Leahy Will Vote To Confirm Roberts

[Gary Sisco]

So says today's NYT. Leahy commented that his decision wouldn't be popular with his constituents, which is pretty funny, since he's in his last term (he had planned to make the last term his last until Junior was elected, when he changed his mind). It'll make for some howls in VT but not from me. Appointing judges is one of the spoils of political victory. The (wrongly named) conservatives in the US have put in serious organizing time over the past quarter century, while their opponents (of all stripes) have not, and hence they now get to taste the results of their lack of political work.

Their opponents could have done the same but chose not to. There was nothing at all standing in their way but their own lack of political will and work. So, that's the breaks of the game. Holding views isn't organizing, nor is bitching making politics, and voting is the last act of a political citizen, not the first.

Personally speaking, I have no problems with the man, as I don't believe that judges should be required to hold one or another ideology. It's enough for me if I think they have the mental prowess to understand constitutional issues and make rational and, to the extent possible in political decisions, objective decisions based on the Constitution, not on this or that couple of issues.

Bottom line, I find him no more or less trustworthy than millions of other lawyers. Which isn't saying much, of course (lawyers will say or write whatever they think will forward the interests of whoever's paying them) but ace auto mechanics, honest outlaws, and etc., don't get nominated to the court.

It was an extremely wise strategic decision on the part of the wrongly named conservatives to appoint a man Roberts' age. He'll serve for many years, to the extent that these things can be known. I'm sure it also royally pissed off Scalia, though, so I predict some unpredictable votes on his part as payback.

[frankiepop]

one thing i have learned from the roberts hearing is what grandstanding and ineffective gas bags leahy and schumer are.

Heard about this yesterday on the radio while I was out on errands. (there's that lag I was talking about, Gary. Not that it really makes a difference in this case)


There was some reporter on cB.S. news who posited that Democrats would pass Roberts through with little dissent due to the fact he's replacing a conservative justice. The major dogfight will come for SDO'C spot. Being a somewhat unpredictable voter, her position on the court is the one that the democrats are going to fight hard and nasty over. Giving Roberts the nod will give them more political credibility when they dig in in the trenches.

Sounds very plausible to me.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

Bush will nominate a "hard right" candidate. Think about it. When it comes to judges, he's gotten everything he wanted.

No question what kind of judge he'll nominate.


But it'll be ugly. Nothing like what we just saw with the Roberts hearings.

[LennyH]

I wonder how many Dems will vote against Roberts because they think he's a bad choice and how many because they want to create some obligatory dissent. It's easy for a few grandstanding blow-hards to vote against him when they know it will not affect the outcome. And I wonder whether they really even believe he's a bad choice. They've gotta know that the chances that Bush would ever nominate someone more palatable to them are pretty slim.

All of the hub-bub about Roberts not stating his position on key issues (pretty much every issue for that matter) is silly. People are kidding themselves if they think that any nominee in the future, Rep or Dem, will go any farther. If they do, I question their intelligence.

The hearings are only good for sizing up a person's intelligence and knowledge of the law and to see if they can handle the pressure. Roberts shined in this respect.

[Monte Smith]

The Judiciary Committee has broken 13-5 for Roberts.

Yes
Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Charles Grassley (R- IA)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Mike DeWine (R-OH)
Herbert Kohl (D-WI)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)

No
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Ted Kennedy (DUI)
Joe Biden (D-Del)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Oh my.

How shocking.



LennyH, good post. Naturally, there will have to be a few partyliners. But I think Roberts impressed a lot of people on both sides of the aisle.

Well, except for mi amigo Harry Reid.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Ted Kennedy (DUI)

That one cracks me up every time, no matter how old it is.

Oh sure.

That lame old joke cracks you up, but my Harry Reid bit goes completely unnoticed?

Lame, jmj, really lame.

[jesus marion joseph]

Don't mistake my lack of response to your Harry Reid joke as a failure to notice. It's more like a tactful decision to refrain from comment.

Weak...............

[Gary Sisco]

I'd tend to agree with the gasbag assessment of Leahy, on an individual level. On a political level, as a very senior Senator (he was already in office while I was in the service and I'm 51, so that's a long time), he's easily one of the most powerful people in the world. I'd be hardpressed to name any single group of people more powerful than the US Senate, numbering only 100.

He was a very effective prosecutor pre-election, however, and he understands constitutional issues as much or more than anyone else you can name in DC.* If he didn't, and if he wasn't as powerful as he is, I'd not have started the thread. When the vote comes out of committee with a "yes" vote to confirm from the senior Demopub, it will be answered by a good many Demopubs on the floor. Such is the way the committee system works.

Like I say, I have no beef. Roberts seems as reasonable a guy as any you'll find in those circles (which isn't saying much). The wrongly named conservatives are reaping the fruits of a quarter century's political organizing work. So that's the way it goes. Bitching doesn't alter that simple fact and nothing at all stood in the way of other political factions from doing the same. It was their choice not to.

*I'm not a big Leahy fan and, on a personal level, we dislike each other. In VT, if you lead any kind of public life, it is possible, unlike most places, to know guys in his position on a personal level and vice versa. There's significantly less than 650,000 people here, so in a way it's no different than the politics of a small city, far's knowing who's who goes. My companeros and I gave him a hellish time during Reagan's terrorist campaign in Nicaragua, when Leahy was a senior member of the Select Committee on Intelligence and so knew exactly what was going on, including North and others' completely illegal "covert" operations. One time he got so angry with us for knowing so many things that were supposed to be classified -- meaning secret from people in the US -- there wasn't much secret in Central America, if you were there -- that he literally stormed out of his own office, red in the face angry, with veins sticking out of his neck.

