You Don't Have To Guess What Sort Of Judges McSame Would Burden Us With If He Had The Chance

If you wonder what kinds of judges McCain would pick were he to be elected president, you can do more than just check his Senate voting record on judicial confirmations. You can also take a look at his kowtowing to extreme right elements in his own Party who have ordered him to stop considering moderates for the VP slot. Right-wing religionists have told him, for example, that someone like Lieberman would be approved for Secretary of this or that but not as Attorney General or VP. They also crossed Tom Ridge off his list. Fox News is reporting that "Several sources at the RNC told FOX News that in the last 36 hours, senior McCain advisers and aides have told RNC officials that McCain 'got the message' last week that choosing a running mate who supports abortion rights would not be helpful." They even rejected McCain's proffered deal that he be allowed to pick a moderate on abortion as long as he is anti-gay. McCain wants to tell them to go suck a lemon-- he hates them as much as they hate him, maybe more-- but his ambition is so overwhelming that he would ask his wife to show her tits to a bunch of bikers if it meant he would get 50 more votes in South Dakota. The only thing that will keep him from picking Meg Whitman is his fear that the religious right will sit out the election. Is John McCain a coward? He always has been, although his carefully crafted image has been one of courageousness and independence. And that bring us to the voting record.

Don't worry, we're not going to go through all his decades in Washington. But let's look at the controversial Bush nominations and where McCain was on each. I looked over 40 votes starting in 2002 when the Bush Regime got serious about stuffing the federal judiciary with extremist ideologues. The trick for the Regime was to make sure all the corporatists they wanted on the bench-- and that has always been the only real criteria for them, that the nominee be a tool of Big Business who would never think twice about the "nation of whiners" (basically, workers and consumers) and always rule in favor of corporate interests-- were also social Neanderthals who could be counted on to be anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-whatever else was being scapegoated by the GOP at any given moment.

The short version of this story is that there have been 40 votes-- confirmations and clotures-- for federal judges. McCain-- Mr. Moderate, Mr. Maverick-- voted with Bush all 40 times. Yes, he voted 100% of the time with Bush, just like the worst lock step extremists-- the ones who don't take on airs and try painting themselves as something they're not, the crazy old reactionaries like Jim Inhofe (R-OK), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

The contentious battles kicked off with D. Brooks Smith of Pennsylvania, who Bush nominated to for the lifetime position of Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the U.S. Virgin Islands). The nomination was strongly opposed by environmental groups and groups defending women's rights, civil rights and the rights of people with disabilities, not just because he was a sure vote against all they are advocating but because of his shady ethics and shaky judgment.

At the time the Democrats held a slim majority in the Senate, but there was an effective conservative majority, with every single Republican-- including McCain, of course-- committed to supporting all of Bush's nominations, regardless of how horrendous any may have been, joined by a handful of right-wing corporate-oriented Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. By the time Smith's nomination came before the Senate, they had already approved all the mainstream conservatives-- more than 70 of them-- that Bush had sent their way. Smith was the first of the crackpot zealots to get a vote. The Republicans were joined by Evan Bayh (IN), Joe Biden (DE), John Breaux (LA), Robert Byrd (WV), Jean Carnahan (MO), Tom Carper (DE), Byron Dorgan (ND), John Edwards (NC), Bob Graham (FL), Ernest Hollings (SC), Herb Kohl (WI), Mary Landrieu (LA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Zell Miller (GA), Ben Nelson (NE), and Bill Nelson (FL).

The day of the Smith confirmation vote the Washington Post and the L.A. Times editorialized that he was a bad choice, pointing out that "Smith has been a federal district judge since 1988. His record raises questions about his suitability for this important seat. In 1997, Smith refused initially to recuse himself from hearing a bank fraud case even though the claims implicated another bank where his wife was a vice president and where the couple had substantial financial assets. Instead, in violation of federal judicial ethics, Smith issued a number of rulings in the case, including several favorable to the banks, before finally recusing himself. Smith long remained a member of a club that barred women even though by 1992 the federal code of judicial ethics specifically prohibited such membership. Only in late 1999, when the circuit court seat to which he has now been named first became vacant, did Smith obey the rules and resign." The NY Times had come to the same conclusion of Smith's unfitness

A few days after Smith's confirmation, Schumer wrote an OpEd in the NY Times arguing that ideology should be considered as one factor in the confirmation of federal judges.

