“So Much For Checks And Balances”: Welcome To Tennessee, Where Lawmakers Are Trying To Kneecap Judges
In state houses around the country, January often brings the emergence of many of the year’s most dubious legislative proposals. January is the month of patently unconstitutional bans on “sharia law.” It is the month of promoting the unlawful practice of jury nullification. But mostly it’s the month for legislators to attack the independence of the judiciary.
Again this year, all over the country, state lawmakers have introduced bills to curb their cousins in the judicial branch. In Oklahoma, lawmakers want to remove from the Code of Judicial Conduct references to judicial independence. In Kansas and New York, state lawmakers want to force trial judges to render their decisions within a certain time or be forced out of office. But perhaps the most egregious of this year’s crop of ill-advised measures comes from Tennessee, where lawmakers have introduced a bill that combines many of these bad measures from other states into one big ball of scorn for the state’s judiciary.
SB 2322, as the Tennessee bill is known, seeks to replace the administrative office of the state courts with the treasurer’s office, which is part of the executive branch of state government. The state Supreme Court would no longer be able to “direct” the work of the court administrator but rather “urge” executive branch officials to take certain action. The bill would shut down the state’s judicial disciplinary board, now under the auspices of the judicial branch, and replace it with a new review board that would answer, again, to the state treasurer. That board would be made up of political appointees from the executive and legislative branches of government. Judges would be prohibited from serving on a board evaluating the work of the judiciary.
If that were all SB 2322 did, it would be bad enough. Each of the above components of the pending legislation violates separation of powers principles and constitutes impermissible encroachment upon basic judicial functions. It is axiomatic that judges should have the power and authority to administer their own affairs, as they do in every other jurisdiction in the nation, and should not be precluded from evaluating the disciplinary issues that arise within their profession. You don’t need to be a political scientist to understand the pressure the executive branch would be able to wield over Tennessee’s judiciary if the legislature were to enact this bill.
But there is more. SB 2322 seeks to dramatically alter the nature of death penalty procedures in a way that undermines core judicial functions. Judges would not be able to extend filing deadlines in capital cases — even if such extensions were justified and necessary to ensure the constitutional rights of defendants. And judges also would be forced to meet their own deadlines for resolving capital cases, even if they were not ready to do so. Meanwhile, lawyers representing indigent capital defendants would be required to reimburse the state if they were later found to have rendered “ineffective assistance of counsel,” a requirement that would make it materially harder for indigent defendants in the state to get a court-appointed lawyer willing to take the case.
These proposed measures, too, are patently unconstitutional incursions into the judiciary’s work. But they also happen to be bad ideas beyond their constitutional dimensions. Forcing judges to rush their decisions won’t make those decisions more accurate or justifiable — and that won’t ultimately save Tennessee taxpayers from the costs of appellate work. And precluding capital defendants from seeking more time to file their court papers — so they can better evaluate evidence, for example — won’t help root out instances of false confessions, or flawed eyewitness testimony, or prosecutorial misconduct.
Experts who study these sorts of bills are, quite naturally, both alarmed and disappointed. “There’s a reason no other state in the country has such a system, Bert Brandenburg, the executive director of Justice at Stake, told me Monday. “It denies the courts the most basic of administrative functions and seeks to make our courts of law answer to politicians instead of the law.”
Tennessee’s judicial branch is not perfect. No branch of government anywhere is perfect. But it is reckless to think that the best solution to perceived problems within this state’s judiciary is to turn control of it over to the executive branch. There is a reason that our systems of government have three branches that are asked to provide checks and balances upon each other. What SB 2322 would do is upset that balance, and preclude those checks, in a way that surely would end up harming the people of Tennessee.
By: Andrew Cohen, The Week, January 29, 2014
“CPAC’s Guest List”: The New March Madness That Still Relies On Extremism And Extremists
It’s getting very hard to keep track of who is and is not allowed in the conservative movement these days. The issue of how much smaller the tent is getting always comes to a head at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, at which warring factions fight to keep each other off the guest list. In 2011, prominent anti-gay groups boycotted because the gay Republicans of GOProud were allowed to cosponsor the event. Last year, GOProud was banned but white nationalists and anti-Muslim extremists were allowed.
The guest list for this week’s conference is even more byzantine. Following last year’s bad publicity, the white nationalists have been disinvited. And anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller has been denied a panel slot, which she claims is because CPAC’s organizers are “enforcing the Sharia.” You know things are getting bad when CPAC has fallen to Sharia.
But excluding white nationalists and an anti-Muslim extremist doesn’t mean that CPAC has suddenly become a friendly and open-minded place. This year, gay groups did get a consolation prize: a rogue, unofficial panel “A Rainbow on the Right.” But don’t look for any rainbows inside — the conference still bars gay Republican groups from its official proceedings. And even without Pamela Geller, the conference will keep its strong anti-Islam tilt, hosting speakers who routinely attack American Muslims. And it’s not just gays and Muslims. New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who vetoed a marriage equality bill in his state, has been deemed too liberal to speak at the CPAC. So has Virginia’s Gov. Bob “Transvaginal Ultrasound” McDonnell, who apparently became some sort of leftist radical when he agreed to raise taxes to fund his state’s highways.
