“Adegbile’s Denied Confirmation Is Affront To Our Principles”: A Handful Of Democrats Help Launch The Explosives
Last week, the floor of the U.S. Senate was the scene of a bipartisan travesty, an affront to the principles of the Constitution, an assault on the notion of American exceptionalism. With the help of several Democrats, Republicans refused to confirm Debo P. Adegbile, President Obama’s nominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department.
The GOP’s resistance was expected since its senators oppose every nominee the president puts forward. But this time, Adegbile’s new job was torpedoed because a handful of Democrats stepped forward to help launch the explosives. They found objections in Adegbile’s résumé, despite his impeccable credentials, sterling reputation and years of advocacy in the causes associated with civil rights.
Indeed, it is precisely that advocacy that led to the assault on his qualifications. His alleged misstep? Adegbile, a lawyer, was tangentially involved in filing a court challenge on behalf of a former Black Panther named Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. Adegbile was litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when it filed a brief contesting the jury-sentencing instructions, an argument which resulted in commutation of Abu-Jamal’s sentence from death to life in prison in 2012.
That process is embedded in decades of case law. Defense attorneys are supposed to vigorously represent accused criminals — no matter the crimes with which they have been charged, no matter their guilt or innocence, no matter how radical their demeanor or vile their behavior — especially in capital cases.
Among the people who ought to understand that is Pennsylvania’s senior Democratic senator, Bob Casey. If he had any decency, any gumption, any courage, Casey would have helped to smooth Adegbile’s path.
He would have noted that American justice rests on the idea that each person stands equally before the bar, a credo that cannot be upheld without defense attorneys for the accused. The senator might have pointed out that in the U.S. armed forces, even the most heinous criminals are represented by competent defense counsel. And he might have reminded Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police that Adegbile did not spare Abu-Jamal’s life. A federal court did so because it agreed that instructions to the jury were unconstitutional.
Instead, Casey led the Democratic opposition. He explained his refusal to support the nominee with this statement:
“I respect that our system of law ensures the right of all citizens to legal representation no matter how heinous the crime. (But) it is important … citizens … have full confidence in their public representatives — both elected and appointed. The vicious murder of Officer Faulkner in the line of duty and the events that followed in the 30 years since his death have left open wounds for Maureen Faulkner and her family as well as the city of Philadelphia.”
That statement is confusing, contradictory and just plain dumb. Casey will ignore the system of law because of the awful grief borne by Maureen Faulkner? I cannot begin to imagine what her family has endured since her husband was gunned down shortly before his 26th birthday, but we don’t allow the anguish of families to dictate justice. If we did, they could serve as jurors, judges and executioners. But that wouldn’t be any different from a lynch mob, would it?
Similarly, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) explained his stick-in-the eye to Adegbile by speaking of the pain endured by the Faulkner family, even while acknowledging that “an attorney is not responsible for the actions of their client.” That wasn’t as outlandish as the rhetoric from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who claimed that Adegbile was “seeking to glorify an unrepentant cop-killer,” but it was a non sequitur.
In this shameful episode, the person who best represented American values was Adegbile, the son of a Nigerian father and an Irish immigrant mother. He clearly puts more faith in the fundamental principles of his homeland than the 52 senators who voted against him.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, March 8, 2014
“Listening To The Founding Fathers”: Constitutionalism With An Anti-Government Ideology Is Historically And Philosophically Mistaken
A political backlash has commenced within the Republican Party against tea party and libertarian groups that have limited interest in securing Republican victories and majorities. Elected leaders, party officials and business groups have begun pushing back against self-destructive legislative strategies and unelectable primary candidates.
But the GOP’s political reaction often concedes a great deal of ideological ground to anti-government populism — what its advocates describe as “constitutionalism.” Our national recovery, in this view, depends on returning to the severely constrained governing vision of the Founding Fathers, as embodied in the Constitution. Many Republicans now seem to be saying: Yes, this is the conservative ideal, but it is just not practical to implement at the moment.
This cedes too much. In a new essay in National Affairs, “A Conservative Vision of Government,” Pete Wehner and I argue that the identification of constitutionalism with an anti-government ideology is not only politically toxic; it is historically and philosophically mistaken.
