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Biased Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies; Bush Nominee, John Roberts, Is Much Worse!
posted Monday, 12 September 2005
Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies of Cancer
Former Chief Justice, Rehnquist
Sun Sep 4, 7:22 AM
WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who oversaw the high court's conservative shift and presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton, died Saturday evening. He was 80 years old and had spent 33 years on the Supreme Court.
Rehnquist's death opens a rare second vacancy on the nation's highest court and gives President Bush, whose election Rehnquist helped decide, an opportunity shape the makeup of the court for years to come.
Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1971 by President Nixon and took his seat on Jan. 7, 1972. He was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986.
The death leaves Bush with his second court opening within four months and sets up what's expected to be an even more bruising Senate confirmation battle than that of John Roberts.
It was not immediately clear what impact Rehnquist's death would have on confirmation hearings for Roberts, scheduled to begin Tuesday.
The last time there were simultaneous vacancies at the court was 1971, when Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan retired in September, about a week apart. Rehnquist, then a Justice Department lawyer, urged the Nixon administration to move fast in replacing them and wound up being appointed to Harlan's seat himself.
Rehnquist presided over Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999, helped settle the 2000 presidential election in Bush's favor, and fashioned decisions over the years that diluted the powers of the federal government while strengthening those of the states.
The president could elevate to chief justice one of the court's conservatives, such as Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but it's more likely he will choose someone from outside the court.
Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and federal courts of appeals judges J. Michael Luttig, Edith Clement, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza, and James Harvie Wilkinson III. Others mentioned are former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, lawyer Miguel Estrada and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson.
On the court's final meeting day of the last term, June 27, Rehnquist appeared gaunt and had difficulty as he announced the last decision of the term - an opinion he wrote upholding a Ten Commandments display in Texas. His breathing was labored, and he kept the explanation short.
In 1999, he presided over Clinton's impeachment trial from the presiding officer's chair seat in the Senate, something only one other chief justice had done. A year later he was one of five Republican-nominated justices who voted to stop presidential ballot recounts in Florida, effectively deciding the election for Bush over Democrat Al Gore.
Rehnquist, who championed states' rights and helped speed up executions, is the only member still on the court who voted on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion. He opposed that decision, writing: "Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."
He believed there was a place for some religion in government. He wrote the 5-4 decision in 2002 that said parents may use public tax money to send their children to religious schools. Two years later, he was distressed when the court passed up a chance to declare that the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is constitutional.
Rehnquist leaves without accomplishing the legal revolution he had hoped for as the nation's 16th chief justice. As Rehnquist read it, the Constitution lets states outlaw abortion and sponsor prayers in public schools but bars them from giving special, affirmative-action preferences to racial minorities and women. The court he led disagreed.
In 2003, for example, the court preserved affirmative action in college admissions and issued a landmark gay rights ruling that struck down laws criminalizing gay sex, both over Rehnquist's objections. And last year, Rehnquist disagreed when the court ruled that the government cannot indefinitely detain terrorism suspects and deny them access to courts.
For years he was known as the "Lone Ranger" for his many dissents on a then-liberal court that left him ideologically isolated on the far right. Succeeding appointments of conservative justices and Rehnquist's elevation by President Reagan to the federal judiciary's top job in 1986 transformed his role into one of leading and nurturing an increasingly conservative Supreme Court.
Rehnquist was the force behind the court's push for greater states' rights. The chief justice has been the leader of five conservatives, sometimes called "the Rehnquist five," who generally advocate limited federal government interference.
Those five - Rehnquist and O'Connor, Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Thomas - have voted together to strike down federal laws intended to protect female victims of violent crime and keep guns away from schools, on grounds that those issues were better dealt with at the local level. They split, however, in a recent decision upholding the federal government's right to ban sick people from smoking marijuana even in states that have laws allowing the treatment.
The Rehnquist five were together in the Bush v. Gore decision, which critics predicted would tarnish the court's hard-won luster.
