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The Reaper
01-26-2006, 12:25
Compare the NYT comments on these two judges. For those too young to remember, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, not exactly a centrist herself, was previously the Counsel for the ACLU.

Looks like they don't have a problem with extremists, just conservatives.

TR

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/26/opinion/26thur1.html?ei=5090&en=784f1dd599ca969d&ex=1295931600&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

January 26, 2006
Editorial

Senators in Need of a Spine

Judge Samuel Alito Jr., whose entire history suggests that he holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress, will almost certainly be a Supreme Court justice soon. His elevation will come courtesy of a president whose grandiose vision of his own powers threatens to undermine the nation's basic philosophy of government — and a Senate that seems eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead.

It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public's attention to the import of this nomination.

At the Judiciary Committee hearings, the judge followed the well-worn path to confirmation, which has the nominee offer up only the most boring statements and unarguable truisms: the president is not above the law; diversity in college student bodies is a good thing. But in what he has said in the past, and what he refused to say in the hearings, Judge Alito raised warning flags that, in the current political context, cannot simply be shrugged away with a promise to fight again another day.

The Alito nomination has been discussed largely in the context of his opposition to abortion rights, and if the hearings provided any serious insight at all into the nominee's intentions, it was that he has never changed his early convictions on that point. The judge — who long maintained that Roe v. Wade should be overturned — ignored all the efforts by the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Arlen Specter, to get him to provide some cover for pro-choice senators who wanted to support the nomination. As it stands, it is indefensible for Mr. Specter or any other senator who has promised constituents to protect a woman's right to an abortion to turn around and hand Judge Alito a potent vote to undermine or even end it.

But portraying the Alito nomination as just another volley in the culture wars vastly underestimates its significance. The judge's record strongly suggests that he is an eager lieutenant in the ranks of the conservative theorists who ignore our system of checks and balances, elevating the presidency over everything else. He has expressed little enthusiasm for restrictions on presidential power and has espoused the peculiar argument that a president's intent in signing a bill is just as important as the intent of Congress in writing it. This would be worrisome at any time, but it takes on far more significance now, when the Bush administration seems determined to use the cover of the "war on terror" and presidential privilege to ignore every restraint, from the Constitution to Congressional demands for information.

There was nothing that Judge Alito said in his hearings that gave any comfort to those of us who wonder whether the new Roberts court will follow precedent and continue to affirm, for instance, that a man the president labels an "unlawful enemy combatant" has the basic right to challenge the government's ability to hold him in detention forever without explanation. His much-quoted statement that the president is not above the law is meaningless unless he also believes that the law requires the chief executive to defer to Congress and the courts.

Judge Alito's refusal to even pretend to sound like a moderate was telling because it would have cost him so little. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., who was far more skillful at appearing mainstream at the hearings, has already given indications that whatever he said about the limits of executive power when he was questioned by the Senate has little practical impact on how he will rule now that he has a lifetime appointment.

Senate Democrats, who presented a united front against the nomination of Judge Alito in the Judiciary Committee, seem unwilling to risk the public criticism that might come with a filibuster — particularly since there is very little chance it would work. Judge Alito's supporters would almost certainly be able to muster the 60 senators necessary to put the nomination to a final vote.

A filibuster is a radical tool. It's easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

The Reaper
01-26-2006, 12:26
Ginsberg:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/ruth_bader_ginsburg/index.html?offset=90&&&&&

NATIONAL DESK | August 4, 1993
Senate, 96-3, Easily Affirms Judge Ginsburg as a Justice
By LINDA GREENHOUSE,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg easily won confirmation to the Supreme Court today, and within hours of the Senate vote Judge Ginsburg, who argued six cases before the Justices as an advocate for women's rights, returned to the Court to inspect her new office. Judge Ginsburg, who was on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, will officially become Justice Ginsburg when she takes the oath of office next Tuesday. She arrived at the Court in midafternoon in a silver Nissan Maxima driven by her husband, Martin. "It feels wonderful," she said of her confirmation as the car paused briefly before disappearing into the Court's underground garage.

