I must confess that my jaw dropped today when I saw that the Supreme Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment doesn't really mean what it says. A refresher: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases […]
Prompted by The New York Times' lame editorial "The Center Can Hold" -- which prompted me to file a request for a correction with Public Editor Byron Calame (no substantive response yet) -- Sen. John Cornyn responds to the charge that GOP senators are merely a rubber stamp for Bush's judicial nominees. To the Editor: […]
During the roundtable discussion portion of Friday's "Special Report with Brit Hume," The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes said that if Clarence Thomas were appointed to the Supreme Court today, the Democrats in the Senate would filibuster him as an "out of the mainstream extremist." National Public Radio's Juan Williams said: "I don't think they'd filibuster […]
City Journal's Katerine Ernst rips California's dimmest bulb, Sen. Barbara Boxer, a new one. After detailing Boxer's nutty attacks on Judge Janice Rogers Brown, Ernst gives us a little history lesson. The Barbara Boxer of four years ago, you’d like to think, would find today’s Barbara Boxer appalling. After all, back then, the senator based […]
So, I linked to that truly helpful chart on President Clinton's late second-term judicial nominations, and what do I get? Grief. Quiddity, the pseudonym of the author of the Uggabugga blog who created the chart, is apparently offended that Sidney Blumenthal brought his chart to the attention of Powerline (where I saw it) and has […]
OK, so maybe that's not the nicest description for our opponents on the other side of the aisle, but a recent back-and-forth between former Clinton attack-man Sidney Blumenthal and the Powerline guys has me thinking that at least some Democrats' minds must be twisted by some illicit drug. The debate began here when Powerline took […]
Guess which Senate party leader those words more aptly describes -- Republican Bill Frist, or Democrat Harry Reid? If you guessed Reid, you're right! The signatures of 14 Senate centrists, seven from each party, spilled across the last page of a hard-won compromise on President Bush's judicial nominees. But whatever elation the negotiators felt, the […]
I first used PGP -- Pretty Good Privacy -- back in the '90s when I was living in Washington State. I was getting a hand with my taxes from Hoystory the Elder (who had worked as a tax preparer in a previous life) and didn't feel at all comfortable e-mailing many of the things that […]
The Supreme Court's senior justice told a meeting of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association that it's right for the Supreme Court to consider foreign courts views when interpreting the United States Constitution. Justice John Paul Stevens -- and the other justices who have shown themselves to susceptible to peer pressure -- shouldn't be sitting on […]
This should be the plan for the next few days in the Senate: Get Priscilla Owen, William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown confirmed. Get John Bolton confirmed to the post of U.N. Ambassador. Then start bringing up the other judges to test the Senate's 14 moderates. Will they be filibustered too? Will they be voted […]