Rehnquist was closing in on the record for longest-serving justice. Only four men were on the court 34 years or longer.
http://www.optonline.net/News/Article/Feeds?CID=type%3Dxml%26channel%3D32%26article%3D15718168
Tabacco is sad he’s gone, but only because Bush is President and will nominate someone, even more distasteful, to fill Rehnquist’s spot. Rehnquist was evil and biased; but with George W. Bush in the White House, the next nominee will be further to the right and much worse.
2 members of the “All Liars Club”
If George W. Bush nominated John Roberts for the Supreme Court, how unbiased could Roberts be! Now that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died, the Roberts nomination takes on urgent and deadly implications. Bush has now nominated Roberts for Chief Justice. One more deadly act by an unconscionable President!
It really doesn’t matter whom Bush nominates for the Court; whoever it is will roll back advances made over the last 50 years: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, while returning “States’ Wrongs” to America. When you elect a Republican to the White House, any Republican, you cede the most important single power to the enemy: the right to nominate Supreme Court justices. These Republican conservative appointments wait out an 8-year Clinton presidency or inconveniently die, so that a Republican President will be able to appoint their individual successors. The Republicans realized a long time ago how important the Supreme Court’s composition is to everyone. The only solution is to N-E-V-E-R elect another Republican or conservative to the Presidency. Even then, it will take the better part of 50 years to clean out the residue of this right wing, reactionary, biased coterie.
John Roberts’ Hidden Secrets
Conflict of Interest? Roberts' Interviews with White House Officials Prior to Gitmo Ruling Raise Questions About Impartiality
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/1331253
New details have emerged concerning the timing of John Roberts' interviews for his Supreme Court post, with senior Bush administration officials, which call into question his impartiality in a crucial case concerning military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. We speak with Georgetown University law professor David Luban and Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
We turn now to the latest on Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. Roberts received a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on Wednesday, clearing another hurdle in his path to the nation's highest court.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it was "regrettable" the ABA did not review Roberts' documents that have been provided to the Senate.
Leahy on Tuesday said the documents "paint a picture of John Roberts as an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then and now." A huge volume of papers relating to Roberts' work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s is scheduled to be released today.
In another Roberts’ development, new details are emerging over a potentially serious conflict of interest. Since 2003, Roberts served on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
As we reported previously, Roberts was part of a three-judge panel that handed President Bush an important victory the week before he announced Roberts' nomination to the bench. The appeals court ruled in the Hamdan V. Rumsfeld case that the military tribunals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed. The decision also found that Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoner-of-war status as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.
Well, new details have emerged concerning the timing of Roberts' interviews for the Supreme Court post with senior Bush administration officials, which call into question his impartiality in the Hamdan case. Roberts’ answers to a Senate questionnaire reveal that he met with Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, six days before hearing oral arguments. The Hamdan case was argued on behalf of the administration by a top Gonzales deputy, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kiesler.
In addition to Gonzales, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney, the vice president's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove and White House legal council Harriet Miers. And, on the day the ruling was issued in favor of the administration, Bush himself conducted the final job interview with Roberts.
Salon.com describes it like this: "Imagine that you're a party to a lawsuit. Now imagine that, once the case is over and you've lost, you find out that the judge who ruled against you was interviewing for a job with your opponent at the same time he was presiding over your case. Would you feel, just maybe, that the judge had a conflict of interest? And how would you feel knowing that the judge got the job he was seeking -- and that the job was a lifetime appointment as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court?"
The truth about this “deal” between the President of the United States and his nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is probably unverifiable. Presidents nowadays are more careful than Nixon was. But I am certain that we are dealing here with a tit-for-tat deal. Roberts ruled the way Bush wanted; and Bush taps Roberts for the Supreme Court and ultimately Chief Justice. America is a dirty business with George W. Bush in the White House.