It is not enough to praise America’s Founders; it is necessary to listen to them. The Federalist Founders did not view government as a necessary evil. They referred to the “imbecility” of a weak federal government (in the form of the Articles of Confederation) compared to a relatively strong central government, which is what the Constitution actually created. Though they feared the concentration of too much power in one branch of government, they believed that good government was essential to promote what they called the “public good.”
And they assumed that the content of the public good would shift over time. “Constitutions of civil government,” argued Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 34, “are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages. . . . Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen.”
In the tradition of the Federalist Founders, Abraham Lincoln believed the federal government should be capable of adjusting to changing circumstances and active in pursuit of national purposes. In his “Fragment on Government,” Lincoln described a number of matters requiring the “combined action” of government, including “public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism” and “providing for the helpless young and afflicted.”
Conservatives naturally want to be seen as defenders of the Constitution. But “constitutional conservatives” need to recognize what both the Federalist Founders and Lincoln actually envisioned for the republic they respectively created and preserved. Far from being constrained by the political and economic arrangements of an 18th-century coastal, agrarian republic, the Founders fully expected the United States to spread across a continent, undergo economic and social change and emerge as a global actor. And they purposely designed a constitutional system that could accommodate such ambitions.
This is not to argue that the Founders would be happy with the current size and role of government. But, after protecting a variety of essential civil liberties, they placed such matters mainly in the realm of democratic self-government. They made it procedurally difficult for majorities to prevail. But they placed few limits on the public policies that durable majorities might adopt in the future — leaving “a capacity to provide for future contingencies.”
In our time, durable majorities have endorsed the existence of Social Security and Medicare. These roles of government were not envisioned by the Founders. But they do not violate a principle of our system nor run counter to the prescient mind-set of the Founders. People are free to argue for and against such programs. But this debate can’t be trumped or short-circuited by simplistic and legalistic appeals to the Constitution as a purely limiting document.
The broad purposes of the modern state — promoting equal opportunity, providing for the poor and elderly — are valid within our constitutional order. But these roles are often carried out in antiquated, failing systems. The conservative challenge is to accept a commitment to the public good while providing a distinctly conservative vision of effective, modest, modern government.
But a shift in mind-set is first required among conservatives: thinking of government as a precious national institution in need of care and reform. This would honor the Founders. The real Founders.
By: Michael Gerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, January 2, 2013
“The Real Enemies Of Christmas”: Sham “War On Christmas” Overlooks Holiday’s History
Probably seeking more TV appearances and speaking gigs, Sarah Palin has decided to enter the overcrowded “War on Christmas” market sector with a new book. Like all the other screeds on the subject, Palin’s version — Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas – takes up arms against a cast of alleged scoundrels frequently denounced by conservative talking heads.
Is Palin sick of the commercialization that has wrenched the season from its roots? Is she tired of Christmas sales that start before Thanksgiving? Has she had it with the bickering over parking spaces and shoving to get the most popular toy that inevitably accompany shopping at this time of year?
Ah, not so much. As Palin tells it, the gravest threats to the seriousness of the season are atheists who sue over public displays of the creche and shopkeepers who call out “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Just like every other right-wing talking head who comes out swinging at this time of year, she sees the problem as Americans who believe in the First Amendment, who speak to Allah when they pray, who understand the difference between public spaces and religious ones.
Her diatribe is not only ridiculously overwrought and paranoid, but it’s also redundant. Hasn’t Bill O’Reilly thoroughly covered this ground?
Still, we’re bound to be subjected to a month-long outcry over school calendars that mention “winter holidays” instead of “Christmas,” so it’s worth repeating the many ways in which Palin and her compatriots are wrong. Let’s start with history.
For the most part, the earliest American Christians did not celebrate Christmas at all. They didn’t believe celebrations were appropriate. The Puritans were a dour bunch who rebelled against the traditional Christmas festivities that had marked the season in 17th-century England: caroling, eating, drinking, carousing.
The Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed any celebrations of Christmas, fining those who dared show any hint of merry-making. That likely would have included the errant greeting of “Merry Christmas!” (Increase Mather, the Billy Graham of his day, had a point about the December 25 anniversary, which he noted coincided with a pagan Roman celebration. Historians doubt that Jesus was actually born on that date.)
