It’s not a ‘coup’

July 28, 2007

A couple of days ago, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised a few eyebrows when he announced his intention to review confirmation-hearing testimony from Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Specter said he wants to “determine if their reversal of several long-standing opinions conflicts with promises they made to senators to win confirmation.” The implication wasn’t subtle — the Republican senator was suggesting that the justices were less than candid so they could dupe senators into supporting their confirmation.

In a similar vein, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), also a Judiciary Committee member, said yesterday that he wants lawmakers to be far less accommodating, should Bush have another chance to nominate a high court justice.

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.” […]

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

One can certainly debate whether Schumer and other Democratic senators were aggressive enough with Roberts and Alito, but given recent history, Schumer’s approach hardly seems radical. He wants to reverse the burden of proof on an untrustworthy White House — instead of starting with an assumption that the nominee deserves to be confirmed, Schumer is recommending a more intense skepticism.

To hear some of our friends on the other side of the political spectrum tell it, the New York senator has put the Constitution in a shredder.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker, for example, had an item with this headline: “Is This A Coup? If Not, What Is It?” His post argued:

The Democrats’ unconstitutional usurpation of power continues: Chuck Schumer, possibly the wackiest of all Capitol Hill Democrats, announces a change in the Constitution.

Alas, he did not appear to be kidding.

So, if a member of Senate Judiciary Committee is not inclined to support hypothetical Supreme Court nominees from a deceitful White House, it’s a “coup”?

And where, pray tell, is the “change in the Constitution”? The law gives the Senate advise-and-consent powers. Schumer is recommending that lawmakers use their consent authority sparingly, should a vacancy arise. He’s not “changing” anything — if lawmakers block a nominee they disapprove of, it’s within their authority to do so.

For that matter, given what we’ve seen from this presidency, is it really wise for any of Bush’s inexplicable allies to whine about “unconstitutional usurpations of power”? I think not.

Wow, it’s so easy to be a Republican these days. They just take the valid talking points the Dems are using and then use them as lies pointed back in the other direction. This is a road that don’t run both ways.

  • Be that as it may, the Senators are unlikely to have an opportunity anytime soon to do more than pay lip service to these high-minded aspirations. What is far more likely is that the U.S. will have a new Attorney General soon, perhaps following the August Congressional break, who was ramjetted into the office by way of a recess appointment. Congress will not be given an opportunity to block anything, and the appointee will serve until after Bush has stepped down. Bush does not view recess appointments as the emergency procedure they are by design, but as a freebie way to sidestep Congressional approval when he knows it is unlikely. Right now his influence is so tainted he’d have a hard time getting Daniel Webster nominated as Attorney General.

  • …the New York senator has put the Constitution in a shredder.

    Don’t ever watch what the GOP says.
    Don’t even watch what they do.
    Watch what they say the Democrats are doing.
    And then call your bookie.

    Would that it was always this easy to see into the future.

  • More evidence Republican lawyers like Hinderaker (and Yoo, and Gonzales, and Addington, ad nauseum) have very little conception of what the Constitution actually says.

  • … kinda scary when ‘our’ side’s assholes admit to being lied to by the worst PROVEN liars in history … and schumer, ‘our’ own fucker, expects to get points by stating the obvious, ‘we’ have been hoodwinked -was obvious before alito even opened ‘its’ mouth- schumer hopes that we will believe him, that he learned his lesson and will not trust republicans again … that is until the guys that pay him and reid and clinton et al -corporations ‘r’us- use schumer again to divert attention from the repubs blah blah blah … such an imbecilistic affront to sanity can only be received by the stupidest fuckers on earth: the merkuns!! You guys are a joke to the educated people of other nations … your own educated people still do not get it, yet!!

  • Schumer is doing the thing that Dems need to do; they have the credibility now to speak up as a co-equal and there is plenty of ammo against the Bush folks and their scams against this country. It also speaks to the general narrative about the Bush team and the GOP – they are untrustworthy and they should be scrutinized harshly as repeat offenders. The Dems need to remind the American people about the chronic failures, fudges and flim-flams foisted on our nation (even against decent Republicans) by the Bushies. Drive down the GOP loyalty numbers and they will start to get the picture and pay more of a price.

