Politics & Law

Which Founding Father Are You?

(Via A Little More to the Right).

George Soros Takes Aim At President Bush

Insight Magazine has an article entitled "Soros Resolves to Bring Bush Down." An excerpt:

On top of $10 million reportedly promised or spent on anti-Bush advertising campaigns, Soros pledged up to $5 million to mobilize anti-Bush activists and voters online. He and other wealthy donors are financing the Internet political-mobilization project MoveOn.org, founded by a California millionaire in 1998 to defend President Clinton from impeachment. More recently, MoveOn.org has organized opposition to the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It claims an "international network" of 2 million online activists. According to its home page, initiatives of MoveOn.org include: "Fire Rumsfeld and change course" and "Investigate the White House."

Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of the important new book Funding Evil, has watched Soros and his operations for years. "Soros uses his philanthropy to change - or, more accurately, deconstruct - the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people," she said. In the 1990s, he gave millions to legalize illegal drugs. He provided $15 million in start-up money - the same amount he's pledged so far to defeat Bush - for Project Death in America, a grant-making organization to promote euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

In a 1995 interview with the New Yorker, Soros said he was disappointed that his terminally ill father wouldn't die quickly enough. His father "unfortunately wanted to live," Soros said. "I was kind of disappointed in him. ... I wrote him off."

University of Michigan Law School

John J. Miller writes that the University of Michigan has the second-best law school in the state of Michigan (via National Review Online).

Bush Re-Election Campaign In Full Swing

The Washington Post has an article entitled "2004 Is Now for Bush's Campaign." An excerpt:

Bush's campaign Web site already has signed up 6 million supporters, 10 times the number that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has, and the Bush operation is in the middle of an unprecedented drive to register 3 million new Republican voters. The campaign has set county vote targets in some states and has begun training thousands of volunteers who will recruit an army of door-to-door canvassers for the final days of the election next November.

The entire project, which includes complementary efforts by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and state Republican parties, is designed to tip the balance in a dozen-and-a-half states that both sides believe will determine the winner in 2004.

"I've never seen grass roots like this," said a veteran GOP operative in one of the battleground states.

Details of the Bush Trip To Baghdad

The New York Times reports that President Bush was caught in pre-Thanksgiving traffic, something he hasn't had to deal with in three years:

The trip, which was a tightly held secret until the very end among only a few aides, began about 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday in Crawford. Mr. Bush left his ranch in an unmarked car, not the usual presidential limousine, for the private airport he uses near Waco, Tex. Aides said they did not want to attract attention, so there was no motorcade and no blocked streets. Mr. Bush said he even tried to disguise his appearance, as did Ms. Rice. ,

"They pulled up a plain-looking vehicle with tinted windows," Mr. Bush told reporters. "I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled 'er down — as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple."

Mr. Bush also noted that without his usual motorcade, he experienced pre-Thanksgiving Texas traffic.

"The president encountered and witnessed traffic for the first time in three years," Mr. Bartlett told the small group of reporters, photographers and television technicians who accompanied Mr. Bush. "That was a little amusing to those who were riding with him."

Air Force One then left Texas for Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where Mr. Bush switched to another Air Force One, a refueled 747. The group picked up a few more reporters, bringing the total number of journalists on the trip, including camera crews, to 13. Reporters on the trip were instructed not to tell their families or their employers where they were going.

The president left Washington on Wednesday night, and arrived in Baghdad about 10 and a half hours later, around 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. On the way, Mr. Bartlett told reporters that if news of the trip leaked out before Air Force One landed in Iraq, the plane would turn around.

Ninth Circuit At It Again

Jim Copland scrutinizes the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in an article over at National Review Online.

Marriage and the Constitution

The Washington Post has a article entitled "Opponents Of Gay Marriage Divided." The article details the various proposals for a constitutional amendment that are currently circulating around Washington.

President Bush In Baghdad

Fox News has an article entitled "Bush Wins PR Points for Secret Trip to Baghdad."

"My Mommies Can Marry"

That is the title of a new Newsweek article that can be found here.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist

Time Magazine has an article about Tennessee Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist entitled "Bush's Cool Operator."

Did Republicans' Efforts Resonate With Voters?

The Washington Times has an article entitled "GOP claims win in judges talkathon." An excerpt:

The poll of 1,000 registered voters found that among the independents who paid attention to the debates, 55 percent held a negative view of Democratic arguments, while 41 percent held a negative view of Republican arguments.

GOP Seeking Candidate To Challenge Senator Barbara Boxer

Fox News has an article entitled "GOP Targets Boxer in Effort to Win Over California."

Governor Schwarzenegger Invigorates GOP

The Washington Times has an article entitled "Schwarzenegger aura buoys GOP."

