Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Judicial activism, Law, Sarah Palin
Per Governor Palin’s ridiculously over-stylized Twitter page:
Vetted judge candidates today from Anch Office, 3 more judges to be announced soon to begin work for AKns interpretting law, not making law
More "teenager on MySpace," and less "politician on Twitter"
Clearly, Palin’s trying to play to that old culture war canard about dangerous “liberal activist judges” making rather than interpreting (”interpretting”?) law. The only thing is, that issue doesn’t really have any bearing on the types of judges she’s appointing. Per her press release, Palin appointed one judge to a state trial court (Fairbanks District Court), and two to state intermediate courts (Fairbanks & Palmer “Superior” Court). Typically, when we talk about judges “making” law, we talk about federal appellate judges (e.g., 2nd Circuit), who, because of the discretionary nature of certiorari review, are often the final word on matters of federal law, and Supreme Court justices, who are always the final word on federal law.
However, the Alaska court system provides for appeals from Superior Court judgments as a matter of right. Accordingly, a Superior Court judge will never have the ability to conclusively “say what the law is,” nor, obviously, would a trial court judge. Conservatives are allowed to worry about “judicial activism,” but the types of appointments she’s made just don’t even present that concern.
So, once more, we’re left with the perception that Sarah Palin is little more than a machine for the generation of talking points. On one point, then, I do agree with her: her departure probably is “best for AK progress.”
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Clarence Thomas, Equality, Racism, Ricci, Sonia Sotomayor, Title VII, Voting Rights Act
To a large extent, the momentous decisions that came out of the Supreme Court’s most recent term raised the question of when, if ever, we as a society should let go of the “strong medicine” we adopted in the ’60s and ’70s to combat the twin evils of overt racism and violent bigotry. Many of these provisions – like the Voting Rights Act, challenged in Holder, and Title VII, challenged in Ricci – pushed the limits of Congress’ power to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments to remedy past discrimination. That was the right decision, then, but maybe it won’t always be. Justice Thomas’ dissent in Holder, in fact, pointedly asked the question many have been thinking: haven’t we fixed racism yet?
But now—more than 40 years later––the violence, intimidation, and subterfuge that led Congress to pass §5 and this Court to uphold it no longer remains. An acknowledgment of §5’s unconstitutionality represents a fulfillment of the Fifteenth Amendment’s promise of full enfranchisement and honors the success achieved by the VRA. Id.
Surely he’s right, that the Voting Rights Act’s greatest triumph would be its factual obsolescence. But are we there yet?
NO. Not when we still hear stories like this:
More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason. [. . .] “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
We as a nation have made significant strides since the civil rights movement. But apparently, for some portions of America, it’s still okay to lock kids out of pools on account of their race (name that Supreme Court case!), or even beat them. Racism has always been an evil that thrives at the fringes of society. That we’ve expunged it nearly completely from the center is something to celebrate, but not cause to let down our guard.
Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King.
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Creationism, Election 2012, Fundamentalism, Republican Party, Tim Pawlenty
There’s no disputing that the Republicans’ 2012 field has undergone something of an implosion. Until late June 2009, Mark Sanford seemed to personify the type of conservative Republicans would need to win the White House again – reasoned, well-mannered, not too tied up with immature antics like the “tea parties,” and reassuring. No more. And until just last week, Sarah Palin was the GOP’s culture warrior emeritus, a controversial choice for the ticket who, nonetheless, could rally the faithful like no-one else. Palin apologists notwithstanding, most now agree, that ship has sailed, too.
So who’s the beneficiary of this sudden purge? Tommy Christopher speculates half-jokingly on a moderate GOP hopeful waiting in the wings, annihilating the opposition with carefully calculated leaks. Most don’t think it’s that direct, but still say the implosion inures to Romney’s benefit. I disagree.
