A test for political peer pressure is shaping up in Washington around the tenure of Roland Burris in the Senate.
With little legal prospect of expelling him for misleading affidavits to the Illinois Legislature and Supreme Court about pre-appointment discussions of fundraising for ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Obama's replacement is under heavy fire from politicians and editorial writers to step aside.
But so far, he refuses to budge. "I've done nothing wrong, and I have absolutely nothing to hide," Burris said in a Chicago speech this week. "You know the real Roland...Stop the rush to judgment."
But calls for his resignation continue, his spokesman has resigned and the pressure mounts. A Chicago Tribune editorial today goads national and local Democrats: "Do you think it's acceptable for someone to take a Senate seat by lies of commission and of omission? That is, by saying what isn't true—and by declining to say what is?"
All this is complicated by the fact that Burris is the only African-American in the Senate, which moves the debate into what Clarence Thomas called "high-tech lynching" territory during his Supreme Court nomination hearings.
In the same Tribune calling for his resignation, a columnist notes: "Watching the Chicago media pack take chunks out of Roland Burris this week—and after taking a few bites out of the lying weasel myself—I couldn't help but wonder: When it comes to covering corruption, is there a media double standard, one for weak black politicians and another for powerful white guys?"
When Barack Obama vacated his Senate seat to bring Change to American politics, it's safe to say this was not what he had in mind.
Update: Sen. Burris should resign at once for the good of the state of Illinois, Gov. Patrick J. Quinn said today. “This should not be a matter that takes weeks."
Showing posts with label Clarence Thomas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clarence Thomas. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Gender Goop
The booing of Sarah Palin yesterday for lauding Hillary Clinton's presidential primary achievement is a dandy metaphor for the sexual stew this election has created.
Here is a woman on the Republican ticket chosen mainly for gender appeal trying to profit from the unhappiness of Hillary supporters being rebuffed by Hillary-hating ideologues even as she tries to win an election for them.
If this foreshadows a Palin problem in her own party, it pales by comparison to the bind she creates for Democrats. If they harp on her lack of qualifications, they risk accusations of sexism. (Recall the success of Clarence Thomas, a less than brilliant choice for the Supreme Court, in clobbering Democrats, with charges of a "high-tech lynching.")
Looking ahead to the Vice-Presidential debate, Joe Biden will have to walk on eggshells to avoid appearing condescending. Even if he treats Palin with utmost courtesy, showing his superior grasp of foreign policy could be interpreted as sexist bullying.
Unlike the unspoken racism that dogs Barack Obama, the question of Palin's identity as a woman will be the subject of open argument ad nauseum, perhaps one of the goals the McCain campaign had in mind when choosing her.
It could serve the double purpose of defending veiled racial attacks on Obama with countercharges that Palin too is being victimized while she goes relatively unscathed in promoting the values of the Religious Right.
This is not quite what the leaders of the Women's Movement had in mind over half a century of trying to break through glass ceilings.
Here is a woman on the Republican ticket chosen mainly for gender appeal trying to profit from the unhappiness of Hillary supporters being rebuffed by Hillary-hating ideologues even as she tries to win an election for them.
If this foreshadows a Palin problem in her own party, it pales by comparison to the bind she creates for Democrats. If they harp on her lack of qualifications, they risk accusations of sexism. (Recall the success of Clarence Thomas, a less than brilliant choice for the Supreme Court, in clobbering Democrats, with charges of a "high-tech lynching.")
Looking ahead to the Vice-Presidential debate, Joe Biden will have to walk on eggshells to avoid appearing condescending. Even if he treats Palin with utmost courtesy, showing his superior grasp of foreign policy could be interpreted as sexist bullying.
Unlike the unspoken racism that dogs Barack Obama, the question of Palin's identity as a woman will be the subject of open argument ad nauseum, perhaps one of the goals the McCain campaign had in mind when choosing her.
It could serve the double purpose of defending veiled racial attacks on Obama with countercharges that Palin too is being victimized while she goes relatively unscathed in promoting the values of the Religious Right.
This is not quite what the leaders of the Women's Movement had in mind over half a century of trying to break through glass ceilings.
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Audacity of Dope
In today's New York Times, William Kristol invokes the Reign of Terror in advising John McCain to follow Danton's lead in picking his running mate.
