Brown’s Extremist Record
Brown’s Extremist Record
On a party-line 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee today approved California Judge Janice Rogers Brown for a seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Conservative congressional leaders cannot fathom why progressives (and many independent observers) think Brown is “out of the mainstream.” Here is a clue:
Janice Rogers Brown Equates Social Security With Cannibalism: “Today’s senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.”
Janice Rogers Brown Supports Age Discrimination: “Discrimination based on age does not mark its victim with a stigma of inferiority and second class citizenship…it is the unavoidable consequence of that universal leveler: time.”
Janice Rogers Opposes Everything About the New Deal: “The New Deal…inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality. 1937…marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution.”
Janice Rogers Brown Opposes Government: “Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies….The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”
Janice Rogers Brown Supports Discriminatory Speech: Ignoring Supreme Court precedent, Brown has argued that racially discriminatory speech in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment.
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I live in CA and I don’t support Brown for a Federal bench. She isn’t remotely moderate. Having said that I think they will have a harder time denying her than P Owens who doesn’t deserve to be dog catcher. But I will support the filibuster for ‘em. Good luck our side.
April 21st, 2005 at 4:47 pmWe should not be selecting judges based on if they are or aren’t moderate/mainstream. They should be selected based on their ability to uphold the Constitution. It seems like most of her decisions do just that.
April 21st, 2005 at 5:02 pmTony says: “We should not be selecting judges based on if they are or aren’t moderate/mainstream.”
Right. We should be selecting them based on their ability to reason and their adherence to the laws of the United States. Those “laws” are not restricted to the Constitution–they include federal statutes abd regulations, and the case precedents from the Supreme Court. This nominee fails on both counts.
I offer the letter I sent to Sen. Frist:
” Dear Sen. Frist,
Although I do not live in Tennessee, I feel that you represent me to the extent that you are the face of the Republican Party in the Senate, and clearly are considered a leader of the country as a whole. I was very sad to hear that you intended to lend your name and office to attempts to portray opposition to a few extremist judicial nominees as exhibiting anti-religious bias.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and I suspect that you know it. Being against the confirmation of a specific extremist who has specific extremist views, a few of which seem to reflect the nominee’s religious beliefs, but most of which reflect the nominee’s political and social beliefs, does not reflect anti-religious bias. In fact, it reflects common sense and a concern for the country, and many strongly religious Americans oppose these specific nominees.
I am equally saddened by your apparent commitment to overturning the long tradition of the filibuster as the weapon of last resort for heart-felt opposition to the majority. As you know, this is not a weapon used lightly, and your decision to overturn it should not be made lightly.
I sincerely hope you take your national status and the prestige of your office as seriously as you seem to take your obligations to your political party.”
LEE RUSS
April 21st, 2005 at 5:19 pmBennington VT
OK Tony you are right. It is my opinion that Justice Brown has been an awful CA Supreme Court Justice as she bases her decisions on her beliefs rather than CA law. How is that for you?
April 21st, 2005 at 5:20 pmYour conclusions aren’t supported by the facts, especially in light of Justice Brown’s dissent in Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car. Her position on the conflict between speech rights and “hostile work environment” claims is in the mainstream.
You can find a full analysis of the case here:
http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.04.01_arch.html#1114017585876
April 21st, 2005 at 6:16 pmRE: “cannablizing grankids” – Unlike today’s workers, us Baby Boomers paid for our grandparents’ SSI, which they hardly contributed to at all. Funny, I never felt anyone chewing on me.
April 22nd, 2005 at 3:49 amLee Russ:
April 22nd, 2005 at 9:13 amFederal law and previous court decisions could and have been wrong/unconstitutional. The Dred Scott decision is the perfect example. Should our judges today base rulings in order to support that decision? Same with federal laws…do you see retirement security mentioned anywhere in the Constitution?
Tony:
Dred Scott has been overruled by the abolition of slavery. There are specific procedures available for overruling prior decisions, a system which allows for certainty and continuity through adherence to precedents while leaving open the door for correction of mistakes.
