5/1/2005
Putting the Right Back Into Civil Rights
There's a lot in this report from the Civil Rights Commission (pdf). An excerpt from the executive summary:
This report finds that President Bush has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words. The report reaches this conclusion after analyzing and summarizing numerous documents, including historical literature, reports, scholarly articles, presidential and administration statements, executive orders, policy briefs, documents of Cabinetlevel agencies, federal budgets and other data.While I'm tempted to write that the intersection of civil rights supporters and president bush's supporters are the null set, on reflection that may not be true. For instance, the report notes that both Powell and Rice are supporters of Affirmative Action. Of course, the report also notes that bush himself doesn't support Affirmative Action. Likewise, the report notes that while dick cheney's daughter is openly gay, the policies of the bush administration have been, well, openly hostile to gay and lesbian citizens. Instead of hypothesizing that bush supporters are orthogonal to civil rights, I prefer an alternative hippopotamus: bush's base sees civil rights as a threat, and that bush/cheney/rove et al, would prefer to re-invent the Civil Rights Commision to appeal to bush's base.
I'll also note that the report omits an important fact: that after the report was released the principal authors were fired, and the report was removed from government websites. Some news accounts say that Mary Frances Berry, the former chairperson, wasn't fired, but simply resigned. Here, I'm reminded of that great Claude Reins line: "we can't decide if he killed himself, or was shot trying to escape."
It may be that bush sees himself as an advocate of civil rights, and programs like faith-based initiatives are in his view a way of fighting for the rights of the repressed fundamentalist minority. It also may be that karl rove has identified exactly who represents bush's base, and has tailored programs and policies so that they benefit fundamentalists, neoconservatives, and plutocrats, and hurt everyone else. The point is certainly debatable. I'll report, you decide.
There's a fascinating section of the report that looks at bush's judicial nominees. One important fact that's often overlooked is that bush ended the long-standing practise of getting the recommendation of the ABA on judicial appointments. If nominees are vetted by anyone, it's the Federalist Society, the folks that brought us Ken Starr, Robert Bork, and Ann Coulter among others. (more on the Feddies here.)
Since these are the same nominees that we're about go nukular over, I thought I'd give a small excerpt on Janice Brown:
Several of Brown’s statements disclosed during her confirmation hearing led one former supporter, a University of California law professor emeritus, to rescind his support. Brown was criticized for engaging in “government-bashing” and presenting “extreme and outdated ideological positions” that are “outside the mainstream of today’s constitutional law.” In one speech, criticizing government programs, she stated that the federal government is “the opiate of the masses [and a drug for] multinational corporations and single moms, for regulated industries and Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.” The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Judge Brown and forwarded her nomination, but it has not come up for a full vote.I understand that the right has been arguing that these nominees have been held up to spite the faith-based community. I'm not seeing that. She comes across, and judging by the report I'm not alone here, as bat-shit crazy.
Update: As this post by Armando points out, when the faith-based card doesn't work, there's always the race card. I thought this bit was particularly interesting:
The report, "Loose Cannon," notes that when Brown was nominated to the state supreme court in 1996, she was found unqualified by the state bar evaluation committee, based not only on her relative inexperience but also because she was "prone to inserting conservative political views into her appellate opinions" and based on complaints that she was "insensitive to established precedent."Bat-shit crazy and unqualified. Think about that. This is what Frist is fighting for.
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