rssWon’t Somebody Think of the White Men?
Thursday, November 05, 2009 at 4:26 pm
- 6 Comments
From the conservative Committee for Justice, a key player in judicial nomination fights, comes this reaction to the nominations of one Hispanic and one African-American judge to circuit court slots.
Does President Obama or his advisors believe that southern white men are likely to be bigoted, making them unfit to serve on the second most powerful court in the land? We hope not and readily concede that it is difficult to know if any such stereotype lurks in the White House. The absence of southern white male circuit nominees could, instead, be an innocent coincidence or the not-so-innocent byproduct of a judicial selection process dominated by racial and gender preferences.
But regardless of the reason for the pattern we noted in 2007 and again now, even the appearance that Democrats are biased against southern white men is a potential problem for the party generally, and for President Obama’s goal of transcending old racial divisions.
Read the whole thing, which puts this in better context but still comes off as a little tone-deaf.
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Comment posted November 5, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
I wonder if this ever bothered them:
Rather than openly challenge President Clinton's nominees on the floor, Republicans decided to deny them Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Between 1996 and 2000, 20 of Bill Clinton's appeals-court nominees were denied hearings, including Elena Kagan, now dean of the Harvard Law School, and many other women and minorities. In 1999, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch refused to hold hearings for almost six months on any of 16 circuit-court and 31 district-court nominations Clinton had sent up. Three appeals-court nominees who did manage to obtain a hearing in Clinton's second term were denied a committee vote, including Allen R. Snyder, a distinguished Washington lawyer, Clinton White House aide, and former Rehnquist law clerk, who drew lavish praise at his hearing — but never got a committee vote. Some 45 district-court nominees were also denied hearings, and two more were afforded hearings but not a committee vote.Even votes that did occur were often delayed for months and even years. In late 1999, New Hampshire Republican Bob Smith blocked a vote on 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Richard Paez for months by putting an anonymous hold on the nomination. When Majority Leader Trent Lott could no longer preserve the hold, Smith and 13 other Republicans tried to mount a filibuster against the vote, but cloture was voted and Paez easily confirmed. It had been over four years since his nomination.
Or this:
But when the Republicans took over the White House in 2001 and the Senate in 2003, things sped up. In 2003, Hatch announced that he would abandon the “blue-slip system” he had insisted on since 1995, whereby a senator could block action on a nominee from his or her home state; North Carolina's Jesse Helms had used this power to block every one of three black candidates to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Anonymous floor holds were abolished, as was the rule requiring that at least one minority-party senator on the Judiciary Committee must agree to a vote on a nominee if any committee member objects. These rules changes left the Democrats with only the filibuster.
Of course, those three weren't white, so perhaps they don't count.
Hell, Bush installed Jay Bybee on the Ninth Circuit; did that bother them? For anyone to complain “that neither party should be allowed to cynically and easily reap the rewards of its own obstruction,” seems just a tad too convenient.
Comment posted November 6, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
some Southern white men are secure enough not to feel threatened by equality. Some.
Comment posted November 8, 2009 @ 12:52 am
Grown men scaring themselves like that. These boys surely haven't been out much their entire lives.
Funny how they can't get past the idea that control is a fallacy. Adherence to failed policies of the past is the real culprit, here, maybe with a dash of racism to round it off.
They were wrong in the 1700's, 1800's, and they're wrong now.
Comment posted November 8, 2009 @ 5:52 am
Grown men scaring themselves like that. These boys surely haven't been out much their entire lives.
Funny how they can't get past the idea that control is a fallacy. Adherence to failed policies of the past is the real culprit, here, maybe with a dash of racism to round it off.
They were wrong in the 1700's, 1800's, and they're wrong now.
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