Robert H. Bork, RIP

[PSM]

Link:http://www.philly.com/philly/obituar..._Bork__85.html

McLEAN, Va. - Robert H. Bork, 85, who stepped in to fire the Watergate prosecutor at Richard Nixon's behest and whose failed 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, died Wednesday from heart complications at a hospital in Arlington, Va.

Brilliant, blunt and piercingly witty, Robert Heron Bork had a long career in the law that took him from respected academic to a totem of conservative grievance.

Along the way, Judge Bork was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for Nixon when, as the third-ranking official at the Justice Department, he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had resigned rather than fire Cox. The next in line, William Ruckelshaus, refused to fire Cox and was himself fired.

Judge Bork's drubbing during his Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.

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His 1996 book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, was an acid indictment of what Judge Bork viewed as the crumbling ethics of modern society and the morally bankrupt politics of the left.

Was he right: http://www.1045wfla.com/cc-common/ma...ticle=10651697

Rest in Peace, Judge Bork.

Pat