Fort Bend Owl
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Robert Bork passes away
A brilliant legal mind - but one of just a handful of Supreme Court nominees to have a vote before the Senate and not be confirmed. There is no question he was fully qualified to serve - his biggest fault was his inability to play along with Congress and answers questions with non-answers.
BTW, it's not always a bad thing when a justice doesn't get confirmed (or withdraws his or her nomination). Bork was replaced by Anthony Kennedy so that certainly moved the court more to the center. Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination under Dubya Bush because she just wasn't qualified and was replaced by Samuel Alito.
RIP Judge Bork.
(This post was last modified: 12-19-2012 02:53 PM by Fort Bend Owl.)
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12-19-2012 02:53 PM |
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Mr. Peanut
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
A brilliant jurist and prototypical "evil" conservative. Could you imagine Bork and Scalia on the same court?
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12-19-2012 05:07 PM |
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maximus
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
RIP
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12-19-2012 07:33 PM |
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Native Georgian
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
Prior to his nomination in 1987, there was not a single instance of any US Senator ever publicly opposing a Supreme Court nominee for their position on Roe v Wade, "abortion"/"choice", etc. So his nomination was a flash-point in the rise of abortion as a national political issue. Also, his nomination marked the first time that opponents of a judicial nomination used the national media and grassroots organizations to stir up public opposition to the nominee. That was simply unprecedented and the Reagan White House -- already weakened by Iran-contra and the natural ebb of presidential power in an Administration's seventh year -- was caught completely off-guard. Finally, his rejection by the Senate marked a turning point in which professional qualifications, moral character, intellectual reputation and judicial experience -- all of the traditional criteria by which past SC nominees had been evaluated -- were thrown out the window and a majority of Senators voted against purely and openly on the basis of opposition to the nominee's perceived/expected judicial opinions. That had never happened before, either.
One bit of trivia: When the Democrats took the majority back in the Senate in the November 1986 elections, a Senator from Delaware named Joseph Biden was in line to become Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. In a media interview, he specifically called out Robert Bork by name as the kind of judicial conservative he would vote to confirm. Biden added that (quoting from memory here) "if the liberal special-interest groups don't like it, that's just tough. I'm not Ted Kennedy."
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12-19-2012 09:04 PM |
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WoodlandsOwl
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
Because of that BS Witch Hunt 25 years ago, a new term "Bork'em" has been introduced into the confirmation process.
I would have loved a SCOTUS with both Bork and Scalia on it.
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12-19-2012 09:21 PM |
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DrTorch
Proved mach and GTS to be liars
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
(This post was last modified: 12-20-2012 09:02 AM by DrTorch.)
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12-20-2012 09:02 AM |
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UConn-SMU
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RE: Robert Bork passes away
Bork saw the Constitution as the Founding Fathers did.
He didn't see it as a living, breathing document that changed from generation to generation, or year to year.
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12-20-2012 10:33 PM |
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