David Luban, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He co-wrote an article for online magazine Slate titled 'Improper Advances; Talking Dream Jobs with the Judge out of Court'.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights
www.democracynow.org
Improper Advances
Talking dream jobs with the judge out of court.
By Stephen Gillers, David J. Luban, and Steven Lubet
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005, at 11:50 AM PT
The appearance of partiality?
Four days before President Bush nominated John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court on July 19, an appeals court panel of three judges, including Judge Roberts, handed the Bush administration a big victory in a hotly contested challenge to the president's military commissions. The challenge was brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee. President Bush was a defendant in the case because he had personally, in writing, found "reason to believe" that Hamdan was a terrorist subject to military tribunals. The appeals court upheld the rules the president had authorized for these military commissions, and it rejected Hamdan's human rights claims—including claims for protection under the Geneva Conventions.
At the time, the close proximity of the court's decision and the Roberts nomination suggested no appearance of impropriety. Roberts had been assigned to hear the appeal back in December, and it was argued on April 7. Surely he had decided the case long before the administration first approached him about replacing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had announced her retirement on July 1. As it turns out, however, the timing was not so simple.
The nominee's Aug. 2 answers to a Senate questionnaire reveal that Roberts had several interviews with administration officials contemporaneous with the progress of the Hamdan appeal. One occurred even before the appeal was argued. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales interviewed the judge on April 1. Back then, it was an ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, not Justice O'Connor, who was expected to retire. The attorney general, of course, heads the Justice Department, which represents the defendants in Hamdan's case. And as White House counsel, Gonzales had advised the president on the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, which were an issue in the case.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2124603/?nav=tap3
PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING WEBPAGE AND SIGN THE PETITION OF ‘DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA’ RE BUSH’S NOMINEES FOR THE SUPREME COURT!
http://tools.democracyforamerica.com/petition/norubberstamps/
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Former Chief Justice, Rehnquist
Sun Sep 4, 7:22 AM
WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who oversaw the high court's conservative shift and presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton, died Saturday evening. He was 80 years old and had spent 33 years on the Supreme Court.
Rehnquist's death opens a rare second vacancy on the nation's highest court and gives President Bush, whose election Rehnquist helped decide, an opportunity shape the makeup of the court for years to come.
Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1971 by President Nixon and took his seat on Jan. 7, 1972. He was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986.
The death leaves Bush with his second court opening within four months and sets up what's expected to be an even more bruising Senate confirmation battle than that of John Roberts.
It was not immediately clear what impact Rehnquist's death would have on confirmation hearings for Roberts, scheduled to begin Tuesday.
The last time there were simultaneous vacancies at the court was 1971, when Justices Hugo Black and John Marshall Harlan retired in September, about a week apart. Rehnquist, then a Justice Department lawyer, urged the Nixon administration to move fast in replacing them and wound up being appointed to Harlan's seat himself.
Rehnquist presided over Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999, helped settle the 2000 presidential election in Bush's favor, and fashioned decisions over the years that diluted the powers of the federal government while strengthening those of the states.
The president could elevate to chief justice one of the court's conservatives, such as Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, but it's more likely he will choose someone from outside the court.
Possible replacements include Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and federal courts of appeals judges J. Michael Luttig, Edith Clement, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Michael McConnell, Emilio Garza, and James Harvie Wilkinson III. Others mentioned are former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, lawyer Miguel Estrada and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson.
On the court's final meeting day of the last term, June 27, Rehnquist appeared gaunt and had difficulty as he announced the last decision of the term - an opinion he wrote upholding a Ten Commandments display in Texas. His breathing was labored, and he kept the explanation short.
In 1999, he presided over Clinton's impeachment trial from the presiding officer's chair seat in the Senate, something only one other chief justice had done. A year later he was one of five Republican-nominated justices who voted to stop presidential ballot recounts in Florida, effectively deciding the election for Bush over Democrat Al Gore.
