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Would Sotomayor Be the First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice or Was It Cardozo?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (121)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's been widely reported that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, though a few people (including some TV commentators) have wondered whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo (on the court from 1932-1938) should not in fact be counted as such.
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Forget Abortion and Gay Marriage--Where Is Sonia Sotomayor on Executive Power?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (7)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One issue in Judge Sonia Sotomayor's candidacy for the high court that I'll follow with special interest is what if anything she says about executive power. It may not have the political sex appeal of abortion and gay marriage, but it's important. The imperial presidency ran out of control in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with Bush administration officials more or less claiming that in the name of national security the president could do whatever he damn well pleased. My old colleague Charlie Savage wrote an important article in Sunday's New York Times laying out the question in the context of the short list, which of course included Sotomayor.
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Is Sotomayor Too Obnoxious for the High Court? The Kennedy Angle
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (5)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
David Frum has a post about the Sotomayor nomination that makes a point both amusing and a bit horrifying. Frum writes that there is good news for conservatives in that the SCOTUS scuttlebutt has been that Anthony Kennedy has been a left-leaning swing vote in recent years in negative reaction to the brilliant but mean Antonin Scalia.
Having lost in 2008, Republicans had no hope of a conservative or even a moderate judicial nominee. What we should therefore be hoping for, my friend continues, is the most personally obnoxious liberal, someone certain to offend and irritate Kennedy—and push him careening back rightward.
So, Frum writes, assuming that the reports are true that she is something of a dislikable bully, she is the perfect choice so far as conservatives are concerned. It's an amusing take ... but there's something genuinely disquieting about the notion that high court decisions are being made on the basis of grade schools clique-ism (I don't like Tony, so I'm going to vote against him; wow, I like Sonia even less, so maybe I'll swing back to the right.)
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Republicans Should Follow British Tory Leader David Cameron's Populist Lead
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (1)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
British Tory leader David Cameron has issued a call for reform that is likely to carry him into No. 10 Downing Street as soon as Prime Minister Gordon Brown calls the next general election.
In "Fixing Broken Politics," a speech he delivered Tuesday at the Open University in Milton Keynes, Cameron proposed transformational changes to the business of government that should appeal broadly to Britons from all walks of life. It is, for someone who has the reputation of being a "toff" (British slang for a "well-dressed" or "upper-class person" and not at all a compliment) a remarkably populist manifesto.
Cameron's plan for remaking British politics includes several items U.S. conservatives would do well to consider as they debate the future of their own movement. They should, in fact, appropriate some of them—decentralization, transparency, electoral reform—into their own effort to wrest political power from the Obama Democrats.
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California Supreme Court Was Right to Uphold Anti-Gay Marriage Prop 8
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (64)By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The California Supreme Court today upheld the legality of the state constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage there.
While I am squarely in favor of marriage equality, the court seems to have made the correct (if undesirable) decision in this case. The bottom line is that California voters can amend their constitution through referenda and they did so. They were wrong, but it's their right. And at the same time, the 18,000 marriages that had been conducted were valid at the time and so should remain valid.
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Republican Attacks on Sotomayor Will Alienate Hispanic Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (20)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Blog posts such as this one from a Cato Institute fellow are so unfair, but simultaneously so helpful to the Democratic Party. It's confounding why the people making them would be so short-sighted:
In picking Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama has confirmed that identity politics matter to him more than merit.
Judge Sotomayor is not one of the leading lights of the federal judiciary and would not even have been on the shortlist if she were not Hispanic.
The first thing conservative or, this is from the Cato Institute's website, libertarian bloggers do when they question Judge Sonia Sotomayor's qualifications, is send every swing Hispanic voter solidly into the Democratic camp. It's even worse when they question her intelligence (which this blogger does by excluding Judge Sotomayor from the category of judicial leading lights.)
One of the few good things George W. Bush did for his party was to woo Hispanic voters. He simultaneously alienated moderates, fiscal conservatives and a host of other key constituencies. Now his surrogates are casting aside what little Hispanic support remains for the GOP. So be it. It's the Republicans' to ruin and they're doing a great job of that.
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Republicans Need Colin Powell's "No-Holds-Barred" Debate
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Being rendered by the electorate in 2008, for all intents and purposes, temporarily irrelevant, Republicans are engaged in something that resembles, in its intensity, a shooting war for control of what remains of the brand and its political apparatus.
Many of the party's leaders and pretenders to leadership are busily fighting over what amounts to being the absolute rule of the smallest hill in the biggest part of the land. Rather than seek ways to broaden the party's appeal—in campaign school we were taught that winning was about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division—they are seeking at all times and in all ways to sharpen the knife's edge in an effort to hone the most conservative—and therefore most exclusive—platform possible.
This is a foolish strategy.
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Hey Republicans, Limbaugh and Cheney Will Only Lead to Prolonged Minority Status
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (19)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Gen. Colin Powell, though arguably one of the most attractive political figures in the country, was drummed out of the Bush White House by an extraordinarily unpopular homunculus, who is now teaming with another homunculus to try to drive Powell out of the party. It won't work Dick Cheney! Teaming up with Rush Limbaugh makes the two men the most reviled political team in the U.S.
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Republicans Should Hold Their Fire on Obama's Supreme Court Nominee
Tweet Share on Facebook May 26, 2009 Comment (16)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog
As I write this, the President is about to name a Supreme Court nominee. Looking ahead to the next few days of marathon coverage, I'd give one piece of advice:
The Republicans would be wise to view this as an opportunity to expand their base, rather than engage in the kind of "shrill" outrage to which Tom Ridge referred recently on MSNBC. No matter whom the president chooses the Republicans should keep their powder dry—especially when it comes to divisive issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and gun control—for several reasons.
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Healthcare Reform that Doesn't Address Long Term Care Would Be a Failure
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2009 Comment (21)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"It is absurd," writes Howard Gleckman, "to expect someone to clean feces from a dementia patient every day for nine dollars an hour for no benefits."
But, as anyone who has cared for an aging parent or terminally ill friend or disabled neighbor or relative knows, America's hodge-podge system of long-term care is packed with such assumptions. And some 54 million of us wrestle with them every day.
Here is one of my favorites: if you suffer a massive heart attack and need expensive medical care in your golden years, it is likely that Medicare will cover your bills.
But if you have the bad luck to contract Alzheimer's disease, it's sorry pal, you're on your own.
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