Another Flowers Fraud On Obama’s High Court Choice

I have to believe that the Philadelphia Daily News give column space to Christine Flowers on Friday because it will make our weekends more enjoyable to know that her dreck won’t appear again for seven days afterwards.

She wastes more of our time here today on the question of who President Obama will choose as his Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice David Souter; after telling us that Obama “still” hasn’t made his choice (is he supposed to be governed by sands running from an hourglass on this?), she implies that he’s busy making sure the demographics of his choice are satisfactory to the voters who elected him.

And then she tells us this…

This is the first time in more than a decade and a half that a Democratic president will be asking a majority Democratic Congress to approve his high court pick. The last was Bill Clinton, whose choice of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was graciously handled by both sides of the aisle: She was confirmed by a 96-3 vote.

Don't expect to see those numbers this time around. With a polarized Capitol Hill, it's unlikely Obama's choice will skate by Republican senators who still remember the tactics of Leahy, Kennedy and Biden at the Roberts and Alito confirmation hearings, not to mention the "high-tech lynching" that greeted Clarence Thomas in 1991, in which only 11 out of 57 Dems voted to confirm.

That’s some intentionally clumsy spin by Flowers; that phrase didn’t characterize the vote on Thomas, but (as far as Thomas was concerned) the testimony that preceded it, notably that of Anita Hill, who had worked with Thomas at the EEOC, as noted here.

Flowers then tells us this…

I SUPPOSE, IN some ways, it's payback time. Of course, everyone's going to pretend to play nice and give the president's nominee a fair hearing. But you can't erase years of bitterness and partisanship simply because the power has shifted.

When Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said last week, "I would hope Republicans give the president the opportunity to put his person on the court with some civility," you had to smile and say, "Amy, Amy, Amy - where have you been for the last two decades!" Democrats routinely threatened filibusters when they didn't like the smell of a GOP nominee, and now they have the audacity to talk about "civility" as if the last few confirmation hearings were tea dances.

I’ll tell you what, Christine; here is some reading material for you to refresh your memory on what has transpired over the prior two presidential administrations on the matter of judicial appointments:

This tells us that, as far as the Repugs were concerned, they believed the only course of action for the Senate was to confirm or deny judicial appointments without a filibuster, though now that they’re the minority, they consider the filibuster to be back “in play.”

This tells us that this thinking was perhaps more in evidence that at any other time during the confirmation hearing of “Strip Search Sammy” Alito, with the Repugs cowing just enough Dems against the filibuster so that the vote was close enough to confirm him (yes, it’s true that Dubya would have just nominated one wingnut after another until he got what he wanted, but principles are supposed to mean something).

This tells us that former Senate Majority Leader Bill (“Cat Killer”) Frist led the effort to block one of Bill Clinton's judicial nominees via filibuster (Judge Richard Paez of the 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals), then lied about it.

This tells us that the Republican-controlled Senate prevented approximately 60 Clinton nominees from even receiving a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less a vote on the Senate floor.

This tells us that Dubya, on the other hand, “(had) a better record of having his judicial nominees approved than any President in the past twenty-five years. Only ten of 215 nominations (were) turned down.”

Oh, and Flowers concludes her column with some typically dismissive shorthand concerning three prospective Obama nominees, as follows:

Elena Kagan – Flowers tells us that she, “as dean of Harvard law school, barred the military from recruiting on campus because of its ‘don't ask, don't tell’ policy” (this also tells us that Kagan was nominated by President Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1999 to replace James L. Buckley, who had taken senior status in 1996. The Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman Orrin Hatch scheduled no hearing, thus killing her nomination, as the Repugs did with the other previously noted Clinton nominees).

Diane Wood – Flowers tells us that Wood, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago, used the RICO statute against hard-line antiabortion activist Randall Terry; more on Terry is noted here (hardly fitting Flowers’ characterization of “peaceful anti-abortion protesters” and “rosary-toting grannies”).

Sonia Sotomayor – As Ben Smith of The Politico notes here, the wingnutosphere has launched a campaign against all three of the prospective nominees vilified here by Flowers, but the campaign against Sotomayor has been the worst, as Media Matters notes here.

But again, this is typical of the type of legal “analysis” generated by Flowers, also on display here in her assault on common sense in the Boumediene v. Bush ruling by the High Court.

As a courtesy to the readers of her column, I believe the Daily News should require that Flowers tell us exactly what type of law she supposedly practices. I believe, based on her foul body of work as a columnist, she would have been perfect in the Office of Legal Counsel for Dubya’s ruling cabal.

Perhaps her columns are her means of venting over the fact that she was denied such a particularly notorious assignment.

Update 1: Concerning Sotomayor (based on this and this - the latter includes a dig at Wood also), I'd say it's long past the point where Jeffrey Rosen should be apologizing (haven't seen it yet).

Update 2 5/11/09: The Inky should be reminded that, aside from presenting a progressive or Democratic response to Flowers' arguments (such as they are) out of basic fairness, it's really bad for business to ignore other points of view on this and other issues (symptomatic of our corporate media in general as noted here - and how much money did you all lose last week?).