Rehnquist, who championed states' rights and helped speed up executions, is the only member still on the court who voted on Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion. He opposed that decision, writing: "Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the `right' to an abortion is not so universally accepted as (Roe) would have us believe."
He believed there was a place for some religion in government. He wrote the 5-4 decision in 2002 that said parents may use public tax money to send their children to religious schools. Two years later, he was distressed when the court passed up a chance to declare that the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is constitutional.
Rehnquist leaves without accomplishing the legal revolution he had hoped for as the nation's 16th chief justice. As Rehnquist read it, the Constitution lets states outlaw abortion and sponsor prayers in public schools but bars them from giving special, affirmative-action preferences to racial minorities and women. The court he led disagreed.
In 2003, for example, the court preserved affirmative action in college admissions and issued a landmark gay rights ruling that struck down laws criminalizing gay sex, both over Rehnquist's objections. And last year, Rehnquist disagreed when the court ruled that the government cannot indefinitely detain terrorism suspects and deny them access to courts.
For years he was known as the "Lone Ranger" for his many dissents on a then-liberal court that left him ideologically isolated on the far right. Succeeding appointments of conservative justices and Rehnquist's elevation by President Reagan to the federal judiciary's top job in 1986 transformed his role into one of leading and nurturing an increasingly conservative Supreme Court.
Rehnquist was the force behind the court's push for greater states' rights. The chief justice has been the leader of five conservatives, sometimes called "the Rehnquist five," who generally advocate limited federal government interference.
Those five - Rehnquist and O'Connor, Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Thomas - have voted together to strike down federal laws intended to protect female victims of violent crime and keep guns away from schools, on grounds that those issues were better dealt with at the local level. They split, however, in a recent decision upholding the federal government's right to ban sick people from smoking marijuana even in states that have laws allowing the treatment.
The Rehnquist five were together in the Bush v. Gore decision, which critics predicted would tarnish the court's hard-won luster.
Rehnquist was closing in on the record for longest-serving justice. Only four men were on the court 34 years or longer.
http://www.optonline.net/News/Article/Feeds?CID=type%3Dxml%26channel%3D32%26article%3D15718168
Tabacco is sad he’s gone, but only because Bush is President and will nominate someone, even more distasteful, to fill Rehnquist’s spot. Rehnquist was evil and biased; but with George W. Bush in the White House, the next nominee will be further to the right and much worse.
2 members of the “All Liars Club”
If George W. Bush nominated John Roberts for the Supreme Court, how unbiased could Roberts be! Now that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died, the Roberts nomination takes on urgent and deadly implications. Bush has now nominated Roberts for Chief Justice. One more deadly act by an unconscionable President!
It really doesn’t matter whom Bush nominates for the Court; whoever it is will roll back advances made over the last 50 years: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, while returning “States’ Wrongs” to America. When you elect a Republican to the White House, any Republican, you cede the most important single power to the enemy: the right to nominate Supreme Court justices. These Republican conservative appointments wait out an 8-year Clinton presidency or inconveniently die, so that a Republican President will be able to appoint their individual successors. The Republicans realized a long time ago how important the Supreme Court’s composition is to everyone. The only solution is to N-E-V-E-R elect another Republican or conservative to the Presidency. Even then, it will take the better part of 50 years to clean out the residue of this right wing, reactionary, biased coterie.
John Roberts’ Hidden Secrets
Conflict of Interest? Roberts' Interviews with White House Officials Prior to Gitmo Ruling Raise Questions About Impartiality
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/18/1331253
New details have emerged concerning the timing of John Roberts' interviews for his Supreme Court post, with senior Bush administration officials, which call into question his impartiality in a crucial case concerning military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. We speak with Georgetown University law professor David Luban and Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
We turn now to the latest on Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. Roberts received a "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association on Wednesday, clearing another hurdle in his path to the nation's highest court.
Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it was "regrettable" the ABA did not review Roberts' documents that have been provided to the Senate.
