Democrats Will Use Katrina To Attack Roberts
Posted on September 7, 2005
As if the tragedy has not been exploited enough, now the democrats will use it to attack John Roberts nomination to Chief Justice.
Hat tip: Joe’s Cafe via Boston Globe
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats said yesterday that they will invoke the vast disparities in income and living conditions laid bare by the Hurricane Katrina disaster to sharpen their questioning of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. at his confirmation hearings next week.
The scenes of devastation featuring primarily poor African-American residents in New Orleans have highlighted the widening gap between rich and poor, said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
I should have figured Kennedy was at the lead on this. The old godfather of looniness doesn’t care what he has to do to further the far-left agenda. Ask my friends around here what I think of Kennedy. If there is a senator out there that makes my head want to explode more than this man, I haven’t met them. Personally, I think Boxer, and Dean put together pale in comparison to this man’s looniness. But, I’m getting off topic. I tend to do that when I get to ranting on Kennedy. It amazes me he gets reelected.
That’s the sort of idea you come up with when you’ve had ten or eighteen Chivas Regals. And also, when you’re distracted because you’re attempting to chat up a coed anthropology major from SFU while not wearing pants.
The article continues:
With Roberts having urged a narrow interpretation of civil rights laws in the past, Senate Democrats will link the scenes of economic hardship with the constitutional and legal issues that surround efforts to address racial and economic inequalities, he said.
”We have made very important progress over the period of the last 50 years in knocking down walls of discrimination so that people can participate and be a part of a changed America,” said Kennedy, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”And he’s going to be asked to explain some of his advice that would have, I think, undermined that progress in important ways.”
This is no joke folks! It doesn’t suprise me however. Personally, I think it is the dependence mentality that is part to blame. This kind of craziness is forcing many on the right to have to play the blame game too. It really has gotten out of hand if you ask me. I think it is sickening that such a tragedy is being exploited in a blame Bush, and now a blame Roberts political game. This isn’t a game folks! Why can’t we work together here to clean up the mess, and fix the problems. There is plenty of time to play the blame game later. Oh wait! There isn’t is there. Robert’s is scheduled for confirmation hearings next week! The democrats have got to double time it now!
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said he, too, will pursue questions raised by Katrina in the Roberts hearings. In addition, civil rights leaders whom Democrats have called to appear at the hearings said they also intend to refer to the scenes from the hurricane-ravaged region.
Leahy said he watched the scenes of hardship on television with a growing sense of anger over the inability to deliver services to those who depend most on the government, issues he said would come up during the Roberts hearings.
“We’ll have legitimate questions as to the authority of the federal government - the central authority of the government - but also the ability of individuals to seek redress if they don’t get the help that they expect,” Leahy said.
Memos Roberts wrote as an aide in the Reagan administration are expected to be fodder for Democratic criticism of his civil rights record. He argued against the constitutionality of affirmative action, pushed to make it easier for school districts to evade busing as part of court-ordered desegregation, and argued for a scaled-back version of the Voting Rights Act.
Later, as an appeals court judge, Roberts also urged a narrow interpretation of the Commerce Clause, one of the tools Congress has used to pass federal laws on a host of issues affecting civil rights.
The hurricane served as a stark reminder that many Americans remain politically powerless and economically repressed, despite laws designed to help in areas like education, voting, employment, and housing, said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
So now it is John Roberts fault that there are poor people in New Orleans, that the levee broke, and that a hurricane formed off the coast. I can’t believe this crap is for real!
But Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said Democrats will be overreaching if they tie Katrina’s aftermath to Roberts. As a lawyer and a federal appellate judge, Roberts has established a commitment to upholding the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress, Cornyn said.
”Trying to connect this nomination hearing for Judge Roberts with the disaster of Katrina, I think, is a stretch,” he said
Overreaching? A stretch? I couldn’t say it any better myself.
And now Moveon.org joins the fray by running an ad trying to tie Roberts with the hurricane. Ridiculous.
MoveOn.org Political Action plans to unveil a TV ad on Monday that questions whether Roberts is sensitive enough to civil rights concerns to lead the Supreme Court. The ad suggests that the plight of the mostly African-American evacuees in New Orleans showed that poverty remains a serious problem among minorities, said Ben Brandzel, the group’s advocacy director. In a mix of judicial and racial politics, the ad then suggests that minorities could suffer if the Senate confirms Roberts.
Linked at Cafe Oregano and Outside The Beltway and Bright and Early
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10 Responses to “Democrats Will Use Katrina To Attack Roberts”
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I agree with Kayne West 100% that Bush does not care about the civil rights of black people. Bush has never agreed to meet with the NAACP, and is the only President since Herbert Hoover in the 1920s that has been so insensitive to this organization for black people. He has nominated some extremely ideological conservative judges to federal district courts who have been hostile to civil rights and civil liberties such as:
a.) Terrence Boyle, 4th circuit court judge who ruled for whites and against blacks in two voting rights cases-reversed both times.
b.) Janice Rogers Brown, DC circuit court judge who voted to protect racist speech in the work place.
c.) D. Michael Fisher, 3rd circuit
court judge who voted to protect racist speech in the work place.
d.) William Pryor, 11th circuit court judge who voted to promote states’ rights over the rights of blacks who have been discriminated against.
Bush has also repeatedly passed tax cuts that mostly help his rich 1% upper class friends while at the same time he has cut social services to help the very poor. Bush’s much-touted No Child Left Behind Act is inadequately funded and does not address the soaring number of poor, under funded, racially segregated public schools nationally. The Bush administration also backed white students in their effort to torpedo the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program. Bush backed “race neutral alternatives” that cripple the fight for workplace diversity.
In short, Kanye West is 100% right when he says that Bush doesn’t care about black people.
You do know Janice Brown is black, right?
What happened to protecting all speech no matter how bad it was?
Mike, are you trying to make the completely illogical link between conservatives and racism that so many on the left honestly believe, but there is actually zero evidence for?
Ogre, ignore Mike, he’s just trolling blogs and posting the same thing everywhere, he commented exactly the same thing on one my posts today. He’s liberalism defined, dishonest parasitic noise.
NAACP is a joke !!!!!
‘Bush refused to meet with the NAACP’ ????
After all the venom they’ve spewed at him non-stop since before his first election, you think he’s going to give those racist A-holes the time of day now ????
BTW, they speak for NO ONE except themselves, and the far left racist agenda.
pjm–your comments are on the mark, but please lose the crude language. You are descending to level of the leftits that can write nothing without the F, S, and other words that show their limited vocabularies.
In the last few days I have said at several sites that there is more than enough blame to go around, but this is nuts. Maybe we should try to get some legislation passed that would call for mandatory Alzheimer test for our elected officials.
God Bless America, God Save The Republic.
“I agree with Kayne West 100%”
Translation: “Bush-hatred has made me crazier than a sh*t-house rat. Nothing I say after agreeing with Kaye West will be of any value to anyone, with the possible exception as evidence at my commitment hearing.
?Bush refused to meet with the NAACP?
So what? The NAACP has been hijacked; it (like the Sierra Club, CBS News, and several other once-admirable institutions) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the DNC.
“I agree with Kayne West 100% that Bush does not care about the civil rights of black people. Bush has never agreed to meet with the NAACP…”
http://edition.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/12/campaign.wrap/
Mike. Seriously. Why bother posting at all if you’re gonna start with a lie? Who’s gonna take you seriously after that?