Another sorry nominee:

From the Los Angeles Times, we read: (excerpts, emphasis added)

STORY ONE:

Janice Rogers Brown, one of the most conservative members of the California Supreme Court, is expected to face a tough fight in the U.S. Senate over her nomination to a federal appeals court.

President Bush nominated Brown in July for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a prestigious court that regularly decides challenges to administration policy and is considered a steppingstone to the U.S. Supreme Court.

UC Berkeley emeritus law professor Stephen Barnett said Brown is conservative "but not monolithically so," and is "increasingly controlling" a tendency to insert her political views into rulings.

... McGeorge School of Law professor Clark Kelso has at times criticized Brown's dissents as too biting and personal. But he said that should not keep her off the D.C. circuit. Compared with the rulings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Brown's dissents are mild, said Kelso, a Republican.

STORY TWO:

California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, ran into skeptical questioning Wednesday from Senate Democrats for speeches in which she referred to the New Deal era as "the triumph of our socialist revolution" and disputed whether the Bill of Rights applied to the states.

Three years ago, Brown described herself in another speech as a "true conservative" who believes that "where the government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she found Brown's pronouncements troubling.

In a 1999 speech at Pepperdine University titled "Beyond the Abyss: Restoring Religion on the Public Square," Brown disputed the doctrine of separation of church and state and questioned whether the Bill of Rights, including the 1st Amendment, applied to the states.

This view harkens back to a lively dispute among constitutional scholars in the first half of the 20th century. The 1st Amendment begins with the phrase, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press"

After the Civil War, the Reconstruction Congress wrote the 14th Amendment, which was intended to extend the Bill of Rights to the states. The amendment said that states may not "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" or deny them "life, liberty or property without due process of law."

The amendment set off a century of debate in the Supreme Court on whether states were truly barred from infringing the basic guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

"The historical evidence supporting what the Supreme Court did here is pretty sketchy," Brown said in her Pepperdine speech. "The argument on the other side is pretty overwhelming'' that the 14th Amendment failed to apply the Bill of Rights to the states.

"It is unfathomable to me that in 2003 anyone would seriously argue that Alabama, for example, could declare an official religion," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

"President Bush nominated Brown" may be technically true, but who is really behind these oddball nominees? John Ashcroft? Ted Olson? A gnome at the Federalist Society?

And another thing. Brown refers to the New Deal as a "triumph of our socialist revolution", which is a popular line with conservatives even though it's completely false. Socialism is government ownership of businesses. The New Deal had a teeny bit of that with the Tennessee Valley Authority, but overall the New Deal was about regulated welfare capitalism. Regulation in the form of agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (established in 1934). Welfare in the form of Social Security Insurance (among other things).

UPDATE: Saturday's New York Times has an editorial that is extremely critical of Brown: "President Bush, who promised as a candidate to be a "uniter, not a divider," has selected the most divisive judicial nominees in modern times."

posted by Quiddity at 10/24/2003 06:35:00 AM