So who was conservative enough to make the cut for CPAC? War on Christmas analyst Sarah Palin, unhinged former congressman Allen West, and orange birther crusader Donald Trump, for starters. Mitt Romney has also been invited — presumably holding on to the right-wing makeover he underwent for his presidential campaign — though he loses top billing to his former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan.
In many ways, CPAC is caught in exactly the same bind as the Republican Party. The party’s leaders know that to survive in the long-term it must moderate its positions and expand its base. But they’re still in the grips of an extremist fringe that just won’t let that happen. Last year, fringe candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock helped sink the GOP’s hopes of gaining seats in the Senate. This year, strategist Karl Rove has threatened to launch primary challenges against fringe candidates in an effort to keep the party relevant. But in doing so, he’s provoked the anger of the Tea Party, whose leaders correctly note that they’re the only reason the GOP has any power at all right now.
This year’s CPAC can be seen as a preview of the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The party’s main movers and shakers are trying to keep their base happy by turning away leaders like McDonnell and Christie who have deviated, in however small a way, from the party line. But they’re also trying to hide some of the most disturbing aspects of their party’s fringe.
McDonnell got snubbed for daring to fund a transportation bill. In his place, CPAC will highlight Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who led the legal charge against the Affordable Care Act and who is running to be McDonnell’s successor. White nationalists and Pamela Geller were ousted for being too far off the fringe, but Donald Trump, who’s devoted himself to claiming that the nation’s first black president isn’t a real American, is a highlighted speaker.
As hard as CPAC’s organizers may try, their guest list is still a mess. But the problem isn’t just the guest list, it’s what they’re serving. They’re trying to represent a movement — and a party — that wants the American people to think they got the message while still relying on extremists and insisting on a rigid orthodoxy. That’s a tall order for any party. And they can’t have it both ways.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, March 13, 2013
“This Is Crackpot Stuff”: Why Must We Take The Family Research Council Seriously?
The FRC, which sponsors the Values Voter Summit that took place in Washington over the past weekend, is a big, big player in conservative politics. Tony Perkins, its leader, has a lot of power in the GOP, appears on television as a serious person, and so on.
So in that context, I think it’s worth noting what goes on at those conclaves when they think no one is watching. They hosted Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann and the other big names last Friday. Then, on Saturday, after the mult-boxes had all been safely packed away and the media weren’t looking, out they came.
Alternet’s Zaid Jilani was watching, and here’s a bit of what he saw. Jerry Boykin, the retired lieutenant general and Christian jihadist who now works at FRC, basically called for World War III. An “ex-Muslin convert” named Kamal Saleem issued a different warning:
During the question-and-answer session, a number of attendees wanted to know more about how Muslims were supposedly infiltrating the U.S. government.
Saleem alleged that a U.N. treaty that Obama was working to enforce to replace the constitution with sharia law. Under this new, purportedly Obama-enforced regime, “churches and synagogues will go down underground because now you’ll have to submit your sermons to the government.” The consequences of an Obama re-election, he said, would be to “lose this nation.”
All right, this is crackpot stuff. But according to the Serious Men and Women of Washington, the FRC is not a crackpot outfit. Can you imagine if the Center for American Progress, say, or Jim Wallis‘s group featured a speaker who alleged that Romney had a secret plan to convert everyone to Mormonism and force Christians to reject all they’d been taught and embrace Joseph Smith’s teachings? I know I said last week I generally steer clear of analogies, but this one is pretty precise.
Except that neither CAP nor Wallis would ever dream of doing such a thing in a jillion years. And not because it would be politically unwise and they’d get their heads lopped off–but because it would just be a plainly nutty and deeply offensive thing to do. And, sure, they’d know that it would erode or destroy their credibility.
But FRC can do this and still be accorded respect. Why? Because we just take it as a given and accept that the right wing is full of nativist and reactionary and racist cranks. And this, remember, is a religious organization.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, September 17, 2012
Even Without Donald Trump, Plenty Of Clowns In The 2012 GOP Field
Farewell Donald Trump. For a brief moment last month, his birther buffoonery powered him to the front of the Republican pack. What a difference a birth certificate, a death announcement, and serious treatment by the press make. Now The Donald has announced that as with his previous presidential flirtations he is not making this race. Suddenly he looks like one of the celebrity has-beens who gets fired on his television show—or worse, like a celebrity has-been who doesn’t actually get onto the show at all.
Trump peaked in mid-April when a survey from the Democratic group Public Policy Polling set him as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, with 26 percent of the vote. Then reality intruded. The press went from treating him like a celebrity making silly noises about running to treating him like a genuine would-be candidate, checking out who he contributed to and fact-checking his weird claims. Then Obama’s long form birth certificate put an end to birtherism while Osama bin Laden’s violent end reminded us that there are monsters in the real world and that the presidency is for serious people, not reality TV blowhards.