But the far bigger flaw in the “War on Christmas” arguments lies in a fundamental misreading of the U.S. Constitution and its traditions. Palin and her ilk claim to be faithful readers of the founding document, but their view of it — like their interpretation of the Bible — is narrow, limited and eccentric.
The United States was not created as a “Christian” nation. In fact, the Founding Fathers were acutely aware of Europe’s bloody and destabilizing religious wars, and they sought to create a nation that would thrive as a pluralistic republic, allowing all citizens to worship as they chose. That is explicit in a treaty unanimously ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797 and aimed at ending piracy along the Barbary coast. One of its articles begins, “As the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion …”
Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase “wall of separation between church and state,” was a believer, but not of the sort that Palin would recognize. While he had great respect for Jesus’ moral teachings, for example, he did not believe in Christ’s divinity.
Jefferson might be surprised by the religious pluralism of the nation he helped to birth, but his wisdom has held up well through the centuries. Government does not endorse any religious view, so public school teachers should not lead public prayers. (Let me also clear up a common misunderstanding: Students are free to pray on their own in public schools, and many do.) Government buildings should not include any Christian inscriptions unless they include those of other religions. Churches, mosques and synagogues, however, are free to display what they like, and they do.
I know many committed Christians who struggle to keep sacred the meaning of the season. But they don’t do that by railing against what they hear clerks say to patrons in the malls. They try to stay out of the malls.
When the “war” focuses on the real enemies of Christmas — endless commercialization and mindless consumerism — I’ll enlist.
By: Cynthia Tucker, Featured Post, The National Memo, November 23, 2013
“Sympathy For The Devil Worshipers”: SCOTUS Struggles Not To Become De Facto Prayer Editors
It’s easy enough to be in favor of a “nonsectarian” prayer before a legislative session — some invocation of a higher power that theoretically doesn’t exclude anyone (besides atheists, that is) — but what exactly does such a prayer sound like?
That was Justice Samuel Alito’s question during oral arguments at the Supreme Court Wednesday morning in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, and it got to the heart of the court’s basic discomfort with cases asking it to decide whether specific government-sponsored prayers cross the constitutional line and “establish” religion in violation of the First Amendment.
In Greece, a town of just under 100,000 in western New York, town officials invite local clergy to offer a prayer before monthly town board meetings. The prayers may technically be given by anyone, but for nine years they were exclusively Christian, many using language such as “in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.” Two residents sued the town under the First Amendment.
Standing before the court, the residents’ lawyer, Douglas Laycock, suggested that a nonsectarian prayer would be satisfactory. Justice Alito wasn’t so sure.
“How could you do it?” Justice Alito asked. “Give me an example of a prayer that would be acceptable to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus … Wiccans, Baha’i.”
“And atheists,” Justice Antonin Scalia added. “Throw in atheists, too.”
Mr. Laycock reminded the justices that atheists were already out of luck based on the court’s prior decisions. Then, riffling through his documents, he suggested, “The prayers to the Almighty, prayers to the Creator.”
“To ‘the Almighty,’” Justice Alito said skeptically. “So if — if a particular religion believes in more than one god, that’s acceptable to them?”
Justice Scalia, often impatient in religion cases, couldn’t resist. “What about devil worshipers?”
Over the laughter of the courtroom, Mr. Laycock said meekly, “Well, if devil worshipers believe the devil is the almighty, they might be okay. But they’re probably out.”
And so it went, the justices trying in vain to determine what sort of prayer, if any, would be sufficiently nonsectarian, and who should be responsible for making that determination. None of them seemed to relish the idea of playing at prayer editor.
As the argument progressed it was increasingly difficult to discern any grounds on which to justify legislative prayer other than the fact that it’s something we’ve always done — which was the basis for the court’s ruling upholding such a prayer in the Nebraska legislature in 1983, when it last considered the question.
Lawyers for the town leaned heavily on that ruling, but several of the justices seemed uneasy with its rationale. “The history doesn’t make it clear that a particular practice is okay going on in the future,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We’re not going to go back and take the cross out of every city seal that’s been there since, you know, 1800. But it doesn’t mean that it would be okay to adopt a seal today that would have a cross in it, does it?”