NATIONAL DESK | August 4, 1993
Senate Confirms Ginsburg by a 96-to-3 Vote

NATIONAL DESK | August 2, 1993
Ginsburg's Spirit Is Echoed by Other Pioneers
By SUSAN CHIRA

In the years that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was rejected by law firms although she had graduated first in her 1959 Columbia Law School class, Muriel F. Siebert was told that she would be hired as a securities analyst only if she wore white gloves and a hat in the elevator. At the same time, Maria Iandolo New collected rejections from medical schools because she had the temerity to marry. As Judge Ginsburg nears confirmation by the Senate as a Supreme Court Justice, her long road to eminence echoes the experience of a generation of women who embarked on careers in a pre-feminist era, before they had an ideology to justify their actions and a movement to open doors that were shut to them. Hearings Revive Memories And many say the barriers remain formidable, although open discrimination is now illegal, thanks in part to the work of Judge Ginsburg. Ms. Siebert went on to become the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and Dr. New ended up as the first woman to head a department at Cornell University Medical College, where she is chief of pediatrics.

EDITORIAL DESK | July 31, 1993
Editor's Note

An article on yesterday's Op-Ed Page criticized Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Senator Carol Moseley Braun for remarks last week at Judge Ginsburg's hearing before the Judiciary Committee. The headline, by referring only to Judge Ginsburg, exaggerated the emphasis her comments were given in the article.

NATIONAL DESK | July 30, 1993
Ginsburg's Nomination Approved

WEEK IN REVIEW DESK | July 25, 1993
THE NATION; The Ginsburg Hearings An Absence Of Suspense Is Welcomed
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

THE prelude to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's selection for the Supreme Court turned out to be much more mesmerizing than the business of actually getting her confirmed, and in that apparent contradiction lay the story of President Clinton's first Supreme Court nomination. The absence of drama in Judge Ginsburg's three days before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week showed that Mr. Clinton, after a fitful and awkward three-month search, had found the formula to cool the superheated atmosphere surrounding Supreme Court nominations during the previous two Administrations. Take a nominee with distinguished legal credentials, a wide-ranging and accessible record, and no hard ideological edges, and send her up for a confirmation hearing that quickly evolves into a bipartisan coronation.

EDITORIAL DESK | July 25, 1993
A Touch of Class for the Court

While members of the Senate Judiciary Committee droned through Ruth Bader Ginsburg's hearings last week, the nominee could have been forgiven for thinking, Don't scoff, hang on a little longer and you're in. Endure she did, showing not only knowledge, but also the patience and courtesy befitting a justice of the highest court. No thanks to the committee, the hearings displayed the workings of a focused legal mind. She dwarfed not only her questioners but all the recent nominees to the Supreme Court she will soon join. Fortunately the senators realize this much: She deserves speedy confirmation.

NATIONAL DESK | July 24, 1993
Ginsburg Hearings End In a Secluded Meeting
By NEIL A. LEWIS,

The Senate Judiciary today held its first closed hearing ever to hear personal accusations against a Supreme Court nominee, but the session for Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was really just for practice, committee members said. No substantive charges surfaced in the 20-minute session, committee aides said, and Judge Ginsburg seemed headed for an easy if not unanimous confirmation after three days of public testimony. The committee vote is scheduled for Thursday.

The Reaper
01-26-2006, 12:28
NATIONAL DESK | July 23, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; Excerpts From Senate Hearings on the Ginsburg Supreme Court Nomination

