Republican appointees Olson listed, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade , and drew an arrow connecting it to the word "abortion." The department eventually adopted Olson's view.
When you disagree with Ted Olson, and it turns out that Olson is the moderate in the argument, you might be a knuckledragger.
Later, then-counselor to the attorney general Kenneth W. Starr asked Roberts to prepare a memo that "marshals arguments in favor of Congress' power to control" the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. Roberts noted as a result that his memo "was prepared from a standpoint of advocacy of congressional power . . . [and] does not purport to be an objective review of the issue."
So sex-obsessed maniac Ken Starr urged Roberts to help erode the power of the Supreme Court. And you've got to like the subtlety of that last sentence.
Roberts approvingly cited comments by "Professor Scalia" -- then-University of Chicago law professor Antonin Scalia -- at a conference on the bills. Scalia "recognized that non-uniformity in the interpretation of federal law could be criticized as 'sloppy,' but asked: compared to what? Given the choice between non-uniformity and the uniform imposition of the judicial excesses embodied in Roe v. Wade, Scalia was prepared to choose the former alternative."
Roberts also took issue with the view that bills restricting the court's jurisdiction would be unconstitutional because they interfere with "fundamental rights." "None of the pending bills concerning jurisdiction in abortion or school prayer cases directly burden the exercise of any fundamental rights," he wrote.
This smacks of that conservative bugaboo judicial activism, yet we saw the attempt to limit the Supreme Court's power. But I guess when you populate the court with scum like Scalia and later Thomas, it makes perfect sense.
In September 1982, Roberts played the role of diplomatic coach, advising Smith on how to handle an upcoming meeting with Coretta Scott King, the widow of the slain civil rights leader. The Carter administration's Justice Department had supplied a $250,000 grant to the Atlanta-based King Center for Non-violent Social Change, to teach conflict resolution in the hopes of reducing violent crime.
The grant, approved in 1980, had run out and the Reagan administration planned not to renew it. Roberts, in a Sept. 16, 1982, memo, called the program "very poorly run" and said that it had only received funding because of "political ties" between King and Homer Broome Jr., a black Justice Department official. But rather than share those concerns bluntly with King, Roberts advised, Smith should instead tell her "there is simply no money available for additional funding," and "indicate support for the activities of the King Center, and even pleasure that the Justice Department was able to be of assistance in advancing" its goals.
That really shows what a rotten piece of shit Roberts is. Lying to the widow of the most prominent Civil Rights figure in modern history about why you won't fund the organization that bears his name is beyond reprehensible, yet there are people who still claim that Reagan was color-blind. Well, since loyalty and the ability to tell bald-faced lies with a straight face are the two most prized characteristics in the Bush Administration, it is little wonder that this little troll was chosen to continue the seemingly irreversible erosion of the basic rights off Americans. And to think, Chief Justice Rehnquist will probably retire soon, giving President Brain-Dead a second pick...
Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602070.html
Young, Non-White, Unmarried, Pregnant Mother Missing - Where Is The Continuous TV Coverage?
I stumbled across this on a web site called "The All Spin Zone". I'd seen numerous mentions of this case on these Internets for the past few days, and now I feel compelled to share the particulars with all six of my dedicated readers. The following excerpt is taken from a letter to TV whore Nancy "All Men Are Guilty" Grace:
Latoyia Figueroa is still missing after 8 days. And as tragic as the Natalee Holloway case might be, Natalee doesn't have a seven year old child wondering where she is, nor was Natalee (to the best of our knowledge) 5 months pregnant.
Here's an overview of the important details in this missing woman case:
1) Latoyia (we should only use her first name) is not white.
2) She does not have blonde hair.
3) She was not scheduled to get married last weekend.
4) She's from West Philadelphia.
5) There may actually be a lead or two in her case.
6) HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY.
7) To the best of our knowledge, no one from Texas has yet offered to bring in cadaver dogs to search for Latoyia, nor have forensic dive teams volunteered to scour the Schuylkill or Delaware rivers.
8 ) Also to the best of our knowledge, the FBI hasn't been requested to participate in the investigation (even though Philly actually is in the US of A), nor have any DNA samples been rushed to Washington, DC.
9) HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY, HER UNBORN BABY.
Ms. Grace has been strangely silent about this matter. I won't speculate why, I'll just let the above evidence do the talking. Full story: http://allspinzone.com/blog/index.php?itemid=940
More NASA Incompetence
In the continuing saga of the sick joke that is the American Space Program, NASA announced that they are halting any future space shuttle flights because of debris that was detected falling away from the Discovery as it left the launch pad yesterday. AOL News excerpt:
SPACE CENTER, Houston (July 27) - NASA said Wednesday it is grounding future shuttle flights because foam debris that brought down Columbia is still a risk - and might have doomed Discovery if the big chunk of broken insulation had come off just a bit earlier and slammed into the spacecraft.
A large chunk of foam flew off Discovery's external fuel tank just two minutes after liftoff Tuesday morning. Shuttle managers do not believe it hit the shuttle, posing a threat to the seven astronauts when they return to Earth. But they plan a closer inspection of the spacecraft to be sure.
''You have to admit when you're wrong. We were wrong,'' said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons. ''We need to do some work here, and so we're telling you right now, that the ... foam should not have come off. It came off. We've got to go do something about that.''
The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.
Unbelievable. Rather than repeat my rant from yesterday's post, I'll just put it this way: Maybe if this administration was serious about re-asserting America's presence in space we wouldn't be screwing around with 20-year-old technology. Full story: http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050702200509990003
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