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Greatest Straw of all time!
Citizen
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 1781
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 11:40 am: |     |
"Sidestepping a two-year congressional battle, President Bush (news - web sites) is promoting federal Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi to an appeals court, at least temporarily, in a slap at filibustering Senate Democrats who question the nominee's civil rights record."
Bush pulls a Clinton and you know what, the time was right to do so.
BUSH/CHENEY IN 2004.. |
Mayhewdrive
Citizen
Username: Mayhewdrive
Post Number: 712
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 12:06 pm: | |
Straw...don't forget to pat Georgie on the back for crossing the 500 dead threshold!
Three cheers indeed. |
Southorangemom
Citizen
Username: Southorangemom
Post Number: 63
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 2:18 pm: | |
Oh please.
Pickering would never have made it through a Senate confirmation process.
Leave it to Georgie Porgie to backend the legitimate way of doing things.
It amazes me that Bush believes he is running this country by himself, and with his cronies, and without the consent of the other elected officials. |
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 172
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 3:49 pm: | |
Here are three jeers for GWB:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kelly_23_4.htm
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kaminer_24_1.htm
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tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 1803
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, January 17, 2004 - 7:10 pm: | |
hooray, now if we want to burn a cross on the front steps of an abortion clinic, we have somewhere to go. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4348
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 4:44 am: | |
I am not a Pickering fan and I will say that up front. However, I believe Clinton used the same backdoor appointment process at least once.
The question is why did Bush's handlers have him do this? Was it a reaction to his less than warm reception in Atlanta at the MLK memorial? Was it to appease his right wing power base after his immigration reform initiative?
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Greatest Straw of all time!
Citizen
Username: Strawberry
Post Number: 1784
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 10:22 am: | |
"Was it to appease his right wing power base after his immigration reform initiative?"
You got it. He threw the right a bone. Like I said, this was a slick Willie move, but it was also one he needed to take.
BUSH/CHENEY IN 2004.. |
hariseldon
Citizen
Username: Hariseldon
Post Number: 153
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2004 - 11:05 pm: | |
The Southern strategy is still alive and well. Haven't we had enough of these rebels hijacking our country!!
Lincoln never should have stopped the South from seceding. Maybe it's not too late to throw the Confederacy and Texas out of the Union. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 1807
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 10:54 am: | |
I want to know what, from a selfish New York-working New Jersey-living point of view is so great about Charles Pickering that someone who lives and works here should get so happy about. |
Don Perkins
Citizen
Username: Cowboy
Post Number: 276
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 4:12 pm: | |
So, the rules are: Recess appointments by a Democrat are good; recess appointments by a Republican are bad.
Now about Pickering. tom, did you agree with John Kerry last week when he called Pickering "a forceful advocate for a cross burner." Is that the case, or are you and Kerry playing a big race card here?
Here's your reader's digest version of the story. Three men get snockered and decide to burn a cross in the yard of a racially mixed couple in Mississippi. Here's your cast of characters:
Mickey Herbert Thomas. 25-year-old with less than a room-temperature IQ.
An unnamed 17-year old with a history of racial hatred. He was the ringleader for the cross burning incident and had previously been arrested for firing a gun into the home of the same mixed-race couiple.
Daniel Swan, a 20-year-old with no previous problems with the law and no history of racial hatred.
The actual cross-burning was the work of Thomas and the 17-year-old juvenile. Swan sat in the truck and did not participate.
Thomas and the 17-year-old accepted a plea bargain and pled guilty. They were sentenced to probation. Swan claimed that he was drunk and was not didn't really know what was happening. He wanted a trial. He was found guilty at the trial. Federal sentencing guidelines said that Swan should get seven and one-half years in federal prison.
So here is Pickering's crime. The ringleader gets probation. The other person who helped to erect the cross, douse it with gasoline and set it on fire gets probation. But the man who sat in the truck, seven and one-half years.
Pickering merely talked to the Justice Department about bypassing the sentencing guidelines to get the truck driver a lesser sentence. This is what Charles Schumer calls "glaring racial insensitivity". This is what John Kerry describes as being a "forceful advocate for cross burners."
By the way, do you know that immediately after Mississippi schools were desegregated Charles Pickering took his kids out of a majority white school and made a point of sending them to a majority black newly integrated school? How's that for a display of Pickering's " glaring racial insensitivity."
It's election time. Beware of the demagogues.
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Elmwoodian
Citizen
Username: Java_drinker
Post Number: 299
Registered: 8-2002
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 9:46 pm: | |
Dear Mr. Straw,
Please sir, if you could, please name the Clinton appointed Judge(s) that were seated using this back-door method (as per your accusations above). I'd just like to see how you spin your way out of another lie?!?!
The fact is that Clinton never used this power because (his words) "that’s not cricket". I wish the current administration would stop digging around for loopholes and dirty tricks just because they're there once in a while .