"The not-so-dirty little secret of the Senate is that we do consider ideology, but privately... If the President uses ideology in deciding whom to nominate to the bench, the Senate, as part of its responsibility to advise and consent, should do the same in deciding whom to confirm. Pretending that ideology doesn't matter-- or, even worse, doesn't exist-- is exactly the opposite of what the Senate should do."

The battle got really intense, though with the Miguel Estrada nomination-- and the seven cloture votes that followed from March, 2003 until July 2003. Not being a judge, the neo-fascist Estrada, perhaps the most radical right of any of Bush's worst nominations, had no paper trail. McCain and the rest of the Republicans all voted to shut down debate on this one but--even with the help of DLC type conservative Democrats like John Breaux, Zell Miller, and the Nelson twins-- they never managed to force a vote and in September Estrada finally skulked away. At the time the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol Times joined many editorial boards breathing a sigh of relief.

The Bush administration did everything in its power - and a few things beyond its legitimate power-- to secure a federal appeals court judgeship for Miguel Estrada. And, now that Estrada has withdrawn his name from nomination, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, claims Estrada is the victim of "a political hate crime," while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., grumbles about "obstruction" and Bush complains that "the treatment of this fine man is an unfortunate chapter in the Senate's history."

What a crock!

Estrada was forced to withdraw from consideration for a place on the influential Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because the Senate was not going to approve him and the American people were fine with that. In other words, the process worked. Bush, Frist and DeLay are just mad because they did not succeed in adding another judicial activist to the federal bench.

A favorite of extreme right-wingers, Estrada's track record and his actions during the confirmation process suggested that he would use the judgeship to advance his views-- rather than interpret the law honesty. That made a lot of senators, including some Republicans, concerned, and created the space that allowed a Democratic filibuster to prevent a Senate vote on the nomination.

In judicial nomination fights, filibusters ought to be employed judiciously. But Estrada's refusal to cooperate with the confirmation process made it entirely appropriate to block his confirmation.

Well aware that his views on legal matters placed him well outside the judicial mainstream, Estrada refused to respond to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee. And the Bush Justice Department refused to release memos Estrada had written while serving in the office of the solicitor general in the administration of Bush's father.

None of this phased John McCain in the least. He voted for cloture (to shut down debate) on this godawful nominee 7 times. He also voted for cloture and/or for confirmation for two right-wing Supreme Court judges, Sam Alito and John Roberts, as well as for Janice Brown, Brett Cavanaugh, Carolyn Kuhl (failed), Charles Pickering (failed), David McKeague, Jeffrey Sutton, Jerome Holmes, Leslie Southwick, Deborah Cook, Henry Saad (failed), Priscilla Owen, Thomas Griffith, William Myers (failed), and William Pryor.

McCain's 100% lockstep votes in favor of anti-environmental, anti-regulatory, anti-worker, anti-minority, anti-consumer hack judges should give anyone who cares to ponder it a look at what kinds of judges we would be likely to see nominated from a McCain administration. And with rubber stamp Republican senators that think advice and consent means agreeing with everything, the American public could look forward to scores, if not hundreds, of judges eager to serve corporate interests and further screw ordinary Americans.

When I heard Pastor Rick ask Obama, a constitutional scholar, which Supreme Court judges he would not have nominated, I knew what the answer should have been. Obama certainly would never have nominated any of the atrocious ideologues put on the bench by Reagan or either of the Bushes. But his answer was nonconfrontational and mild, going right to the Court's weakest and most pathetic link, Clarence Thomas. A couple weeks ago I heard Jeff Merkley speak at a small rally. He's challenging one of these rubber stamp senators in Oregon, Gordon Smith. Like McCain, Smith has never run across a Bush nomination he wasn't enthusiastic about. He voted for every one of them. That's a definition of a rubber stamp. Merkley made it clear when he spoke that he would have voted against the extremists Bush had nominated for the courts. "Time and time again," he said, "Republicans like Gordon Smith have voted to stack the courts with extreme right-wing judges who favor corporate special interests over ordinary Americans. Oregon deserves a Senator who will put the people and their rights first and is not afraid to stand up to the divisive politics of the Republican party." Yeah, so does America, lots of them.