Public Policy Polling’s survey last week had Trump at 8 percent, in a fifth place tie with Ron Paul.
But with Trump-mentum ended, where can we hope to find entertainment value in the GOP primary field? The answer is, where can’t you? Donald Trump, entertainer-turned-pol was never going to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But neither will the other maybes and might-want-tos.
Take Newt Gingrich, whose announcement video last week said we should “look reality in the face, [and] tell the truth.” The truth and the reality are that Gingrich is an abrasive bomb thrower who resigned his speakership after his colleagues, and most voters, had enough of him, not the profile swing voters usually latch onto. His disapproval rating when he left office was 70 percent and was still as high as 38 percent as recently as last summer. And Gingrich, a self-styled historian, is fighting history. Only once has a former speaker of the house made the transition to the White House. That, NBC’s Chuck Todd notes, was James Polk in 1844. And not since James Garfield in 1880 has a politician achieved the White House having only served in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Newt is not alone with this problem, of course. Sitting Rep. Michele Bachmann seems happy to conflate her fanatical Tea Party following with actual broad-based support. But again her lack of experience in winning even a statewide office in Minnesota makes one wonder whether she’s drinking tea or Kool-Aid. For sheer “what is he thinking” chutzpah, however, it’s hard to beat Rick Santorum, whose last act in American politics ended when the voters of his home state of Pennsylvania fired him from the U.S. Senate. I can think of one modern politician who won the White House after losing his last previous election, and Richard Nixon is not a figure whose mantel many GOPers lay claim to these days.
Sure Newt, Bachmann, and Santorum are members of the GOP presidential B Team, but is the A Team much more impressive? You could have made an argument for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, before he announced this weekend that he would not run. The best that can be said of Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is that he is inoffensive (read: bland), while the worst that can be said of 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is that she’s . . . Sarah Palin.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels commented last week that “the chances [of his beating Obama] would actually be quite good.” Apparently channeling some Trump-ian bombast, he added that, “The quality and the number of people who have said they’d like to be associated is really quite awesome to me.” Also awesome is the idea of someone running as a gimlet-eyed spending hawk whose previous job before governor was as George W. Bush’s budget chief. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes, “By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019.”
Then there’s Mitt Romney, who Thursday made his highest profile attempt to explain why the healthcare law he passed while governor of Massachusetts, with an individual mandate, is good, but the national-level version of it, signed by Barack Obama, is bad. Romney’s dilemma: He can’t embrace the individual mandate because conservatives don’t like it any more at the state level than they do at the federal one. But he also can’t repudiate it lest he feed the political chameleon image that led the Democratic National Committee to tout “Mitt Romney, Version 5.0.”
The most damning illustration of the state of the GOP field may have come in a Politico report noting that virtually the only issue the contenders agree on is that “Sharia law is a continuing threat to the United States.”
One can’t help but look forward to the GOP nominee explaining that urgent threat in a general election debate while standing next to the president who got bin Laden.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, May 16, 2011
Mr. Gingrich’s Intolerant History: A Presidential Bid Built On Divisiveness And Name-Calling
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and latest entrant in the Republican presidential field, has money, experience and name recognition. His introductory videois all serenity and hope, a deceptively calm way for many voters to meet a splenetic politician with a long history of slashing divisiveness and intolerance.
He refers to himself as a historian, but apparently his personal study of history has primarily taught him about the effectiveness of demagogy. Donald Trump, fiddling with birth certificates, is an amateur compared with Mr. Gingrich at sliming the Obama administration — as well as Democrats, Muslims, blacks and gay men and lesbians.
The Democrats who won in 2008, including President Obama, are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine,” he wrote in his 2010 book, “To Save America.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then the inevitable historical coup de grâce: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”
The slurs don’t stop there. He compared the Muslims who wanted to open an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan to the German Reich, saying it “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.” He is promoting the fringe idea that “jihadis” are intent on imposing Islamic law on every American village and farm.
Last year, he called for a federal law to stop the (nonexistent) onslaught of Sharia on American jurisprudence and accused the left of refusing to acknowledge its “mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” This nuanced grasp of world affairs was reinforced when he said that Mr. Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”
In his world, advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment, blacks have little entrepreneurial tradition, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.” (He kind of took back that last slur.)
Despite all this, not to mention the ethics violation when he was speaker, Mr. Gingrich’s real liability among the conservative and fundamentalist groups that dominate the Republican primaries is his personal history of infidelity that led to two sordid divorces. (Much of which took place while he was denouncing President Bill Clinton for moral transgressions.) That may explain his endless calls to restore Judeo-Christian values.
It is sometimes difficult to know what some Republican candidates stand for, as they pander to the far right without alienating the center. It is not difficult to know what Newt Gingrich stands for, and to find it repellent.
By: The New York Times, Editorial, May 12, 2011
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