Leahy on Tuesday said the documents "paint a picture of John Roberts as an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then and now." A huge volume of papers relating to Roberts' work as a lawyer in the Reagan administration in the 1980s is scheduled to be released today.
In another Roberts’ development, new details are emerging over a potentially serious conflict of interest. Since 2003, Roberts served on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
As we reported previously, Roberts was part of a three-judge panel that handed President Bush an important victory the week before he announced Roberts' nomination to the bench. The appeals court ruled in the Hamdan V. Rumsfeld case that the military tribunals of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could proceed. The decision also found that Bush could deny terrorism captives prisoner-of-war status as outlined by the Geneva Conventions.
Well, new details have emerged concerning the timing of Roberts' interviews for the Supreme Court post with senior Bush administration officials, which call into question his impartiality in the Hamdan case. Roberts’ answers to a Senate questionnaire reveal that he met with Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, six days before hearing oral arguments. The Hamdan case was argued on behalf of the administration by a top Gonzales deputy, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kiesler.
In addition to Gonzales, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney, the vice president's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove and White House legal council Harriet Miers. And, on the day the ruling was issued in favor of the administration, Bush himself conducted the final job interview with Roberts.
Salon.com describes it like this: "Imagine that you're a party to a lawsuit. Now imagine that, once the case is over and you've lost, you find out that the judge who ruled against you was interviewing for a job with your opponent at the same time he was presiding over your case. Would you feel, just maybe, that the judge had a conflict of interest? And how would you feel knowing that the judge got the job he was seeking -- and that the job was a lifetime appointment as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court?"
The truth about this “deal” between the President of the United States and his nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is probably unverifiable. Presidents nowadays are more careful than Nixon was. But I am certain that we are dealing here with a tit-for-tat deal. Roberts ruled the way Bush wanted; and Bush taps Roberts for the Supreme Court and ultimately Chief Justice. America is a dirty business with George W. Bush in the White House.
David Luban, Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He co-wrote an article for online magazine Slate titled 'Improper Advances; Talking Dream Jobs with the Judge out of Court'.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights
www.democracynow.org
Improper Advances
Talking dream jobs with the judge out of court.
By Stephen Gillers, David J. Luban, and Steven Lubet
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005, at 11:50 AM PT
The appearance of partiality?
Four days before President Bush nominated John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court on July 19, an appeals court panel of three judges, including Judge Roberts, handed the Bush administration a big victory in a hotly contested challenge to the president's military commissions. The challenge was brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Guantanamo detainee. President Bush was a defendant in the case because he had personally, in writing, found "reason to believe" that Hamdan was a terrorist subject to military tribunals. The appeals court upheld the rules the president had authorized for these military commissions, and it rejected Hamdan's human rights claims—including claims for protection under the Geneva Conventions.
At the time, the close proximity of the court's decision and the Roberts nomination suggested no appearance of impropriety. Roberts had been assigned to hear the appeal back in December, and it was argued on April 7. Surely he had decided the case long before the administration first approached him about replacing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who had announced her retirement on July 1. As it turns out, however, the timing was not so simple.
The nominee's Aug. 2 answers to a Senate questionnaire reveal that Roberts had several interviews with administration officials contemporaneous with the progress of the Hamdan appeal. One occurred even before the appeal was argued. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales interviewed the judge on April 1. Back then, it was an ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, not Justice O'Connor, who was expected to retire. The attorney general, of course, heads the Justice Department, which represents the defendants in Hamdan's case. And as White House counsel, Gonzales had advised the president on the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, which were an issue in the case.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2124603/?nav=tap3
PLEASE GO TO THE FOLLOWING WEBPAGE AND SIGN THE PETITION OF ‘DEMOCRACY FOR AMERICA’ RE BUSH’S NOMINEES FOR THE SUPREME COURT!
http://tools.democracyforamerica.com/petition/norubberstamps/
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
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