The question answered itself, and was a reminder of how much the country’s religious makeup has changed over the past two centuries. Justice Alito emphasized the point in returning to his earlier concern about workability. While the U.S. may once have been “98-percent-plus Protestant,” he said, today “there are all sorts of other adherents to all sorts of other religions. And they all should be treated equally, and — but I don’t — I just don’t see how it is possible to compose anything that you could call a prayer that is acceptable to all of these groups.”
Mr. Laycock agreed, and reached the inevitable conclusion to that argument. “We cannot treat everybody, literally everybody, equally without eliminating prayer altogether.”
But there is an alternative to “eliminating” prayer — a moment of silence, which is what the town of Greece did for years without complaint. It allows everyone to pray exactly as they wish; it even makes room for the atheists and devil worshipers.
For some — including several members of the current court — a “silence only” policy is surely a step too far. But it would be a reasonable compromise in a pluralistic society, and for justices who don’t want to become de facto prayer editors, it’s a bright line on an otherwise blurry canvas of conflicting tests and standards that have rarely satisfied anyone.
By: Jesse Wegman, Editors Blog, The New York Times, November 6, 2013
“There Are No Asterisks”: Those Who Wrap Themselves In The Constitution, Must Also Abide By The Constitution
Shortly after the 2010 midterms, as the newly elected House Republican majority was poised to start governing (I use the word loosely), the GOP officials had an idea for a symbolic gesture: they’d read the entire Constitution out loud. In January of this year, as the new Congress got underway, they did it again.
There wasn’t any harm in this, of course, but there wasn’t any point, either. It seemed to be the Republicans’ way of reminding the political world that they are the ones who truly love the Constitution. Sure, there are parts conservatives don’t like (the establishment clause, promoting the general welfare), and the right is eager to amend the document in a wide variety of ways, but for Tea Partiers and their allies, the Constitution has no greater champions than far-right congressional Republicans.
And if that’s still the case, Kristin Roberts has some bad news for them.
Have Republicans forgotten that they too must abide by the Constitution?
The document is explicit in its instruction to America’s federally elected officials — make good on the country’s debts. “The validity of the public debt of the United States,” the 14th Amendment states, “shall not be questioned.”
This is not some arcane biblical reference that needs to be translated from scraps of parchment. In fact, its purpose and intent are fairly well documented.
There’s been quite a bit of talk about exotic tactics President Obama may have to consider if congressional Republicans choose to push the United States into default on purpose. Maybe the White House can pursue a “14th Amendment option.” Maybe he can mint a “platinum $1 trillion coin.” Maybe the Treasury can create “Super Premium Bonds.” Maybe the president can do something to protect Americans from those who would do us deliberate harm, even if those people happen to be elected members of Congress. After all, if the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned, doesn’t Obama have a constitutional obligation to protect us from Republicans’ sociopathic tendencies?
Maybe it’s time to turn the question around on those who like to wrap themselves in the Constitution they claim to revere.
As this relates to Obama, there’s some disagreement among credible experts about whether the president can act unilaterally to circumvent the debt-ceiling law. Obama himself addressed the point yesterday, arguing that it really is up to Congress to complete this simple task and it wouldn’t do any good for him to experiment with creative alternatives.
But that only helps reinforce the importance of the question for congressional Republicans who swear to support the Constitution before they’re permitted to hold office. The document says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned.” It doesn’t say anything about justifying extortion schemes, or holding the public debt hostage, or protecting the integrity of U.S. finances in exchange for right-wing goodies to satisfy U.S. House candidates who won fewer votes than their rivals.
Likewise, Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution — known as the Full Faith and Credit Clause — doesn’t include any asterisks about what happens when one party really hates health care reform.
When the 14th Amendment was ratified, U.S. Sen. Benjamin Wade, an Ohio Republican, argued, “Every man who has property in the public funds will feel safer when he sees that the national debt is withdrawn from the power of a Congress to repudiate it and placed under the guardianship of the Constitution than he would feel if it were left at loose ends and subject to the varying majorities which may arise in Congress.”
Today’s congressional Republicans are prepared — some are eager — to betray this commitment, ignore their constitutional responsibilities, and put Americans’ wellbeing at risk for no particular reason.
Those who claim to cherish the Constitution have some explaining to do.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 9, 2013
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