--- Nathan Newman <nathanne at nathannewman.org> wrote:
> Ah the rhetoric-- yep, Douglas, Black, Goldberg,
> Fortas, Marshall -- all
> appointed by Democrats -- were such rightwingers.
Been a while since them guys were appointed. ANd no Democratic Pres is likely to nominate their equivalents today -- even Cass Sunstein, despite his embarassing try to for a judgment "One Decision At A Time," in praise of the Rehnquist Court, is way too left. Fara s Senators go (like Black), there isn't anyone in the Senate as populist as Black, nor hardly anyone in the agenclies as left wing as Douyglas (he was SEC Chief). There are no labor lawyers of Goldberg's stature, and the idea of appointing a labor-side labor lawyer the bench is a joke. And he's no Black, Goldberg, Fortas, or Marshall.. And I thought you disapproved of them preferring justices in the Frankfurter mode.
So let's grow up. Breyer and Ginsburg are the best we can hope for from a Democrat, if indeed anyone that far left. (That that they are loads better than Roberts.) Our best hope for a progressive Justice is still a renegade Republican, Brennan was a Democrat, btw -- that was in the quaint old gentlemanly days when a Republican Pres thought it was a nice bipartisan thing to do to appoint a Justice of the opposite party. He quickly regretted that mistake, however, and it has not, I believe, been repeated.
>
> And how pray tell, can the Democrats exercise "party
> discipline" on Senators
> who choose to defy them? The Republicans who
> control executive and
> legislative power can discipline their caucus by
> threatening to deny them
> pork for their districts or otherwise threaten their
> reelection. What great
> weapons does the Dem leadership have against
> Senators Pryor, Nelson or
> Lieberman?
Nathan, you're almost even to make me switch back to no-lesser-evilism. How about: deny them the Party's endorsement? Throw them out of the Party? (Labour did it with Galloway.) Cut off their PAC money? Find candidadtes who support Dem principles tro endorse, fund, and run agaianst them?
Tell what price I have to pay from going through all
these things twice. . . . .
>
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