A fairly busy day for a Monday. A lot of coming (Elena Kagan, Carl Burke) and going (Tandy Carter, Gordon Brown, Lena Horne, Frank Frazetta):
- Chief Carter fired over Benjamin case (thestate.com) — And nothing seems to add up. There’s just no way a professional cop fights asking for an outside review to this point. What really just happened here? FYI, here’s his interim replacement.
- Obama nominates Kagan for high court (WashPost) — And right away, her complete lack of judicial experience becomes an issue. As in zero. Zip. Nada.
- Dow Jumps 404.71; Nasdaq Up 4.8% (WSJ) — Biggest one-day game in more than a year.
- Brown steps down as Labour leader (BBC) — This was the only way Labour could get in on the action of trying to do a deal with the Lib Dems.
- Lena Horne dead at 92 (NPR) — I hope the sound works for you on that link.
- Frank Frazetta, fantasy illustrator, dies at 82 (NYT) — OK, he’s not Lena Horne, but you’ve probably seen his pictures. And if you were ever a young guy in this country, you were impressed. This is bigger than when racy pinup queen Bettie Page passed on.
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You could have made a similar image at Rotary, no sweat….
Downing or Dandruff Street? Did the valet resign his position ahead of the PM’s departure?
It is a great photo – for an add. Maybe on your blog first?
If Gordon Brown spoke at Rotary, I forget it. Of course, it WOULD have been forgettable. Now if Tony Blair had spoken, I’d still be there trying to get his autograph…
Naw, I mean, you could get the back of a middle-aged man with good hair in a blue suit–who’d know it wasn’t Brown?
Kinda looks like Dan Rather of a few years back…
Here’s some news for the day… John McCain stars in a parody campaign ad about “illegals”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0lwusMxiHc&feature=player_embedded
Wait, it’s NOT a parody?!?
“complete the danged fence!” is this year’s “you kids get off my lawn!”
Re Kagan and judicial experience: as I understand it, there have been 38, that’s right, 38 Justices with no prior judicial experience. Here are four names you might want to ponder from that list: Earl Warren, William Rehnquist, Felix Frankfurter, and Louis Brandeis.
Thankyou, Phillip.
And you’ll note that all of those justices were pre-Bork. They all came before tout le monde made it their business to vet nominees to death, according to the lowbrow standards of kneejerk politics.
Back in the day of Warren et al., the decision was made by (gasp!) SENATORS, who could study the records of the nominees and determine thoughtfully whether they had experience and scholarship that overrode the lack of judicial experience.
Nowadays, with everybody presuming to be an expert, you have to meet a more populist, demagogic standard. And not having been a judge is a “disqualification” that Joe Average at least thinks he understands. Since senators pay a LOT more attention to the whims of Joe Average than they did in Earl Warren’s day, expect her never having sat on the bench to be something she has to overcome. And she probably will. But we’ll see.
There will be a day when a Republican President gets to nominate a Supreme Court judge again. I hope we’ll see the same level of “accommodation” from liberals as they expect from conservatives. But I’m sure they’ll have a VALID reason to be morally outraged.
By the way, I have NO right to that image; I just thought it was cool. It was on the NYT site, and is by Matt Cardy of Getty Images.
Go to the NYT page and patronize their advertisers (you know, explain things to them in a condescending tone) by way of compensation.
And if they complain, yes, I’ll take the image down…
Just a note that Getty Images is very aggressive about folks using their images for free. I had a client that inadvertently had a Getty image on their site, and they ended up paying Getty a few thousand dollars because of it.
They have programs that search the web for their images, and then don’t ask you to take it down first — they just send a letter and a bill.
Maybe I missed it but I don’t see any mention of the 100 people slaughtered in Iraq as yet more proof of our misguided application of imperialism to solve the world’s problems. Really Brad, your thinking got us into this mess. The least you can do is make mention of something that discredits your war mongering attitude toward foreign policy.
Brad, it’s true that Bork coincided with the early days of the 24-hour-news-cycle, cable, etc. But you’re forgetting Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell, much earlier, Nixon nominees who were rejected. I’d argue that all 3 of those instances were really a spillover of the Warren Court: since progressives saw the Court as the arena where women, African-Americans, minorities, were able to be granted their full rights as American citizens (vs. the more resistant branches of government), the nominations that came soon after many of those vital cases came under heavy scrutiny, lest these hard-won gains begin to be rolled back.
So it predates Bork a bit, and if you want to blame the progressive wing for starting the trend of “everybody presuming to be an expert,” I can’t argue against that.
Gosh, Doug, you make it sound like it’s been a generation since a Republican President was able to get a SCOTUS nominee through…Roberts, Alito? These names ring a bell? As for “accommodation,” well, Alito only got a handful of Democratic votes, true, but Roberts got fully half of the Dems in the Senate.
Thanks for the warning, Susan. bradwarthen.com can’t afford several thousand dollars, so I took it down.
I figured I wasn’t doing harm, since I was driving traffic to a site that DID pay for it. But why take a chance? Wouldn’t be prudent.
When I was in Emory Law School, in the early 80s, Bork was widely considered to be way way out there in extreme right field. I cannot think of a liberal scholar —there were wacky judges in California, but not considered even in the running–who was as extreme as Bork. Nominating him was a red flag to the liberal, and even moderate bulls in the Senate.
Other, more reasonable right-wing candidates did not receive a similar drubbing, because they were not as immoderate and apparently lacking in judicial temperament.
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine in general with the MSM. They cover a story intensly for a time then slowly drop it before the impact of the story has run it’s course. I mentioned Iraq but there are many examples that I could have cited.
What ever happened to the Icelandic volcano? Has it stopped erupting? Has airline traffic been restored to normal? Then there is the coal mine disaster. Did they ever determine a cause and culpability? Is congress considering additional regulations?
Or how about the Goldman Sachs debacle. Has that been resolved?
Even the colossal oil spend seems to be dying out slowly as a news story.
Brad why don’t you do a piece on stale news stories some time. Seems like there are many unresolved issues that get pushed aside.
I want to applaud the point that Bud’s making (among other things, I’m so glad to have Bud among us again, even though he gives me hell).
But I’m pretty sure that the front page isn’t the place to address his concern. The PROBLEM here is that newspapers no longer have any room INSIDE the paper to provide the perspective and followup that he seeks. The front page needs to be reserved to that which is new and most important to tell people about TODAY, not necessarily the stuff they need to follow over time. (And sure, running stories will make the front again when there is a game-changing development.)
But fortunately, we CAN do on a blog what newspapers no longer have room inside to do. And I’m going to take Bud up on his suggestion to do a “Where are these stories now?” roundup…
And Kathryn — face it: We track the ugly craziness of Supreme Court confirmation fights to Bork because “Bork” is such a kickass action verb.
Yeah, it sounds like what you do when you drive the porcelain bus.
Bud, That’s an excellent idea! Brad, I’m looking forward to seeing some of these posts.