“Unfair And Partial”: Federal Judge Edith H. Jones Says Minorities Are Predisposed To Crime
Judge Edith H. Jones of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is facing serious allegations this week after controversial remarks the jurist made at Federalist Society in February. According to the conservative group, there is no transcript of recording of Jones’ speech, but affidavits from attendees point to deeply problematic language from anyone, least of all a sitting federal judge.
According to the [ethics] complaint, Judge Jones, 64, who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, and who until recently was the chief judge of the Fifth Circuit and mentioned during Republican administrations as a possible Supreme Court nominee, said that “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime.”
One of the affidavits accompanying the complaint is from Marc Bookman, a veteran death penalty lawyer in Pennsylvania, who attended the lecture. He quoted Judge Jones as saying, “Sadly, some groups seem to commit more heinous crimes than others.” When asked to elaborate, Judge Jones “noted there was no arguing that ‘blacks’ and ‘Hispanics’ far outnumber ‘Anglos’ on death row and repeated that ‘sadly’ people from these racial groups do get involved in more violent crime,” the affidavit said.
A variety of civil rights organizations and legal ethicists this week filed a complaint of misconduct. An affidavit from James McCormack, the former chief disciplinary counsel for the Texas bar, added that he believes Jones “violated the ethical standards applicable to federal judges under the Code of Conduct for United States judges.”
Making matters slightly worse, this wasn’t the only offensive comment Jones made at the event.
Judge Jones is alleged to have said that the defenses often offered in capital cases, including mental retardation and systemic racism, were “red herrings.” She also said, according to the witnesses, that Mexicans would prefer to be on death row in the United States rather than in prison in Mexico.
It would appear that defendants have reason to question whether Jones is a fair and impartial arbiter of justice. Indeed, if I were a criminal defense attorney, and my client’s conviction rested in part on a ruling from Jones, I’d probably have new grounds for an appeal.
The matter will reportedly be reviewed by the 5th circuit’s chief judge. It’s a controversy worth watching.
Postscript: When Jones was on a very short list of jurists then-President George W. Bush was considering for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, the Washington Post published this brief profile, noting, “Known as a strong and outspoken conservative, she has written opinions that called into question the reasoning behind the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, has been an advocate for speeding up death penalty executions, and is a vocal proponent of ‘moral values.’ She also wrote a 1997 opinion throwing out a federal ban on the possession of machine guns and has been an advocate for toughening bankruptcy laws.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 5, 2013
“Blind To The Past And The Future”: Republicans Are Ignorant Of The Lessons Of History And Impervious To The Wisdom Of Experience
As a new effort at comprehensive immigration reform inches its way forward in the Senate, dissent from many conservatives is revealing their true contempt for, and fear of, the possibility that demographic groups who look different from their base will accrue power.
The questions are: Is providing a pathway to citizenship (or at least permanent residency) for the 11 million people in this country illegally an act of humanity and practicality? Or is it an electoral imperative to which opposition ultimately guarantees political suicide?
The answer probably is “yes” to both, although many Republicans seem to think the opposite.
President George W. Bush, a supporter of a pathway to citizenship, spoke to The Huffington Post about the current efforts for comprehensive immigration reform, saying, “I think the atmosphere, unlike when I tried it, is better, maybe for the wrong reason.”
Bush continued: “The right reason is it’s important to reform a broken system. I’m not sure a right reason is that in so doing we win votes. I mean when you do the right thing, I think you win votes, as opposed to doing something that’s the right thing to win votes. Maybe there’s no difference there. It seems like there is to me though.”
But that distinction — humanitarianism over opportunism — is as lost on as many of Bush’s fellow Republicans today as when he was in office. They don’t even accept the logic of long-term electoral viability over extinction.
The most outlandish example of conservative rhetoric in its truly offensive glory on this subject came in an interview last week with Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent conservative activist, on the news site PolicyMic. In it she said:
“I don’t see any evidence that Hispanics resonate with Republican values. They have no experience or knowledge of the whole idea of limited government and keeping government out of our private lives. They come from a country where the government has to decide everything. I don’t know where you get the idea that the Mexicans coming in resonate with Republican values. They’re running an illegitimacy rate that is extremely high. I think it’s the highest of any ethnic group. We welcome people who want to be Americans. And then you hear many of them talk about wanting Mexico to reclaim several of our Southwestern states, because they think Mexico should really own some of those states. Well, that’s unacceptable. We don’t want people like that.”
There are so many stereotypes and fallacies in that statement that it’s not even worth unpacking, but it is a great illustration of some deep-rooted conservative views.
The one thing I will take the time to contest is the notion that even if Republicans changed their rhetoric and tactics, they wouldn’t gain traction with Hispanics (not all of whom are Mexican, by the way, Ms. Schlafly).
