Republican filibusters have kept George W. Bush’s courts unchanged and very conservative. The fact that Republicans believes U.S. "law" leans very conservative allows them the cover of supporting judges who mistakenly make outrageously conservative declarations and judgement.
Their attack on Obama for his insistence Republicans approve
or deny nominee’s, is getting downright destructive to the judicial branch of
government. Here are a few jaw dropping details reported by Media Matters:
Filibuster Reform Has Right-Wing Media Frantically Condemning Judicial "Power Play": By shamelessly repeating Sen. Chuck Grassley's debunked analogy that thepresident's current nominations to the important U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit are a "type of court-packing reminiscent of FDR's era," right-wing media appear to be running out of excuses for rampant Republican obstructionism.
This "radical and different" treatment of the president's nominees as opposed to that of past Republican presidents has led to the real possibility that Senate rules will be changed in July.
Grassley and now Rep. Tom Cotton have introduced bills that would block the president's nominations by eliminating the vacant seats -- literally court-packing in reverse.
The Wall Street Journal similarly warned that the president wanted judges who "rubber stamp liberal laws," leading him to his "flood-the-zone strategy" for the D.C. Circuit, "a liberal power play that shows contempt for traditional political checks and balances."
Breitbart.com is breathlessly proclaiming the nominations show "Obama has declared war on judicial independence" and is "trying to declare law by executive fiat."
As American Enterprise Institute scholar and congressional expert Norm Ornstein reported, Grassley's court-packing rhetoric made him "laugh out loud" at the absurdity of the comparison: “I remain deeply uneasy about a nuclear option … But if senators who know better … continue to obstruct nominations, they and their colleagues will be the ones responsible for the damage done.”
How can you describe any of the following Republican picks
as “impartial,” when they've made comments that show a “complete contempt for traditional political
checks and balances?”
The last three Republican presidents actually have been quite successful at "flood-the-zone" strategies. The ensuing right-wing tilt of the federal judiciary, especially at the upper levels, has been dramatic.
Take the Reagan-pick Judge David Sentelle, currently on the heavily conservative D.C. Circuit the president is trying to balance, whose latest shocking decision overthrew decades if not centuries of precedent in order to disallow the president further recess appointments. Or his possibly more extreme colleague, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who has criticized New Deal programs as "the triumph of our own socialist revolution" and formally advocated for a rejection of the results of the "democratic process" that led to such progressive legislation, a blend of "political and judicial roles" that even conservative legal experts have balked at.
Just this week it was reported that at an unrecorded Federalist Society speech, Judge Edith H. Jones of the Fifth Circuit - another Reagan nominee - allegedly claimed "blacks and Hispanics were more prone than others to commit violent crimes and that a death sentence was a service to defendants because it allowed them to make peace with God." Jones has been repeatedly pushed by right-wing media as suitable for the Supreme Court.
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