This is far different from the overall hostility to the entire spectrum of modern law which these two nominees (and you) seem to exhibit. Mr. Bush has a habit of appointing people to institutions which they seek to overthrow (witness the education department, Bolton for the U.N. and numerous others). I believe that’s called extremism, and it is fully in keeping with the announced intent of Paul Weyrich (to whom this administration listens very closely) of his brand of conservatives to tear down modern institutions and replace them with institutions more to their own liking..
If these nominees agree with you that the current laws are unconstitutional, let them say so in public. Then the public can understand what the choices are, the Senate can decide if they want to confirm someone with those views, and the public can decide whether to re-elect senators based on their decision.
What happens, of course, is that the nominees swear up and down that they are not hostile to modern laws (which would be a lie if they agree with you), hoping to be confirmed under false pretenses.
I strongly suspect that many reasonable Republican senators do not want to overturn the filibuster. The filibuster puts the responsibility for blocking the president’s nominees on the Democrats. As long as the Democrats filibuster, reasonable Republicans do not have to decide between voting against the nominee and incurring the wrath of a very vengeful administration, or voting for the nominee and incurring the wrath of their own consciences and constituents.
As for retirement security, of course it isn’t mentioned specifically in the Constitution. Neither are interstate highways or aircraft carriers. So what? The Constitution sets out powers and responsibilities in necessarily broad language that must be applied to specific facts. The judiciary has been given the power to make those interpretations. Article I section 8 specifically allows taxation for the “general welfare” of the country. To me, retirement security sure seems to fall within that phrase.
The fact that the broad language of the Constitution needs to be applied to narrower circumstances by ordinary human beings means that there will always be differences of opinion on how the document should be applied. This does not mean that people who disagree with you are heathens who want to destroy the democratic republic. It just means that they disagree with you. When their views also seem to be massively self-serving, the motivation behind their belief is understandably viewed with suspicion.
It is the responsibility of all of us to simply be honest about our beliefs. I think that: (1) the judicial nominees at the heart of the current controversy are being very dishonest when they testify before the Senate about what they believe; (2) what they believe is contrary to current principles of law; (3) what they believe is based on theories and dogma that I think are dead wrong.
April 22nd, 2005 at 9:43 amLee:
1) You’re right about interstate highways not being mentioned, even though they were created under the guise of “…regulate commerce among the several states…”. Not even close, in my opinion, to being Constitutional.
2) Aircraft carriers are authorized under “To provide and maintain a navy”.
3) If the general welfare clause was meant to cover every authorized act of Congress, why are there enumerated powers listed below? Are those merely some suggested applications? Madison and Jefferson both stated that “general welfare” was limited to the powers listed below it.
3a) How do you define the limit of general welfare, if read broadly? It could be construed to mean pretty much anything Congress wanted it to. The Constitution grants limited powers to the federal government, leaving everything else to the states.
4) If you want Social Security, federal funded education, etc., that’s fine. But you need to amend the Constitution to add those powers to Article I, Section 8.
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:27 pmOk, so Ms. Brown is a judicial ‘originalist’ in which the Constitution is supposedly interpreted in the legislative context of its 18th century passage. I hope someone asks her if she is willing to be a slave again.
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:48 pmSen. Frist’s willingness to attempt an end-around of legislative precedent that has existed and worked well for more than two hundred years speaks very clearly to the oft-demonstrated tendency of the radical right wing of the Republican party to run roughshod over those who disagree with them, to take vengeance on those they deem “disloyal”, and to plod blindly down dark alleys of policy for which all of us have to pay. They have completely lost sight of the fact that this country is a representative form of government designed to address he interests of ALL of its citizens, not just those whose bias tends toward the ultraconservative. The fact that more than 90% of Bush’s nominees to the bench have been confirmed is not even mentioned in their diatribes against Democrats who, in blocking the progress of the nominations of judges categorically rated as “unsuitable” by those in the legal profession, are painted as opposing “people of faith”. This kind of propaganda ploy, ad hominem attacks, is often very effective because it aims at the segment of the population that garners its understanding of politcal issues through sound bites on the evening news. The fact that there are numerous facts to dispute and refute the charges is completely ignored, unmentioned on the evening news, and even denied by people like Frist and his ilk, who are so mired in their hypocrisy that they conveniently forget the eight years during which numerous President Clinton nominees to the Federal bench were blocked by Republican filibuster, resulting in shortfalls in thenumber of judges and backlogs in the court system. These people should recall that they will not always be in the majority, and it is much less likely that they will remain so if the public perceives that they are destructive to the business of this country.
