More Politics, re: DeLayFollow

The Plame thread and its hypocrisy brought to mind the DeLay indictment and DeLay's insistance that he be given a new judge because this one has donated to liberal causes (MoveOn.org). There's also an amusing bit where DeLay's attorney claims that MoveOn.org sells t-shirts with DeLay's mugshot which is simply untrue and has never been true. But anyway, this apparent marriage of politics and justice leaves me wondering where the line is drawn. After all, we're being told of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers and her 1989 questionnaire in which she pledges to support anti-abortion causes and any anti-abortion legistlature,


Is the understanding here that only judges hailing from the Right are able to leave their "personal views and ideology" behind when they take the bench and all the rest are liberal activist judges? Judges with a liberal bent are unable to "look at the law and apply the law to that case"?

I understand that DeLay needs to start painting the prosecutor, judge, baliff, court clerk, etc as evil "partisan fanatics" now so if, Heavens forbid, it turns out he did break the law he can blame everyone but himself (see: Plame Investigation) but it'd be nice if we could arrive at some sort of a standard here.

Is this the new era of how Republicans react to the law? Smear the justice system rather than let the case stand on its merits?

Yes.

I didn't read most of that, so I'll just answer yes as well.

Really? So you're saying it's okay because Miers probably just lied as a politican to get elected? 'Cause we all know they all do it?

Not what *I* look for in a Supreme Court justice but we must have different standards.

Again, Bush was using this to promote her to the conservatives -- either he's lying about her stance or else he thinks this questionnaire actively reflects it. I'm not even complaining so much about Miers but about the double standard being given here about whether or not personal ideology is a disqualification for being on the bench.

Hey, you keep your Plame stuff in the Plame thread. I'm still waiting to see if Gbaji is willing to back the man his party appointed or if he insists on hedging his bets until he knows the outcome.

"Conscience" implies (to me) a moral decision on legal matters. Which is precisely what we should be avoiding. I'm not sure if that's what you intended though.

So nothing but the law should ever impact a judges decision? Mitigating circumstances should just be thrown out? "The Mercy of the Court" should go the way of the dodo?

DeLay's attorney is doing what good defense lawyers do: he's setting up grounds for dismissal/mistrial/appeal.

In my mind 2 things are a given. 1) The Republican party is about to lose massive amounts of power at the federal level and 2) it will happen without my help.

I think there are threeo fairly dramatic differences between those two issues.

First. I think it's a bit unfair to compare an answer in a questionaire someone took 16 years ago to a political donation made this last year (IIRC, it was within the last year or so. Recent in any case). The time difference alone is significant. People change their viewpoint and position in 16 years. It's unlikely to happen in one or two.

Second. They're different in terms of strength of support. The type of questionaire she filled out was pretty generic. "Do you support a pro-life agenda (yes/no)?". That doesn't leave a lot of room for "personal" position on the issue. I don't think it's fair to compare that and a donation to a specific political action organization. Now if she'd made donations to a particular pro-life organization, then they'd be a bit more similar (at least this aspect would be). She has to answer something in the questionaire. She's got no choice (assuming it was required for whatever office she was seeking). No one requires that you donate *any* money to any group, much less tell you which one to donate to. One can assume that if he donated to movon.org, that he supports their agenda. We can't really say anything specific about Meir's agenda with regards to abortion from the answer in the questionair other then that she's more in favor of pro-life then pro-choice. Without knowing the question she answered specifically, it's a bit hard to say...


Finally, the two issues are different in application as well. Judges are allowed to have opinions on things. It's not "wrong" for a judge to be personally pro-choice or pro-life. We make a huge legal distinction between having a personal opinion, and having some kind of financial stake in something, right? People in government recuse themselves from decisions all the time because they have invested something that's affected by the outcome. Meir's has not "invested" anything in the cause of pro-life. A donation to a political action group is an investment. He presumably put his money there in the hopes of a "return" in the form of political change. While it's a bit more grey because he's not expecting anything financial in return, it's still a pretty clear sign of a conflict of interest if he's the one presiding on a case against a prime opponent to an organization he's actively involved in. It would be like the local Boy Scout leader also being a judge ruling on a case involving the Boy Scouts. Most people would assume conflict of interest and expect a different judge.


Um. And that's not even getting into the fact that one is a current *real* case before a court, with real people and real circumstances, while the other is a broad appointment. You can certainly ask that a specific judge recuse himself in a specific case where there's a percieved conflict of interest. It's a bit more unreasonable to say that we shouldn't appoint a judge at all because that judge may support a viewpoint, and may at some future point judge based on that view.


Not that I think the Meir's appointment makes any sense. Just pointing out that the two are not even vaguely similar...

This one?
Or this one?




Edited, Mon Oct 24 17:43:47 2005 by pickleprince

Which organizations?

So let me get this right. She was a member of an organization that has no business supporting any legal position on that subject (why is an organization of lawyers supporting a judicial position in the first place? Is this like when you're a member of the teachers union and a portion of your dues goes to the Democratic party whether you're a Democrat or not?), and she (rightly IMO) fought to get them to drop support for pro-choice?

Not seeing anything wrong with that. Now if she tried to get the ABA to support a pro-life position, you might have a point. This looks more to me like she opposed an organization of lawyers working politically to affect the laws they try in court.

False Dilemma.