Coopting Obama's keyword, Kristol urges the Republican nominee to show audacity and "upend the normal dynamics of this year’s election" with a bold vice presidential choice like Gen. David Petraeus, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or--wait for it--"a hawkish and principled Democrat like Joe Lieberman."
As one of the Connecticut Independent's constituents, I am reduced to paraphrasing Henny Youngman, "Take my Senator--please."
Kristol's reasoning: "If any Republican can defend conservative principles and policies, at once acknowledging Bush’s failures while pivoting to present his own biography and agenda to the voters, McCain can.
"Still, he’ll have to take risks."
One of them would be listening to loony advice from the likes of Kristol, who has only recently become McCain's new best friend and is now urging on him the wisdom of the French Revolution: “Il faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.”
McCain may want to keep in mind that Danton ended up under the guillotine.
Coopting Obama's keyword, Kristol urges the Republican nominee to show audacity and "upend the normal dynamics of this year’s election" with a bold vice presidential choice like Gen. David Petraeus, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or--wait for it--"a hawkish and principled Democrat like Joe Lieberman."
As one of the Connecticut Independent's constituents, I am reduced to paraphrasing Henny Youngman, "Take my Senator--please."
Kristol's reasoning: "If any Republican can defend conservative principles and policies, at once acknowledging Bush’s failures while pivoting to present his own biography and agenda to the voters, McCain can.
"Still, he’ll have to take risks."
One of them would be listening to loony advice from the likes of Kristol, who has only recently become McCain's new best friend and is now urging on him the wisdom of the French Revolution: “Il faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.”
McCain may want to keep in mind that Danton ended up under the guillotine.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Racial Preferences: Obama/Thomas
In 1974, a future Supreme Court Justice graduated from Yale Law School. In 1991, a future US Senator and Presidential candidate received his law degree from Harvard.
But there is more than a generation gap between two men of color who went on to live out success stories in American public life. Aside from differences in temperament, there is a sharp contrast in how they overcame racial prejudice and at what emotional cost.
Reviewing Thomas' recent memoirs, Jeffrey Toobin notes in the New Yorker, "The young law student quickly came to resent the fact that he had benefitted from preferential admissions.'As much as it stung to be told that I’d done well in the seminary despite my race, it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it,' he writes...
"Thomas never explains what Yale did to him that was so terrible. When he didn’t receive the job offers he wanted from law firms, he interpreted the slight as reflecting what 'a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference...' Later, Thomas peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and put it on the frame of his law degree. 'I never did change my mind about its value,' he writes."
There is a sharp contrast between Clarence Thomas' seething resentment and Barack Obama's law school experience, as described today by Dean Barnett in the conservative Daily Standard:
"Regardless of his classmates' politics, they all said pretty much the same thing. They adored him. The only thing that varied was the intensity with which they adored him. Some spoke like they were eager to bear his children. And those were the guys. Others merely professed a profound fondness and respect for their former classmate."
Barnett goes on to add: "Barack Obama graduated right near the top of his law school class. That fact, along with his presidency of the Law Review, makes his uniform popularity all the more impressive. Law schools are intensely competitive places. People who thrive to an unseemly extent, as Obama did, are usually subject to an array of resentments...
"The people that Obama so thoroughly charmed generally weren't the charm-prone types."
As newly minted lawyers, they took different paths, Thomas into Washington politics, Obama into working as a community organizer in Chicago. If he becomes the first African-American president, he is not likely to find a sympathetic racial compatriot on the Supreme Court.
But there is more than a generation gap between two men of color who went on to live out success stories in American public life. Aside from differences in temperament, there is a sharp contrast in how they overcame racial prejudice and at what emotional cost.
Reviewing Thomas' recent memoirs, Jeffrey Toobin notes in the New Yorker, "The young law student quickly came to resent the fact that he had benefitted from preferential admissions.'As much as it stung to be told that I’d done well in the seminary despite my race, it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it,' he writes...
"Thomas never explains what Yale did to him that was so terrible. When he didn’t receive the job offers he wanted from law firms, he interpreted the slight as reflecting what 'a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference...' Later, Thomas peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and put it on the frame of his law degree. 'I never did change my mind about its value,' he writes."