  • The Senate did not approve two of the nominations to the Supreme Court made by George Washington. I think that it can be assumed that people living less than a decade after the ratification of the Constitution had an inkling of the intent of the framers.

  • The Republicans and their enablers see the law and the Constitution not as tools to help them do their jobs, but as obstacles that must be overcome to accomplish their goals.

  • Hey, Roland – there’s a way to disagree without discourtesy. Your punctuation, grammar and invention of the non-word “imbecilistic” (that’d be “imbecilic”) leave you little maneuvering room when mocking American education. Inflammatory insult rarely results in agreement or compromise. The real mark of education and polish is courtesy.

  • You can find some nice round-ups of GOP obstruction here and here.

    An then there is this.

    Nominees for federal judgeships must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and for years, political wrangling between Clinton and Republican senators has muddled the process.

    Last year, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who heads the Judiciary Committee, held up the confirmations of 36 of Clinton’s nominees because Clinton wouldn’t nominate a Hatch ally to the federal bench in Utah.

    Locally, two of the 10 judgeships in U.S. District Court have been vacant since 1997, although Clinton has twice nominated candidates for the vacancies.

    The first, Pittsburgh lawyer John Bingler, asked Clinton to withdraw his name in 1997 after Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., twice blocked his confirmation.

    Santorum said he opposed Bingler because the lawyer was not included on a short list of nominees prepared by a bipartisan federal judicial nominating commission appointed by Santorum and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

    Or this.

    As a senator from Pennsylvania and a Pittsburgher, Sen. Santorum should be urging his colleagues to cooperate with the White House in bringing the federal bench in Western Pennsylvania up to strength. As a partisan Republican, however, he’s apparently willing to see the seats go unfilled now so that they might be filled next year by a President George W. Bush.[…]
    “I’ve told the White House from day one that, ‘You pick the Democrat, I’ll pick the Republican, and we’ll move him,’ ” Sen. Santorum told the Post-Gazette. But now it’s apparently too late even if a new crop of nominees includes Allegheny County Solicitor Terry McVerry, a Republican. “Terry is a terrific guy, but they’ve waited well past any chance,” said the senator.

    Of course, under the Constitution, it is the president who chooses federal judges, subject to Senate confirmation. Presidents – Republicans as well as Democrats – traditionally nominate lawyers of their own party. Home-state senators have no special constitutional role in judicial appointments, but tradition has given them an unofficial say-so.

  • Hindraker is a tool. A smart tool, but a tool nonetheless. Looking to him for a reasoned analysis is like looking to Bush for reasonable honesty. It’s just never going to be there. He’s going to say whatever he thinks best suits his boy, Mr 25%. Facts be damned, and to hell with truth. When it comes to defending Bush, there’s no low to which he will not stoop and no bounds to the tortured logic he will employ.

  • I refuse to believe that anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle was hoodwinked. They caved. Plenty of citizens saw through the nominees, largely because it’s not necessary to rely on what they say in a confirmation hearing — they have legal histories that speak for themselves!

  • Back there in 1964 Barry Goldwater was seen and cast by many as being a GOPer who had roamed too far off the GOP reservation.

    Nixon did a rebound in 1968 based in large part by wading into uncharted Southern political strategy zones and gaining traction by having done so.

    Reagan about ten years later would ride that Nixonian warhorse and his own political steed based on nostalgic kitsch and well oiled GOP themes into the WH in 1979-1980 election cycle.

    G.W.Bush and his brand of GOPerism from Texas and Neo-con/Religious Zealot (Krazed Kook?) Land has fully gone into the wilderness these days. Along with the Newt G./Tommy D. GOPer gang and too many GOPer Senate fundies,dummies and finger in the wind integrity challenged “I cant find my convictions or principles” types. The DC GOPers are in trouble.

    So…now what? More of what Karl Rove is peddling? More of what Dick Cheney is so devout about? Join up closer with the Enron/Wall St. corporatists/big finance dance types? Or seek out more of what Grover Norquist sells? Or John Hagee and the Rapturists? Or more of the AntiScience/Everyman For Hisself GOPers fact and truth slay?