April 22nd, 2005 at 3:53 pmTony,
April 22nd, 2005 at 4:46 pmTony,
April 22nd, 2005 at 4:53 pmYour #4 …. Social Security, education, etc…= Legislation, which by the way does not conflict with the will of the people … SS name one corporation which is as efficient …. education, well… as Rosanna Danna would offer “Never Mind”….. I wonder of the spirit that drives those who are obsessed with being RIGHT …. I personally, somewhere deep inside, have a difficult time w/abortion. I DO NOT for a moment think it my place to legislate to another soul what they may or may not do or believe ….
and may you continue to be free ……
Tony:
You obviously have a very narrow view of what the federal government is authorized to do, and I have a very different view. That’s fine, you’re entitled to your view, and so are the judicil nominees. But you didn’t answer my complaint (in the letter to Sen. Frist) that “the judicial nominees at the heart of the current controversy are being very dishonest when they testify before the Senate about what they believe.” They certainly are not saying that interstate highways are unconstitutional, that there can be no federal role in education, etc. They want to get nominated as people who believe in the current system of laws, then work to destroy that system once appointed. That dishonesty is wrong.
Under my view of the Constitution, the limits of “general welfare” are decided on the same basis used to define “equal protection,” “due process,” and “provide and maintain a navy.” We use common sense and the checks and balances of our system. None of the quoted terms is self-explanatory, not even the Navy provision. Is the Naval Academy part of providing and maintaining a Navy? It’s debatable, but most people would say it is. Is constructing a system of highways that allows candidates for the Naval Academy to travel from their home states to Annapolis part of providing and maintaining a Navy? Also debatable, but most people would say it isn’t.
It takes the legislature to enact a law, the president to sign it, and the judiciary to uphold it if it gets challenged, for the law to be valid. That’s a pretty good series of checks and balances.
That Madison and Jefferson both stated that “general welfareâ€? was limited to the powers listed below it is not dispositive. As I suspect you know, the very fact that the Constitution’s authors could easil–and I meean EASILY–have made that meaning clear, but did not do so, is a pretty strong factor in concluding that “general welfare” is not limited as you believe.
That’s how I see the Constituion. That is how it is seen by most jurists today. That is the view of it that underlies most of our current society. If you want to change that view, to go back and undo all the legislation and programs that are based on my interpretation, you need to at least be honest about it. You are being honest, the judicial nominees are not.
Let them state in open hearings what they believe. Let the Senate and the public know what is in store for them if enough judges with these views are appointed. Then let the system work.
April 23rd, 2005 at 10:41 amHaving come in later to read this thread, Tony’s arguments are the same old, righwing blather. Plain and simple for ya, Tony, Janice Rogers Brown, as a Libertarian, wishes to destroy and Constitution, Bill of Rights and any other entity that seeks to give government some control over the day-to-day affairs of mankind. So, to hell with the unfortunate, let them starve. To hell with FDA, let people decide whether the ground beef they’re buying to make hamburgers for their 2 year old has e-coli or not. Libertarians are the most anarchistic, destructive and unrealistic of any of America’s current political denominations. They absolutely want the destruction of democracy and return to pure “republic”. Boy, that would sure work really well for an “emperor” seeking to build a worldwide empire. Wonder why GWB supports her, hmmm?
May 8th, 2005 at 3:27 pm> Janice Rogers Brown, as a Libertarian, wishes to destroy and Constitution, Bill of Rights and any other entity that seeks to give government some control over the day-to-day affairs of mankind.
Whatever…Libertarians hold the Constitution and Bill of Rights as downright sacred. It’s the unconstitutional add-ons like federal welfare, the FDA, the FCC, the DEA, etc. that we dislike.
June 7th, 2005 at 11:16 amOh, and by the way, that recent Supreme Court case that upheld the federal trumping of drug lawsw over California’s legal medical marijuana…Brown would have voted against that.
June 7th, 2005 at 11:18 amgiven the recent extream un-constitutional decisions from spreamcourt (regarding government can take private property, translate to, rich guys can take poor guys homes away because they pay more taxes), Brown is the only way to ensure American basic survival.
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