Leaked Memos Show Senator Ted Kennedy Spearheaded Democratic Opposition To President Bush's Judicial Nominees

The Hill has an article entitled "How Ted cemented filibuster." An excerpt:

Confidential Democratic memos downloaded from a Senate Judiciary Committee database and leaked to the press show that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) overcame the reservations of 15 Senate colleagues to convince Democrats to wage filibusters against some of President Bush’s judicial nominees.

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One document opposing Estrada argued that “the D.C. Circuit is far too important to appoint someone about whom we have so many questions. Key labor, civil rights, environmental, and administrative law cases are decided there, and we know it is a ‘feeder’ circuit for the Supreme Court… . We can’t repeat the mistake we made with Clarence Thomas.”

Bush Gets a Black Eye On the Cover of Time Magazine

Time Magazine has a cover story entitled "Love Him, Hate Him President."

"I Know Bush"

David Frum has an op-ed in the London Telegraph entitled "I know Bush. He's your best chance for peace." An excerpt:

Americans are fundamentally a generous and optimistic people. Those political leaders who have achieved lasting success in American politics - such as Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan - did so by appealing to Americans' best qualities. If the people approve and return George W Bush, it will be because he did the same: because he extended the universal principles that Americans espouse to that vast and challenging stretch of earth from Morocco to Malaysia.

Almost everybody agrees that the war on terror represents a new kind of war. It is hardly surprising, then, that those in charge of this war should sometimes make mistakes. Perhaps the timing of this state visit was one of those mistakes. But over the next five years, there will be plenty of opportunities to correct that error - and for this President who has risked so much to advance the common ideals of the English-speaking peoples to return to Great Britain to receive the cheering welcome he deserves.

Senator Cornyn Speaks Out On Judicial Filibusters

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn has an article entitled "Falsities on the Senate Floor" over at National Review Online. An excerpt:

The Constitution expressly establishes supermajority voting requirements for authorizing treaties, proposing constitutional amendments, and other specific actions. To confirm judicial nominees, by contrast, the Constitution requires only a majority vote — as the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in United States v. Ballin (1892).

No wonder, then, that filibusters have been roundly condemned as unconstitutional — by Democratic senators and leaders as well as by prominent Democrats on the bench and in the legal academy.

The current filibusters of judicial nominations are also unprecedented. 168-4? Try 0-4. Until now, every judicial nominee throughout the history of the Senate and of the United States of America, who has received the support of a majority of senators, has been confirmed. Until now, no judicial nominee who has enjoyed the support of a majority of senators has ever been denied an up-or-down vote. Indeed, until now, Democrat and Republican senators alike have long condemned even the idea of defeating judicial nominees by filibuster.

During Wednesday night's historic session, however, a partisan minority of senators claimed precedent for their filibusters. Embarrassed by public exposure of their destructive acts, this partisan minority would very much like to find support for their actions, no matter how implausible.

But Senate Democrats have already admitted — at least amongst themselves — that their current obstruction is unprecedented. In a November 3 fundraising e-mail to potential donors, my colleague, Jon Corzine, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, acknowledged — actually, he boasted — that the current blockade of judicial nominees is "unprecedented."

It is dishonest for Senate Democrats to tell their donors one thing, and the American people another thing. My colleague from New Jersey is right that the current filibusters are unprecedented. And the alleged precedents now cited by Senate Democrats for the current filibusters are all false.

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Today, an enthusiastic bipartisan majority wants to confirm judicial nominees, yet for the first time in our nation's history, a minority is stopping them.

That's why Georgetown Law Professor Mark Tushnet — no shill for President Bush's judicial nominees — has written that filibusters are clearly different from the holds and committee delays used against nominees from the earlier Bush and Clinton administrations. He has written that "[t]here's a difference between the use of the filibuster to derail a nomination and the use of other Senate rules — on scheduling, on not having a floor vote without prior committee action, etc. — to do so. All those other rules . . . can be overridden by a majority vote of the Senate . . . whereas the filibuster rule can't be overridden that way. A majority of the Senate could ride herd on a rogue Judiciary Committee chair who refused to hold a hearing on some nominee; it can't do so with respect to a filibuster." He has also written that "[t]he Democrats' filibuster is . . . a repudiation of a settled pre-constitutional understanding."

Energy Bill Draft Set For Debate

The Associated Press reports that "House, Senate OK Broad Energy Bill Draft."

Graham Helping Other Presidential Campaigns

The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel has an article entitled "Graham talking with Democratic campaigns about possible future role."

Supreme Court To Review Guantanamo Detainees

The Washington Post has a story entitled "Justices to Rule on Detainees' Rights."