Following are excerpts from the third day of hearings yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to become Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, as transcribed by the Federal News Service, a private transcription service: On Discrimination Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, cited several instances in the 1980's when the Supreme Court "cut back on the legal protections against job discrimination." He then asked Judge Ginsburg to discuss her view of the Court majority's approach to construing civil rights laws in those cases. JUDGE GINSBURG My view of the civil rights laws conforms to my views concerning statutory interpretation generally -- that is, it is the obligation of judges to construe statutes in the way that Congress meant them to be construed. Some statutes, not simply in the civil rights area but the anti-trust area, are meant to be broad charters: the Sherman Act. The Civil Rights Act states grand principles representing the highest aspirations of our nation to be a nation that is open and free, where all people will have opportunity. And that spirit imbues that law, just as free competition is the spirit in the antitrust laws, and the courts construe statutes in accord with the essential meaning that Congress had for passing them. . . . Q. I note that in a 1979 speech at a colloquium on legislation for women's rights you stated that "I think discrimination based on sexual orientation should be deplored." . . . I'd like to ask you whether you still believe, as you did in 1979, that "discrimination based on sexual orientation should be deplored." A. I think rank discrimination against anyone is against the tradition of the United States and is to be deplored. Rank discrimination is not part of our nation's culture. Tolerance is. And a generous respect for differences based on -- this country is great because of its accommodation of diversity. I mean, the first thing that I noticed when I came back to the United States from a prolonged stay in Sweden -- and after I was so accustomed to looking at people whose complexion was the same -- and I took my first ride on a New York subway and I thought, What a wonderful country we live in -- people who are so different in so many ways and yet we, for the most part, get along with each other. The richness of the diversity of this country is a treasure, and it's a constant challenge, too, to remain tolerant and respectful of one another. Senator William S. Cohen, Republican of Maine, noted later that the courts had frequently deferred to military regulations far more restrictive than would be permitted in civilian law. He then referred to Judge Ginsburg's earlier testimony that she found "rank discrimination" deplorable and asked her precisely what she meant by the term. A. Yes. I think base discrimination is deplorable and against the spirit of this country -- discrimination, arbitrary discrimination without reason. Q. No. Does "rank" mean institutional discrimination? Does it mean intentional discrimination? Does it mean arbitrary discrimination? Because as I understand the Constitution, it is permissible to discriminate or to classify provided there is a rational basis for it. A. If I discriminated against some person for reasons that are irrelevant to that person's talent or ability, that is what I meant when I said rank discrimination: arbitrary discrimination that's unrelated to a person's ability or worth, unrelated to a person's talent; discrimination because -- simply because of who that person is and not what that person can do. Q. Or does? Or does? In other words, do you draw it upon that person's status or conduct? Would it be a difference, in your judgment? A. A person's birth status should be -- should not enter into the way that person is treated. The person who is born into a certain home with a certain religion or is born of a certain race, those are irrelevant characteristics to what that person can do or contribute to society. Q. What about sexual orientation? A. Senator, you know that that is a burning question that at this very moment is going to be before the Court, based on an action that has been taken. I cannot say one word on that subject that would not violate what I said had to be my rule about no hints, no forecasts, no previews. Q. Well, it seemed to me that you already did comment on that when you responded to Senator Kennedy this morning. He talked about race, religion, and gender and sexual orientation, and I think your comment was rank discrimination is deplorable under all of those circumstances. A. I think rank discrimination for any reason -- hair color, eye color, you name it -- rank discrimination is un-American for whatever reason. If you have a classification, there has to be a reason, as you said, for any classification. On Capital Punishment Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, asked Judge Ginsburg whether she believed, "as Justices Brennan and Marshall did," that the death penalty was incompatible with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A. At least since 1976, and possibly if you date it from Furman and earlier, the Supreme Court by large majorities has rejected the position that the death penalty under any and all circumstances is unconstitutional. I recognize that there is no judge on the Court that takes a position that the death penalty is unconstitutional under any and all circumstances; all of the Justices on the Court have rejected that view. There are many questions left unresolved. They are coming constantly before that Court. I think at least two are before the Court next year. I can tell you that I have -- I do not have a closed mind on this subject. I don't want to commit my -- I don't think it would be consistent with the line I have tried to hold to tell you that I would definitely accept or definitely reject any position. I can tell you that I am well aware of the precedent, and I have already expressed my views on the value of precedent. Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, cited Herrera v. Collins, in which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority, "was unable to declare clearly and unequivocally that the Constitution forbids the execution of innocent people." He asked Judge Ginsburg, "Do you believe the Herrera case stands for the principle that it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person?" A. As I understand it -- and the case is not fresh in my mind -- what the Court said was that the evidence in that case was insufficient to show innocence. It did not rule out a different ruling in a case with a stronger record. We heard yesterday from Senator Feinstein, who was expressing her anxiety with the number of cases that go on for years and years. The colloquy that is occurring here is showing the tremendous tensions and difficulties in this area. Her anxious plight was there must be a time when the curtain is drawn, and your anxiety is that no innocent person should ever be put to death. Those tensions are coming before you, some of them, in the Powell Commission report that you are going to have to address. My understanding of Herrera is it's concerned with the situation that someone could say, 10 years after a conviction and multiple appeals, "I didn't do it," and then the process would start all over again. I can empathize tremendously with the concern. . . . What the Court said -- and this is to the best of my recollection -- that the evidence was too slim in Herrera to make out that claim, and it left the door open to a case where there was stronger evidence of innocence. That case is yet to come before the Court in the future. So my understanding of this case is it, based on that particular record, said the evidence was too thin to show innocence, that the Court was leaving open the question of whether you could have such a plea on a stronger showing than the one that was made in that case. And that's as far as the Herrera case went. It just left open a case where a stronger showing could be made. In response to a question from Senator Hatch, Judge Ginsburg declined to discuss her views on the death penalty because, she said, she had never decided a capital case or written about the subject. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, later reminded her that while practicing law she had written a friend-of-the-court brief in Coker v. Georgia, arguing "that the death penalty for rape was not constitutional." A. I did not write about the question we've been addressing about the constitutionality of the death penalty. The Coker-against-Georgia brief was a brief that said the death penalty for rape, where there was no death or serious permanent injury apart from the obvious psychological injury -- that that was disproportionate for this reason: The death penalty for rape historically was part of a view of woman as belonging to man, as first her father's possession. If she were raped before marriage, she was damaged goods and she was not someone -- it was a theft of something that belonged first to the father. And if she were a married woman and she were raped, again she would be regarded as damaged goods. We've seen that most recently in tragedies in many places in the world, where women in Bangladesh, for example, were discarded, were treated as worthless, because they had been raped. And that was what Coker against Georgia came out of, and that's the whole thrust of that brief, that this was made punishable by death because man's property had been taken from him because of the rape of women. And that was the perspective that was taken in the Coker-against-Georgia brief. Q.