There is a sharp contrast between Clarence Thomas' seething resentment and Barack Obama's law school experience, as described today by Dean Barnett in the conservative Daily Standard:
"Regardless of his classmates' politics, they all said pretty much the same thing. They adored him. The only thing that varied was the intensity with which they adored him. Some spoke like they were eager to bear his children. And those were the guys. Others merely professed a profound fondness and respect for their former classmate."
Barnett goes on to add: "Barack Obama graduated right near the top of his law school class. That fact, along with his presidency of the Law Review, makes his uniform popularity all the more impressive. Law schools are intensely competitive places. People who thrive to an unseemly extent, as Obama did, are usually subject to an array of resentments...
"The people that Obama so thoroughly charmed generally weren't the charm-prone types."
As newly minted lawyers, they took different paths, Thomas into Washington politics, Obama into working as a community organizer in Chicago. If he becomes the first African-American president, he is not likely to find a sympathetic racial compatriot on the Supreme Court.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Clarence Thomas' Confession
By writing his memoirs and promoting them on 60 Minutes, Clarence Thomas has not only breached the traditional Supreme Court wall of personal privacy but, in effect, made it clear that his critical vote to give George W. Bush the presidency in 2000 should never have been cast.
Given the bitterness and disdain he now publicly expresses for Democratic Senators over their behavior during his confirmation hearings in 1991, how could he possibly not have recused himself from the case that would give the presidency to their party or, as it actually did by a 5-4 vote, to the Republicans and the son of the man who named him to the court at that?
Could there be a case in which a Justice is compromised by personal prejudice any more clearly?
In his blog on The Hill web site, old Washington hand Brent Budowsky notes the unprecedented event of a Justice “using the Court’s return as a book promotion to remind the world of his enemies, demons, biases and vendettas.”
Budowsky, a former Democratic aide in Congress who advises politicians of both parties, went on to suggest that Thomas “should now recuse himself from any cases involving any litigants who opposed his confirmation, because his attacks on them destroy any pretense of judicial impartiality. This is a man with a chip on his shoulder, axes to grind and scores to settle.”
He was the same man in December, 2000 when he cast the only vote in the United States that counted to make George W. Bush the 43rd President. Almost seven years later, he is still so full of the anger behind that vote that he can’t resist confessing how wrong it was of him to cast it.
Given the bitterness and disdain he now publicly expresses for Democratic Senators over their behavior during his confirmation hearings in 1991, how could he possibly not have recused himself from the case that would give the presidency to their party or, as it actually did by a 5-4 vote, to the Republicans and the son of the man who named him to the court at that?
Could there be a case in which a Justice is compromised by personal prejudice any more clearly?
In his blog on The Hill web site, old Washington hand Brent Budowsky notes the unprecedented event of a Justice “using the Court’s return as a book promotion to remind the world of his enemies, demons, biases and vendettas.”
Budowsky, a former Democratic aide in Congress who advises politicians of both parties, went on to suggest that Thomas “should now recuse himself from any cases involving any litigants who opposed his confirmation, because his attacks on them destroy any pretense of judicial impartiality. This is a man with a chip on his shoulder, axes to grind and scores to settle.”
He was the same man in December, 2000 when he cast the only vote in the United States that counted to make George W. Bush the 43rd President. Almost seven years later, he is still so full of the anger behind that vote that he can’t resist confessing how wrong it was of him to cast it.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Murdoch Retirement Plan for Rove
If Newt Gingrich got $4.5 million and Clarence Thomas $1 million, what will Rupert Murdoch pay for Karl Rove’s memoirs?
In announcing his departure exclusively to Murdoch’s soon-to-be Wall Street Journal, Rove disclosed “no specific job plans, save to write a book on the Bush years, which ‘the boss,’ as in Mr. Bush, ‘has encouraged me to do.’"
To keep his wholly owned franchise, the other boss, Rupert Murdoch, will undoubtedly be the overbidder, even if no other publishing house is holding its nose and competing.
Should the umpteen-million advance not be enough to keep Rove living in high style retirement, there will undoubtedly be a part-time job as a commentator for Fox News.
