Why Do Senate Republicans Hate Traditional American Judicial Values
Caitlin Halligan, facing a Republican filibuster, officially withdrew from consideration for a judgeship on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This is not surprising or unexpected. Halligan, who was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Chief Justice John Roberts, had seen her nomination languish since 2010. The successful filibuster that snuffed Halligan's nomination early this March represents another example of why real reform or (better yet) elimination of the filibuster is desperately needed.The anti-American view of Senate Republicans is startling in the light of someone who they did approve, Janice Rogers Brown. The Truth About Janice Rogers Brown
The filibustering of Halligan is striking, even in the context of an utterly dysfunctional Senate, for two reasons. First, Halligan is a mainstream nominee, with broad support for her credentials and temperament from across the political spectrum. And second, Obama is the first president in at least 50 years not to get a single nominee confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, despite a relatively large number of vacancies. Obama isn't packing the court or looking to staff it with radical liberals, and yet a minority in the Senate is preventing him from replacing a seat that has been vacant for seven years and counting.
What justifications did the Republicans offer for this extraordinary act of obstructionism? Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell turned to one of the emptiest cliches in the modern Republican playbook. "In short, Ms. Halligan’s record of advocacy and her activist view of the judiciary lead me to conclude that she would bring that activism to the court," McConnell asserted. Repeating the word "activist" twice is a nice touch. "Judicial activism" is, of course, has become a completely vacuous tautology that means nothing more than "a judge whose decision I don't agree with." The frequent Republican use of the term has become particularly farcical given the nearly successful Republican campaign to strike down the centerpiece legislation of the Obama administration's first term based on egregiously flimsy ad hoc constitutional arguments. (McConnell, needless to say, disapproved of the Court's ultimate lack of activism.)
Anti-government: Brown has made it crystal clear that she does not believe in government involvement of any kind. She abhors the New Deal in its entirety and has said regarding Social Security that "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have the right to get as much 'free' stuff as the political system will permit them to extract." Her anti-government, anti-regulation sentiments are particularly disturbing because she has been nominated to the D.C. Circuit of Appeals, which makes decisions on most federal administration and regulation cases such as those involving regulations set by agencies like the Social Security Administration, Federal Elections Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and those dealing with federal environmental and labor laws.
Violence Against Women: Brown was the lone dissenter in opining that a jury should not be allowed to hear evidence of Battered Women's Syndrome. She also wrote a shocking dissent in 2003 regarding criminal charges against a man accused of raping a 17-year-old woman on a date. The woman had verbally expressed that she did not want to have sex several times throughout the night. Although she consented to kissing and fondling and at one point to sex, she asserted that she quickly changed her mind and continued to say no and struggle when the man forcibly penetrated her. The question before the court was whether criminal charges of forcible rape could be brought when a woman withdraws her consent and the man continues against her will. The California Supreme Court found that indeed criminal charges could be brought but Brown's dissenting opinion questioned whether the woman had protested enough and asked the question, "Is persistence the same thing as force?"
Objectivity: Brown participates in many invitation-only private "seminars" thrown by ultra-right wing organizations such as the Liberty Fund and the John M. Olin Foundation. Attending such events, and even making speeches at them, contributes to an appearance of impropriety at best and at worst may influence judges and affect the outcomes of cases.
To Mitch McConnell (R-KY) the evil opinions of Brown are not judicial activism. What country do Mitch and Judge Brown think they're living in? Iran perhaps.