The Reaper
01-26-2006, 12:29
On page 22 of that brief, a heading underlined says, "The death sentence for rape is impermissible under the Eighth Amendment because it does not meet 'contemporary standards' regarding the infliction of punishment and is inadvisable since it diminishes legal protection afforded rape victims."

It seems to me it deals directly with the issue of the Eighth Amendment. A. Senator Grassley, I urge you to read the entire Coker-against-Georgia brief. I think you will find it to be exactly what I represented it to be. One of the reasons why rapes went unpunished, why women who had been raped suffered the indignity of having the police refuse to prosecute, was statutes of that order. . . . I've written on the subject of women who have been raped and society's attitude toward them. Coker against Georgia fits into that category, and it must not be taken out of context to say anything about any other subject than the one that was addressed in that brief. And that was that the death penalty for rape -- the origin of that and the perpetuation of it -- was harmful to women, far from resulting in convictions. . . . It was a contribution to the proper way to look at this terrible crime. It was a contribution to the end of thinking of women as damaged goods because they had been raped. That's what I think about it. On Free Expression Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, asked whether freedom of expression was still an evolving right under the Constitution. A. Free expression, I think, was an idea from the start, even before the limitations on it -- the Alien and Sedition Act, which I think never was reversed by the Supreme Court but certainly has been reversed by the history of our country since that time. The idea was there from the beginning, -- though I mentioned the Revolutionary War cartoon, "Liberty of speech for those who speak the speech of liberty" -- the idea was always there. The great opposition to the government as censor was always there. But it is only in our time that that right has come to be recognized as fully as it is today with the line of cases ending in Brandenburg v. Ohio -- truly recognizes that free speech means not freedom of thought and speech for those with whom we agree, but freedom of expression for the expression we hate. I think that there are always new contexts that will be presented but that the dissenting positions of Holmes and Brandeis have become the law that everyone accepts. I think that is the case today. Q. What about in the area of entertainment? A. Well, now we're getting into more slippery territory. It depends what kind of entertainment, I suppose. You know that the Supreme Court has a series of decisions about the speech that's in the kind of nether land between fully protected speech and unprotected speech. Indecent speech -- you have -- it's not subject to -- that is within the First Amendment but not entitled to the same level of protection as other speech. The Supreme Court has had decisions about the -- what do they call? -- adult movie theaters, that those can be zoned for the safety of the neighborhood. They can either be -- a municipality can decide to spread them out so they won't be clustered or can put them all together in one combat zone. So there is a difference between the degree of respect of the kind of knowledge, information -- political speech on the one hand; then, as you know, there is this category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment called obscenity. And then there is this category of speech that's not out of the ball park but that is subject to regulation, indecent speech. That's an area that I can't talk about in specific terms because it is something that is -- has come before my court, is coming before the Supreme Court in connection with broadcast regulation. But I do recognize that there are those -- there is that category of speech that does not get the full protection of the First Amendment but is not left out entirely.


NATIONAL DESK | July 23, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; Today's Hearing Will Be Closed

When the Senate Judiciary Committee reconvenes Friday morning to consider the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg it will do so in a session closed to the press and public. The closed hearing is one of the changes put in place by the committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, to avoid some of the turmoil that occurred two years ago during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas.