In announcing his departure exclusively to Murdoch’s soon-to-be Wall Street Journal, Rove disclosed “no specific job plans, save to write a book on the Bush years, which ‘the boss,’ as in Mr. Bush, ‘has encouraged me to do.’"
To keep his wholly owned franchise, the other boss, Rupert Murdoch, will undoubtedly be the overbidder, even if no other publishing house is holding its nose and competing.
Should the umpteen-million advance not be enough to keep Rove living in high style retirement, there will undoubtedly be a part-time job as a commentator for Fox News.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Supreme Court Racist: Free at Last
As he goes off on vacation, perhaps to write the book for which Rupert Murdoch gave him a $1 million advance, Clarence Thomas can take satisfaction in having embarked on his real life’s work--dismantling the progress in race relations since Brown v Board of Education in 1954.
In her syndicated column today, Ellen Goodman points out a significant statement by the usually silent Supreme Court Justice in the decision striking down voluntary integration plans in Seattle and Louisville schools:
“One sentence leaps out of the footnotes: ‘Nothing but an interest in classroom aesthetics and a hypersensitivity to elite sensibilities justifies the school districts' racial balancing programs.’ He trivialized the values of diversity to a matter of aesthetics and closed with a warning: ‘beware of elites bearing racial theories.’ So much for a half-century of civil rights.”
With Bush appointees Roberts and Alito enabling a 5-4 conservative majority on the Court, Thomas is, in the words of the man who made it possible for him to pursue his life goal, “free at last” to express his inner disdain for African-Americans without the skills, desire or coldness of heart to Uncle Tom their way to the top.
Thomas didn’t invent the stereotype of a self-hating minority member--Jews have had their share--but he is practicing the art at the highest level ever.
In her syndicated column today, Ellen Goodman points out a significant statement by the usually silent Supreme Court Justice in the decision striking down voluntary integration plans in Seattle and Louisville schools:
“One sentence leaps out of the footnotes: ‘Nothing but an interest in classroom aesthetics and a hypersensitivity to elite sensibilities justifies the school districts' racial balancing programs.’ He trivialized the values of diversity to a matter of aesthetics and closed with a warning: ‘beware of elites bearing racial theories.’ So much for a half-century of civil rights.”
With Bush appointees Roberts and Alito enabling a 5-4 conservative majority on the Court, Thomas is, in the words of the man who made it possible for him to pursue his life goal, “free at last” to express his inner disdain for African-Americans without the skills, desire or coldness of heart to Uncle Tom their way to the top.
Thomas didn’t invent the stereotype of a self-hating minority member--Jews have had their share--but he is practicing the art at the highest level ever.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Book-Contract Baksheesh
On the eve of another Rupert Murdoch mongoose act, this time swallowing the Wall Street Journal, he gets a review from the New York Times that required legwork by no less than four reporters and, in the end, reflects both shock and awe at the Australian who is eating the media world.
America’s “paper of record” narrates Murdoch’s unique skills at getting politicians to act as enablers in his addictive expansion of an information empire.
In addition to the time-honored methods, Murdoch has perfected new variations for buying them, not least of which is bribery by book advance.
As Congress was preparing to redraw the media ownership rules, Murdoch’s book publishing arm, HarperCollins, gave House Speaker Newt Gingrich a $4.5 million contract. In the Senate, Trent Lott got a $250,000 advance for a memoir.
Other Senators came at bargain prices. Arlen Specter, received $24,506 for “Passion for Truth,” Kay Bailey Hutchison $141,666 for “American Heroines.” Chuck Hagel has a book deal for next year.
Unless things have changed drastically since my time as a publisher, books by politicians, unless they involve scandal, are not best-sellers. Trent Lott’s quarter-of-a-million-dollar tome sold 12,000 copies.
But Murdoch got his money’s worth, as he no doubt will from the $1 million advance to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Book publishing is an odd business that has never been just about money.
America’s “paper of record” narrates Murdoch’s unique skills at getting politicians to act as enablers in his addictive expansion of an information empire.
In addition to the time-honored methods, Murdoch has perfected new variations for buying them, not least of which is bribery by book advance.