Straw, I understand that you got your panties in a bind over 8 good years and it wasn’t your guy at the helm. But what is it with some people that they can’t just say “ya, the other guy did a good job; I hope our guy can do well too”? Instead all we hear his Booooooooo (toss mud) boooooooooo, Monica…. Booooooo.
You don’t hear the left screaming about Reagan’s pre-office infidelities or Bush’s (Sr.) Contra “out of the loop” statements or much about Dan Quale’s bone-headed everything anymore. No, they seem to be able to put it behind them and move ahead while the right seem to always be mired in the mud blaming someone for something, but it’s never their fault. Frankly, as a proud Independent both sides make me kinda sick, but the right is wrong on this one, again.
To quote you in your infinite wisdom… yawn, next!
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rckymtn
Citizen
Username: Rckymtn
Post Number: 216
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 11:10 pm: | |
Roger Gregory, 4th Circuit.
Then Bush appointed him the "real" way and he was confirmed.
If it weren't for recess appointments, we'd never have had Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall.
Pickering will serve a year and then will have to retire.
I never understood, however, how come many of the same Democrats who supported his nomination to be a district judge ten years ago changed their minds in the interim and now decided he's not worthy to be on the federal bench. Of all the arguments I've heard about Pickering, this is one that convinced me that Democratic opposition to his nomination was not credible.
And, he would have been confirmed if the Democrats had permitted an up or down vote on him, just like Estrada would have been, and Owens, and Kuhl, etc. Majority rule, however, is not the rule in the U.S. Senate. |
tom
Citizen
Username: Tom
Post Number: 1813
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 11:20 pm: | |
So let's assume for a moment that Pickering did the right thing, and interposed himself into a probable gross injustice. And it was for someone regularly spends his weekends with one guy who shoots at other people's houses, and a mentally retarded man several years older than himself.
Is Pickering the kind of do-gooder who regularly intercedes on behalf of the oppressed? Can you find me an instance where he interceded on behalf of a black or hispanic person? An abused wife? Or is there just this one cross-burning incident? |
Elmwoodian
Citizen
Username: Java_drinker
Post Number: 300
Registered: 8-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 7:40 am: | |
rckymtn ,
nor is it in Presidential Elections, oh well, sucks for us. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4368
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 8:10 am: | |
Aren't the Republicans,in the person of Bishop Ashcroft, the people trying to take judges discretion away on sentencing guidelines?
Or is that only for pot smokers and doesn't apply to racists?
Hell, we put imbecile teenagers on death row and murderers plea bargain and turn in accomplishes who get executed. |
ashear
Citizen
Username: Ashear
Post Number: 910
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 8:51 am: | |
Tom and BobK are right no target. There are lots of judges out there taking a principle stand against the injustices of the sentencing guidelines. Pickering was only concerned about this one cross-burner. |
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 741
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 12:49 pm: | |
I think it was a push from Conservatives (repub and dem) to set sentencing guidelines, because liberal justices were letting convicts and repeat offenders off without serving any time. To combat that, the conservatives acted, but it was only in response to what wasn't taking place -- punishment. Since then, justices of all stripes and persuasions have argued for loosening those guidelines, as they force manytimes unreasonable (in the light of the perp's history and the criminal act) sentences. |
ashear
Citizen
Username: Ashear
Post Number: 917
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 12:59 pm: | |
CJC - much of what you say is true, though I think you mischaracterize the state of federal sentencing pre-guiedlines. My point is that Pickering, except for this one cross-burning case, has not been one of those judges. So why this one case. It can not have been the only one he ever saw in which the guidelines demanded this kind of result. Its commonplace in federal sentencing. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4378
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 1:48 pm: | |
Rckymtn, there is an old boy system for naming District Court judges. Basically, the senior Senator from the state where the court is located chooses and the nomination is made and the judge confirmed, except under the most unusual of circumstances.
Schumer recently put a very unqualified person on the federal bench to pay of a political debt, so the system works both ways. |
Diversity Man
Citizen
Username: Deadwhitemale
Post Number: 591
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 6:45 pm: | |
Which of you posters actually represent defendants in federal court?
DWM |
sbenois
Citizen
Username: Sbenois
Post Number: 10630
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 7:45 pm: | |
The boys at Sbenois and Sbenois do every day.
---> Brought to you by Sbenois Engineering LLC <-
Hey, it also wouldn’t look good coming out of a motel with your wife’s best friend saying you were just planning a surprise birthday party for her husband...- Arturo November '03
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notehead
Citizen
Username: Notehead
Post Number: 895
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 11:00 pm: | |
I knew there was more than one!! |
rckymtn
Citizen
Username: Rckymtn
Post Number: 217
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2004 - 12:07 am: | |
Elmwoodian - touche!
bobk -- you're correct -- Schumer supported Doris Irrizary for a district court seat in Brooklyn despite her Unqualified rating by the bar association. She also was Pataki's pick. So Bush threw them both a bone -- they can both claim credit for putting a Puerto Rican woman on the bench. Makes no difference that she's not qualified and yells at lawyers and doesn't understand common legal arguments, which were the substance of the comments received in opposition to her nomination. |
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