To have a fighting chance in 2012, the GOP will need to field a fresh face, untarnished by the Bush years and, hopefully, with a solid record behind him. That rules out Romney. As popular as he remains in some GOP circles, he’s never really been trusted by the “movement,” contrary straw polls notwithstanding. You can only re-invent yourself so many times, and good ‘ol Mittens used them all last spring. Further, his firmly “establishment” credentials are more of a liability given the current state of the party. But if not Romney, who?
I’ll put my money on Tim Pawlenty. More moderate and less polarizing than most, Minnesota’s governor is exactly what Sarah Palin was supposed to be, but never could manage to pull off – a competent, moderate outsider. Spared the drama of the Franken/Coleman deathmatch, he’s been largely unfazed, too, by the disaster working its way through the Republican ranks. I’d worry. Especially because, at the end of the day, he’s still a creationist.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Economics, Elitism, Equality, Jerks, Law, Peter Brown, Securities law, Sexism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court, Wall Street Journal
Over the last week, we’ve written more than a few things about soon-to-be-ex-governor Sarah Palin. Previously, these criticisms by myself or others have triggered in conservatives something we didn’t know they had in them: righteous feminist outrage. Good for them! Even if I disagree with the application to governor Palin – criticizing a woman is not sexist, unless it’s premised on her gender, obviously – it’s nice to see the GOP discover feminism. Too often conservative pundits pigeonhole feminism as a militant philosophy, which is rather like defining Christianity by Fred Phelps. It’s never too late to discover feminism for the big-tent, inoffensive, simple philosophy that it is to so many Americans. We hope they keep it up.
Sadly, by the current evidence, that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Ever. Check out the Wall Street Journal’s latest super-substantive criticism of the Judge:
Her net worth of $740,000 is a third of what the last new Supreme Court justice, Samuel Alito, brought to the bench, and he had only worked previously in government or as a judge. That’s not much of a nest egg, given her salary and opportunities. [. . .]
And the way she spends her money does tell us something about a woman who will rule on the most cases involving business, labor and capital. Simply put, Ms. Sotomayor’s behavior would make a financial planner cringe. [. . .] She has been the model of financial disinterest. [. . .]
She owns no stocks or bonds. [. . .]
As she goes through confirmation hearings beginning next Monday, lawmakers are unlikely to ask why she has not accumulated more financial assets. It’s an interesting question to ponder, but the senators likely will turn to sexier topics. That’s too bad, because how one handles money is something to which everyone can relate.
On the surface, this “critique” is obnoxious only for its apparent snobbery, containing within it the presumption that someone who has practiced and adjudicated complex securities disputes somehow doesn’t understand the capital markets, because she’s never been personally involved in them. But I think something far more nefarious is at work here — an attempt to play off the old sexist stereotype of the spendthrift woman (see above, right). Take your cues from the conspicuous use of gender terms (”…a woman who will rule on…”), as much as the simple fact that, without more, Judge Sotomayor’s finances couldn’t be less relevant to her competence as a federal judge.
One has to imagine that, if Peter Brown actually cared about Judge Sotomayor’s record on cases implicating the capital markets, he could have turned to her case law. As a judge sitting in first the SDNY and then the Second Circuit, she’s ruled on, and written opinions on, no small number of important “money” cases, and reviewed all with a competency that her opponents would find thoroughly uninteresting. See, e.g., Press v. Quick & Reilly, Inc., 218 F.3d 121 (2000) (applying antifraud liability to a case of first impression, concerning broker/dealer disclosures) and U.S. v. Falcone, 257 F.3d 226 (2001) (canvassing insider trading rules). Securities is not an easy field of law, especially these days, when lawyers and judges must be as much investment bankers as jurists. In fact, I submit that a federal judge sitting in New York, and hearing these cases daily for twenty years, probably has a better grasp on it than a mere columnist.
Presumably, if Brown cared enough to look beyond his brandy snifter and actually confront Judge Sotomayor on her record, he’d have something novel to say about the intersection of her jurisprudence with the capital markets. But since he can’t be bothered to do so, we’re left with this useless & vaguely insulting article. Is this the best the Journal can do?