As Congress was preparing to redraw the media ownership rules, Murdoch’s book publishing arm, HarperCollins, gave House Speaker Newt Gingrich a $4.5 million contract. In the Senate, Trent Lott got a $250,000 advance for a memoir.
Other Senators came at bargain prices. Arlen Specter, received $24,506 for “Passion for Truth,” Kay Bailey Hutchison $141,666 for “American Heroines.” Chuck Hagel has a book deal for next year.
Unless things have changed drastically since my time as a publisher, books by politicians, unless they involve scandal, are not best-sellers. Trent Lott’s quarter-of-a-million-dollar tome sold 12,000 copies.
But Murdoch got his money’s worth, as he no doubt will from the $1 million advance to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Book publishing is an odd business that has never been just about money.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Bush-League Supreme Court
Of the damage this presidency has done to American society, the worst and longest-lasting is just becoming visible.
As the Supreme Court ends its 2006-2007 term, signs of a tectonic shift in the legal landscape show an ultra-conservative majority in place to curtail individual rights to privacy and protections from discrimination.
In the most striking decision so far, the Court in April upheld by 5-4 a federal law banning a type of abortion in the middle-to-late second trimester.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that the majority opinion "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court.”
In the New Yorker this week, Jeffrey Toobin notes that, with the coming of Roberts and Alito, the Court is now poised to fulfill the long-hoped-for conservative agenda: “Expand executive power. End racial preferences intended to assist African-Americans. Speed executions. Welcome religion into the public sphere. And, above all, reverse Roe v. Wade, and allow states to ban abortion.”
It took two Bushes to accomplish this. As a new biography of Clarence Thomas reminds us, in 1991 the first President Bush claimed to have chosen Thomas, who had only one year of experience as a judge, without regard to race to follow the distinguished first African American on the Court, Thurgood Marshall.
After the confirmation hearings, which he had complained were an attempted “high-tech lynching,” Thomas’ presence on the Court turned out to be a boon for the Bushes as his vote created the 5-4 majority that halted the Florida recount in 2000 and awarded the presidency to George W.
Attempting to duplicate his father’s feat of replacing a demographic giant with a dwarf, W in 2005 nominated his White House counsel and former personal attorney, Harriet Miers, for the seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor. Conservative outcry led to the withdrawal of the nominee described by Bill Maher as “Bush’s cleaning lady.”
Today the hard-right majority is still tenuous, depending on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. But with a year and a half left of the Bush term, human mortality could change that before a new President is sworn in. Either way, whoever takes the oath in 2009 will have a lot to say about American values from then on.
As the Supreme Court ends its 2006-2007 term, signs of a tectonic shift in the legal landscape show an ultra-conservative majority in place to curtail individual rights to privacy and protections from discrimination.
In the most striking decision so far, the Court in April upheld by 5-4 a federal law banning a type of abortion in the middle-to-late second trimester.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that the majority opinion "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court.”
In the New Yorker this week, Jeffrey Toobin notes that, with the coming of Roberts and Alito, the Court is now poised to fulfill the long-hoped-for conservative agenda: “Expand executive power. End racial preferences intended to assist African-Americans. Speed executions. Welcome religion into the public sphere. And, above all, reverse Roe v. Wade, and allow states to ban abortion.”
It took two Bushes to accomplish this. As a new biography of Clarence Thomas reminds us, in 1991 the first President Bush claimed to have chosen Thomas, who had only one year of experience as a judge, without regard to race to follow the distinguished first African American on the Court, Thurgood Marshall.
After the confirmation hearings, which he had complained were an attempted “high-tech lynching,” Thomas’ presence on the Court turned out to be a boon for the Bushes as his vote created the 5-4 majority that halted the Florida recount in 2000 and awarded the presidency to George W.
Attempting to duplicate his father’s feat of replacing a demographic giant with a dwarf, W in 2005 nominated his White House counsel and former personal attorney, Harriet Miers, for the seat vacated by Sandra Day O’Connor. Conservative outcry led to the withdrawal of the nominee described by Bill Maher as “Bush’s cleaning lady.”
Today the hard-right majority is still tenuous, depending on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. But with a year and a half left of the Bush term, human mortality could change that before a new President is sworn in. Either way, whoever takes the oath in 2009 will have a lot to say about American values from then on.
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