According to exit poll data, from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, Republicans made significant headway in closing the gap between the number of Hispanics who voted for Democratic candidates to the House of Representatives and those who voted for Republicans, shrinking a 50-point Democratic advantage in 1982 to just 12 points in 2004.
But then came Bush’s attempt at comprehensive immigration reform and the enormous pushback it got from Congressional Republicans. Just before Christmas in 2005, the Republican-led House passed an enforcement-only immigration bill that sparked huge protests.
In the 2006 elections, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters for House races shot back up to 48 points. That year, Democrats recaptured the House and the Senate, and took control of a majority of governorships.
Republicans, seemingly ignorant of the lessons of history and impervious to the wisdom of experience, are hellbent on revisiting 2005. While the Democratic advantage among Hispanics in presidential races is large and growing, the Democratic advantage in House elections has slowly begun to shrink again. And Hispanics, seemingly excited by the movement on immigration reform and optimistic about its prospects, have developed sharply more favorable opinions of Congress. A full 56 percent of Hispanics hold Congress in high esteem, up from 35 percent in November 2011, according to an ABC News/Washington Post Poll.
So what do some Republican lawmakers want to do to the only segment of the population in which a majority now has a favorable opinion of Congress? Spurn them and dash their hopes.
Brilliant, if you want to cement Democratic preference among Hispanics in perpetuity.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, June 1, 2013
“More Autopsies In The Future”: The GOP Makeover Is The Same As It Ever Was
In March, the Republican National Committee released its so-called autopsy of the 2012 elections. It focused mainly on the growing Hispanic vote — of which Mitt Romney garnered only 27 percent.
To avoid being seen as the party of “stuffy old men,” the report said, the GOP would have to change its messaging, become more inclusive, and embrace issues like immigration reform. Otherwise, the “Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only.”
How is the rebranding effort working so far?
Not great. Earlier this month, Pablo Pantoja, the GOP’s Hispanic outreach director in Florida, switched to the Democratic Party, citing a “culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party.” He said he was partly inspired by the revelation that Jason Richwine, who co-authored a widely publicized anti-immigration report for the Heritage Foundation, once wrote a controversial dissertation arguing against admitting Hispanic immigrants with low IQs.
Incidents like that certainly aren’t helping the GOP’s image. Worse, fringe GOP candidates are making a splash in prominent statewide races, writes Josh Kraushaar at National Journal. He points to two states, Virginia and Colorado, where Republicans are losing ground despite the fact that Democrats there are vulnerable.
In Colorado, where Hispanic people made up 42 percent of all population growth between 2000 and 2010, Republican Tom Tancredo, who has taken a hard line against immigration reform, has emerged as a legitimate contender in the 2014 governor’s race. If Tancredo has read the RNC’s report, his March op-ed in the Christian Post — in which he chastised Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for speaking Spanish, and supported Romney’s disastrous “self-deportation” strategy — certainly doesn’t show it.
Virginia is even more worrisome for the GOP. The party’s nominee for the gubernatorial race in 2013, Ken Cuccinelli, is a hardcore conservative who has not only pushed for English-only workplaces, but has defended laws that criminalize sodomy, alienating younger voters who overwhelmingly identify with the Democratic Party. Polls show him trailing his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, despite the fact that McAuliffe has been called a “soulless hack” by members of his own party and worse.
Meanwhile, the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor, E.W. Jackson, is even more conservative, dragging the Republican ticket down further. (Among other controversial statements and positions, Jackson has claimed that Planned Parenthood has killed more blacks than the KKK.) As Dave Weigel at Slate put it, “Democrats win in Virginia, in off-years, when they convince suburbanites that the GOP has lost its mind.”
Furthermore, the GOP is struggling to come up with mainstream candidates who can compete in Senate races in Colorado and Virginia in 2014. The irony is that the GOP should be in a position of strength in those races, writes Kraushaar:
What’s remarkable is that these swing-state setbacks are taking place in what’s shaping up to be a promising political environment for Republicans. The off-year electorate, on paper, should be more conservative than in 2012, with younger voters and minorities less likely to show up for a midterm election. The scent of scandal threatens to weigh down Democrats over the next year. The implementation of Obama’s health care law, polling as poorly as ever, will be taking place right as the midterms begin in earnest. This is the stuff that should be catnip for prospective GOP recruits.
But instead we’re hearing crickets in these two Senate races, not to mention a handful of other battleground contests (Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire) where Republicans should be faring better. [National Journal]
Exacerbating the problem is that most elected Republican officials have no incentive to go after the Hispanic or youth vote. The average Republican district is 75 percent white and GOP congressmen overall represent 6.6 million fewer minorities in 2012 than they did in 2010, according to USA Today.