NATIONAL DESK | July 23, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; GINSBURG DEFLECTS PRESSURE TO TALK ON DEATH PENALTY
By NEIL A. LEWIS,

Despite increasing pressure from Republican senators to spell out her positions on controversial issues, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg today resisted giving her views on the death penalty and gay rights as she completed her third day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. With little suspense over the outcome -- she is expected to be confirmed easily as the nation's 107th Supreme Court Justice -- the day's hearing was highlighted by a display of just how much the committee's Democratic and Republican members have traded roles since Bill Clinton's election. [ Excerpts from the hearing, page A16. ]

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; A Judicious TV Image, With a Flair for Detail
By WALTER GOODMAN

It was, finally, a one-woman performance. After the canned tributes and lame jokes, the flourishes of gallantry and strained bonhomie among the senators, all that mattered was the image being sent forth by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If there is such a thing as a judicial temperament and it can be recognized on the screen, Judge Ginsburg surely has it. The unshowy mien; the moderate language; the carefully focused answers; the disinclination or inability to break into arias, even when lured in that direction by the friendly Senator Edward M. Kennedy's insistent inquiries into how she was "sensitized" to what she calls gender-based inequalities, and, especially, a determination to stick with specifics when all around were goading her on to generalizations: all bespoke a woman with a vocation. As she instructed Senator Strom Thurmond, "Judges work from the particular case, not the general proposition."

NATIONAL DESK | July 22, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; A Sense of Judicial Limits
By LINDA GREENHOUSE,

After two days of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has emerged as something of a rare creature in the modern judicial lexicon: a judicial-restraint liberal. As one who believes that the judiciary should ordinarily take a back seat to the elected branches of government, she made easy conversation with the conservative Republicans on the Senate Judiciary committee, who have spent years exhorting judicial nominees to interpret the law and not make the law.

NATIONAL DESK | July 22, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; GINSBURG AFFIRMS RIGHT OF A WOMAN TO HAVE ABORTION
By NEIL A. LEWIS,

Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg today offered a strong and unambiguous defense of a woman's right to abortion, saying it was based on the Constitution's explicit guarantee of equal protection as well as an unstated right of privacy. "It is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision maker, that her choice be controlling," Judge Ginsburg told the Senate Judiciary Committee on the second day of her confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. "If you impose restraints, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex. The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality."

NATIONAL DESK | July 22, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; Excerpts From Senate Hearing on the Ginsburg Nomination

Following are excerpts from yesterday's hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to become Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, as transcribed by the Federal News Service, a private transcription service: ON ABORTION Senator Hank Brown, Republican of Colorado, asked Judge Ginsburg about her article suggesting that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment might better protect women's right to abortion than the privacy rights invoked in the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

NATIONAL DESK | July 21, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT; GINSBURG PROMISES JUDICIAL RESTRAINT IF SHE JOINS COURT
By NEIL A. LEWIS,

Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Clinton's nominee to the Supreme Court, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that she would be neither a conservative nor a liberal on the Court, but someone who ruled cautiously, without reaching out to write broad principles into the law. In her opening statement to the committee, which began its hearings today on the nomination, Judge Ginsburg also sought to set a clear boundary on what kind of questions she was willing to answer. She said she would not discuss specific cases or issues that might come before her.

NATIONAL DESK | July 21, 1993
THE SUPREME COURT: Reporter's Notebook; Hearing Without Strife Brings Joy to Senators
By LINDA GREENHOUSE,

Drama was not much in evidence as the latest Supreme Court confirmation hearing got under way today, but memory was. That was apparent from the moment the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman, Joseph R. Biden Jr., greeted the nominee, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the midst of extending a formulaic "welcome," he interrupted himself with a heartfelt "believe me, you are welcome here this morning." Mr. Biden said the lack of controversy surrounding this nomination was "the most wonderful thing that's happened to me" since becoming chairman of the committee in 1987.

Roguish Lawyer
01-26-2006, 15:03
Is water wet?

one-zero
01-26-2006, 15:36
If only more citizens would take the time, give a shit, and do that kind of simple research and comparison...

It's too easy to remember the last soundbite rather than formulate an opinion based on facts.
These moonbats (NYT and ilk) are lucky I have to work for a living, cause if I won the lottery I'd pay for ad space/time and put this, and like info, in people's face as much as possible - that is when I wasn't running my American CIDG program, "testing" new guns, and other nefarious activities:cool:

Good job TR, wish some of our journalists would bring these points out more. Some touch on them, but there's nothing like using the enemies own indisputable evidence against him...
regards, 1-0