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Elitism, Mythology, Political rhetoric, Political symbols, Sarah Palin
To most Americans, in her resignation, Sarah Palin proved herself to be the petty, embarassing failure we expected her to be. I personally regard her as something a little more dangerous – a calculated shot by the GOP at the Achilles’ Heel of democracy, a voter’s tendency to listen to the heart over the head. Good riddance.
But what to make of her continued popularity? To a very vocal minority, Palin is not only a talented politician, but a key player in an eschatological drama now unfolding, where villains will fall and heroes rise, no other explanation needed:
Glenn Beck: Many write:Palin is done.U don’t understand EVERYTHING is about to change. What you thought you knew, could trust or depend on is shifting (see also here, and here)
Some wingnut: Sarah of the Bible set in motion a righteous people to occupy the Earth. Sarah of Ak. set in motion a righteous government to occupy America
Why? What’s so compelling in this simple character, this personified insult to the American intellect? The answer, oddly enough, may be in comparative mythology. Palin’s meteoric rise & fall curiously parallel the story laid out in Joseph Campbell’s “Hero of a Thousand Faces,” which Campbell described as the skeletal form of most major myths, from the Iliad, to the Lord of the Rings, to Star Wars. Bear with me.
This all might seem fairly far fetched. But without the help of allegory, I remain at a loss to explain Palin’s continued popularity. Myths are generous: they work failings and bizarre transformations into the fabric of the story, forgiving and even valorizing them. To supporters sufficiently desperate for a hero, then, Palin can be just that, enriched rather than hurt by her flaws. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, any story that casts Palin as some kind of hero is what it sounds like – a fiction.
Below, my attempt to build Palin’s brief stay on the political stage into a Campbell-style myth, to understand just what, exactly, the other half sees in her: (more…)
Filed under: Author - ACG, Politics | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Elitism, Fundamentalism, Intellectualism, Political rhetoric, Political symbols, Practical History, Sarah Palin
To listen to Ross Douthat, writing in yesterday’s Times, Governor Palin embodies the second, rarely-seen prototype of American success — the self-taught statesman:
Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.
This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.
Douthat’s very next paragraph significantly undercuts his valorization of Palin as some latter-day Jackson. But not nearly enough. I can’t contest the fact that, at many points in American history, we have held up as exemplars men & women who’ve obtained their knowledge and power through non-traditional means, outside of the academies. Hence the protoype of the farmer-statesman, embodied as much by Washington as by Lincoln.
But. When we hold up men like Jackson, Jefferson, and Washington as embodying the “democratic ideal” (from rags to riches and great power), we applaud them for coming to the same end as those who climb the formal ladder to power, and for overcoming adversity and acquiring unique outsider knowledge along the way. Jackson, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Washington were easly the intellectual equals of Wilson and Obama – they just came to their knowledge and realized their intellectual potential through a more circuitous, and differentially laudable route.
Sarah Palin is different. Rather than coming to knowledge & intelligence through an arduous alternate route like, e.g., Lincoln, Palin and those like her completely disclaim the value of intelligence in political decisionmaking, and evince an outright distrust of earned knowledge, regardless of its source. Her motivating principle is not that experience can supply the same intelligence found in elder, learned statesmen, but rather that intelligence is completely irrelevant to governance. To her, impulse, instict, and faith are all you need, and “book smarts” are worse than useless. She’s more Stephen Colbert, and less Lincoln.
Admittedly, the farmer-statesman is a curious type, and often trades on the perception of himself (or herself) as an ignorant rube. But this image is, in the end, a ruse. Think Lincoln, who relished the chance to benefit from others’ underestimation of his abilities. For Palin, it’s not. Don’t confuse the two.
So what is the motivation behind Palin’s popularity, and the persistent narrative, like Douthat’s, that holds her out as conforming to the democratic ideal? More on that later.