While the massive redistricting that produced those numbers might help Republicans keep their House seats, they certainly won’t help the party expand on a national level — which is where the ultimate prize, the presidency, will be determined.
Then there are the stream of controversial comments from the party’s right wing — like this from conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, and this from pundit Ann Coulter. Put together, the party’s perceived hostility toward non-white groups could offset any goodwill built by the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has championed immigration reform in the Senate. The success of that legislation is seen by many GOP analysts as crucial to the party’s electoral prospects.
It’s worth keeping in mind that there’s a lot of room for growth in the Hispanic vote in the next couple of elections. Esther J. Cepeda at The Washington Post crunched the Census numbers and found that only 48 percent of eligible Hispanic voters went to the polls in 2012, compared to 64.1 percent of white voters and 66.2 percent of black voters.
If Democrats can rally those voters, especially in swing states, Republicans will be releasing more autopsy reports in the future.
By: Keith Wagstaff, The Week, May 30, 2013
“That Great Untapped Reservoir”: Phyllis Schlafly Urges GOP To Focus On White Voters
Some important divisions among Republican officials surfaced in the wake of the 2012 elections, but most of the party agrees on one over-arching strategy: Republicans are going to have to do better among non-white voters. It’s an increasingly diverse nation, and the GOP’s core base is overwhelmingly white — a problem that appears to be getting worse, not better.
With this in mind, the Republican National Committee is launching yet another minority outreach campaign, and may even end up grudgingly supporting comprehensive immigration reform. The Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, a long-time leader of the religious right movement and anti-feminist activist, is convinced her party has it all wrong.
[I]n an interview this week with conservative radio program Focus Today, Schlafly just came right out and said it. Calling the GOP’s need to reach out to Latinos a “great myth,” Schlafly said that “the people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn’t vote in the last election.” Schlafly accused the Republican “establishment” of nominating “a series of losers … who don’t connect with the grassroots.”
Look, this isn’t complicated. White voter turnout rates have been pretty steady over the last few presidential-year election cycles, and both John McCain and Mitt Romney won the support of a majority of white voters. Indeed, it wasn’t especially close — McCain won 55% of the white vote in 2008 (en route to losing the election badly), and Romney did even better, winning 59% of the white vote (en route to losing the election badly).
Schlafly is under the impression that there’s this untapped reservoir of conservative white voters, just sitting at home, waiting for the Republican Party to reach out to them with a message they’ll like, and if Democrats are really lucky, GOP officials will take Schlafly’s advice seriously.
Because as the nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, conservative dead-enders who still see an emphasis on white voters as the key to electoral salvation are kidding themselves.
But even if we put these pesky details aside, I have a related question for Schlafly and those who agree with her: exactly what would it look like if Republicans tried even harder to “reach out to … the white votes”? The GOP is already looking an awful lot like the driven snow, so what more can party leaders do, specifically, to make white folks feel even more welcome?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 30, 2013
“Bad Heritage”: One Wonders If Jim DeMint Is Quite The Person To Lead The Way Toward The Think Tank’s Redemption
When Jim DeMint left the Senate to assume command of the Heritage Foundation, some people questioned the wisdom of the move. Not from DeMint’s perspective—after all, instead of being a staunchly conservative member of the minority party with a staff of a few dozen whose job was to throw rhetorical bombs at the majority and say mean things about Barack Obama, now he’d have a staff of a few hundred and rule one of the right’s most important institutions, not to mention probably quadrupling his salary. No, the puzzle was why a think tank like Heritage would want someone like DeMint, not known for putting much stock in thinking, as its leader.
And before you know it, Heritage is taking a huge hit to its reputation. It was always known for producing tendentious analyses of issues, but the report it released this week on immigration, claiming that reform would cost the country trillions of dollars, was a masterpiece of glaring omissions and questionable assumptions; included among the latter was that immigrants and their children will never move up the economic ladder.
Then we got a little more insight into where that belief might have come from. It turns out that one of the report’s co-authors, the spectacularly named Jason Richwine, wrote a dissertation at Harvard claiming that there are immutable differences in intelligence between races, and that should govern our immigration policy. “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, he wrote, “but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” Then we discovered that this wasn’t the first time Richwine had opined on the alleged intellectual inferiority of certain races. With the heat growing, today Richwine resigned from Heritage.
But there may be an upside for Heritage in all this. For some time to come, their quantitative work will be subject to extra scrutiny, with observers on the lookout for both statistical shenanigans and the authors’ repellent views whenever a new Heritage report comes out. The organization will surely know this, which could lead them to be unusually careful and restrained in the arguments they make. If so, they could end up producing better work and eventually overcome the damage this episode has done. But one wonders if Jim DeMint is quite the person to lead the way toward redemption.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 10, 2013
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