But in his favor, in the 70s in VT there was a really dirty cop/narc-for-hire, who put dozens of people in jail for entirely baseless drug charges, using his own drugs as evidence. Leahy, in his prosecutor mode, then, pre-Senate, finally became suspicious. How come this guy makes so many busts compared to others? How come the people he busts actually do seem to be not guilty? Maybe they are in fact being framed, as they all maintain. So he hired his own narcs to come up from New York to do a sting on the dirty narc, and busted him. The governor, once reality was introduced to the situation, pardoned everyone who'd been busted by the guy. Some had done some significant time for nothing at all (and some of those never recovered from the experience) and a good friend of mine lost his business and was exiled from Vermont by a judge. His business was the best hipster bar, ever, in Vermont, and was a prime target of the powers-that-be that were paying this guy to clean out the hipsters from the county. He came back from exile after being pardoned but he never got his business back, nor was he ever compensated by the state for having seized it from him for no reason at all.

That bust alone, since most of those busted by the dirty narc were good friends, won Leahy more than one vote from me, including his first, victorious run for the Senate.

All other things aside, I also admire him for re-upping for another six years when he had planned, publicly, to retire, pre-Bush appointment. Six years is a hell of a long time when you're his age. It's a goodly chunk of any reasonable amount of time he might expect to live, by then. That decision alone shows that the man is willing to sacrifice much for political (as opposed to the normal personal ambitions) reasons and principle. He'd already served long enough as a Senator to have fulfilled any kind of personal ambition and then some.

So, I can respect the guy on some levels and not on others, even though I dislike him. There are a lot of people who have my respect but not my personal liking; the two things don't go together, with me, necessarily.

[jesus marion joseph]

I think the real reason he re-upped was a last-ditch effort to have Lake Champlain classified as one of the Great Lakes!

Those points you make about Leahy's dedication are all very good ones, Gary. I hadn't really stopped to look at it from that angle.


I, too, respect him for dedicating another six years of his life to swimming through a bunch of bureaucratic, and sometimes pointless, horseshit when he could retire and live a nice peaceful life in the country side somewhere.

[Monte Smith]

I'm curious about how Chris D. feels about both his Wisconsin senators voting for Roberts? I know Chris is a solid Dem, but don't know how he feels about Roberts because he has voted neither yay or nay on the Roberts poll on this board.

[rollhead]

You can't be seriously discussing this, can you?

You are analyzing this like medieval theologians deciding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

It was clear from the git-go that that the Democrats are getting a bargain on this one, and weren't going to raise a serious stink.

They were rubbing their hands together with glee because Bush didn't do what they expected and send up a knuckle dragger.

The stink will come if Bush thinks he can get someone like Roy Moore to take Sandra Day O'Connor's position.

[frankiepop]

I'd tend to agree with the gasbag assessment of Leahy, on an individual level. On a political level, as a very senior Senator...

to a point, but leahy waste valuable time pontificating on his own questions, and i have no doubt why...leahy and are schumer are more interested in keeping the attention on themselves rather than gathering information....


compare a truly serious senator from wisconsin...feingold....with prepared concise questions.....

Oy................

[patricia]

Originally Posted by rollhead

You can't be seriously discussing this, can you?

You are analyzing this like medieval theologians deciding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

It was clear from the git-go that that the Democrats are getting a bargain on this one, and weren't going to raise a serious stink.

They were rubbing their hands together with glee because Bush didn't do what they expected and send up a knuckle dragger.

The stink will come if Bush thinks he can get someone like Roy Moore to take Sandra Day O'Connor's position.

I think that the Dems are doing exactly what they should do, strategically. Roberts will get their support, precisely because they are readying themselves for whoever is proposed to fill Justice O'Connor's slot. If they oppose both Roberts, who on his face seems acceptable, it will be much more difficult to oppose whoever is proposed for Jusice O'Connor's vacancy. They would come across as being opposed to anyone who is described as even mildly conservative. Roberts has very little history. Who knows what the next one up will have hidden in their closet? Bad form to oppose both.

[Gordon B]

Originally Posted by patricia

I think that the Dems are doing exactly what they should do, strategically. Roberts will get their support, precisely because they are readying themselves for whoever is proposed to fill Justice O'Connor's slot. If they oppose both Roberts, who on his face seems acceptable, it will be much more difficult to oppose whoever is proposed for Jusice O'Connor's vacancy. They would come across as being opposed to anyone who is described as even mildly conservative. Roberts has very little history. Who knows what the next one up will have hidden in their closet? Bad form to oppose both.

I agree with you. Why do you think Hillary Clinton announced that she will vote "nay?" I think it's a mistake because she may be appointing her own SC Justice one day. Politicians have long memories.

[Gary Sisco]

Pat -- They're outnumbered whatever happens so Junior E Newman will have his way.

Either that or throw a tantrum in his crib.

[Gary Sisco]

fpop -- Leahy has no reason to seek attention for himself. He's unbeatable in VT and he's not running again, anyway. He gets attention because of his seniority in the Senate, where he's been a ranking member for many years.

Far's gasbags go, I always thought that was the primary job description of anyone in Congress. Or maybe it's so understood that they don't have to include it.

[frankiepop]

i am not impressed with leahy........is he bad at what he does? i would say at least he is below average...

i just made my observation during his roberts interrogations ... what did leahy do? well, he talked most of the time. and what did i learn from him? not much.
i am just saying...

is leahy as effective as kennedy? no way...
as good as feingold? you got to be kidding?
kohl, feinstein biden -- no?
better than grassley? yes.

i dont think you have to engage in an election fight to be a bit of a megalomaniac, he should prepare a little more....instead of stammering all over the place....i mean people make fun of w bush's speaking skills...

[frankiepop]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

fpop -- Leahy has no reason to seek attention for himself. He's unbeatable in VT and he's not running again, anyway.

good