    One could safely state the GOP is now in deep disarray.

    So the GOPers will likely be getting ever more fast and furious during 2008 and the DC DEMS can and should expect the worst of ACME CO. styled
    GOP attack and smear ploys and misdirection steering.

    What else can they do?

    G.W.Bush is no Nixon or Reagan. He is much less and much worst.

    In the Pantheon of Great and Exalted GOP Leaders G.W.Bush will not likely ever reside.

    As for the GOP these days…

    It is going with the slippery sloped creed of “Party First,Nation Second”…

    As the Bush/Cheney regimes fast growing political/ legal no-goes crater and it’s Iraq/ ME truly bizarre truth and fact denial ‘ Only in Our Dreams Circle Logic ‘ IED’s— the GOP in DC must stay behind in DC– long after The Decider and Darth Cheney have fled DC.

    The DC GOPers left behind will suffer most from G’s and D’s reign.

    The fundies,dimbulbs and Kristol/Lieberman types and whoever else comprises the core GOP support numbers are loyal and may well remain so. That can be said.

    Whether they are sane or able to discern and reason in passable ways?

    That cannot be said with certainty.

    Barry Goldwater was a paragon of GOP values and stands compared with what the Bush/Cheney regime and DC GOPers have become and are these days.

  • Just like everything else these Bush/WH supporters have it backwards…Schumer is trying to take the constitution out of the shredder..
    These Justices mis-represented themselves to congress and based on how often this administration abuses its powers, any judicial post nominee should be automatically rejected as anything they have done so far as never been for the good of the people but mere a political grab for power.
    The republicans want to control the DoJ and the whole Judicial branch because they have the greatest need for their favoritism.

  • If you favor a fascist state, and are willing to twist the Constitution into a tool to suit your ends (see, Unitary Executive, for example), Schumer is indeed shredding the Constitution. Some of the irrationality that comes out of the right does is disingenuous posturing, but some of it they truly believe. The latter is what makes them truly dangerous.

    As difficult as it might be, this is what those of us who aspire to be reality-based must incorporate into our perception of reality.

  • “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance.”

    Who decides when the Supreme Court is in balance? Is it when rulings offend each side equally? When justices rule unanimously every time? How about if every ruling is unanimous, but Schumer disagrees with the outcome only 50% of the time?

    Schumer’s got the right idea — no one can presume that they will be confirmed to the highest court inthe land — but “balance” is a phantom target.

    Speaking of Schumer, is it absolutely necessary for a sitting legislator to be in charge of the re-election committee? It just opens them up to accusations that everything they do is political. (Of course, such accusations are thrown around under any circumstances.)

    For future reference, keep track of who else Buttmissile declares “the wackiest of all Capitol Hill Democrats.” If he thinks it’s Schumer, then he can probably find a lot more.

  • I wish I could ask senator Shumer how he could have been so naive as to trust Bush at all, much less enough to be “hoodwinked” by the conniving bastard about a SCOTUS pick. At that point we had already seen plenty of the work that came out of the Rove/Cheney/Bush shop, and NONE of it made me ever think “OK, there’s something halfway decent”. None of it. Shumer seems way too smart to be fooled by such blatantly partisan hacks, but apparently he thought that a bunch of criminals had somehow goofed up and nominated someone who wasn’t just another tool for the criminals. And of course as Beep52 points out, their records gave all the clues Shumer should have needed.

    I’m sure senator Shumer’s apology to the DFHs who railed against Bush’s lying nominees is in the mail. And next week Shumer et al will finally listen to what the DFHs are saying, since the DFHs have been right about quite a few things about which senator Shumer and his friends have been “hoodwinked”.

    And then we’ll all get our Ponies.

  • Racer X, et. al, Schumer is speaking somewhat loosely when he says “we were hoodwinked.” Schumer himself voted against both confirmations and was the toughest, most skeptical questioner during both hearings. Now he’s simply urging other Dems to catch up to him.

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