Dwight Merideth, “The GOP Is Robbing Us Of Our Christian Heritage”:
Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 211 Judges to the Circuit Courts. Democrats have appointed 122. Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 813 trial Judges to the District Court bench while Democrats have made 508 such appointments.
If the Federal Judiciary is comprised of a bunch of liberal activists, it is the GOP who put them there.
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, “When Reality Outstrips Irony …”
“It is unfortunate in our electoral system, exacerbated by our adversarial media culture, that political discourse has to get so overheated that it’s not just arguments, but motives are questioned,” Tom DeLay, 4/16/05
“The Democrats’ hateful, moronic comments are beyond the pale, and the Democrats know it, but they don’t care because they have nothing to offer the public debate but rage, resentment and quackery.” Tom DeLay, 12/16/03
Fred Clark, “And have not charity”:
Elimination of the estate tax would result in a decrease in charitable giving of up to 12 percent… For many vital nonprofit agencies on the front lines, a 12-percent drop in charitable giving will mean they have to close their doors.
On the other hand …
There is no other hand.
tbogg, “Ride the wild Bolton Mobius strip….”
John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.
Matthew Yglesias, “New Depths Discovered”
According to Landay’s sources, the administration only wants reports showing that terrorism is going down, and if the State Departments methods don’t produce that result, then there report just won’t be done. Lovely.
via Pandagon, Inquiry Finds White House Role in Contract
A White House aide was told about potential problems with the Education Department paying a conservative commentator to promote an administration policy but did not prevent the contract from being renewed, according to a new government report.
Via Andrew Sullivan, former Reagan and Nixon speechwriter Jeffrey Hart:
The Bush presidency often is called conservative. That is a mistake. It is populist and radical, and its principal energies have roots in American history, and these roots are not conservative.
But the point isn’t to provide or critique economic analysis, is it? The point isn’t to inform the readers of National Review, is it? The point is that Paul Volcker–chosen by Republican Richard Nixon’s staff to be Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, chosen by Republican Arthur Burns to be President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, chosen by Republican Ronald Reagan’s staff to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board–has written something inconvenient for the Bushies inside the White House. And so National Review undertakes the mission of trying to murk the waters with clouds of ink.
And in this squid-like task, actual knowledge of the economy or of economics is a positive hindrance. The less the writer knows, the better.
Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution, “No surprise”
And how is this for a laugh?
Reducing agricultural spending by $5.4 billion is [was? AT] a key part of the administration’s plan to cut the federal defict in half. So far, however, the the Senate Budget Committee has agree to cuts amounting to just $2.8 billion.
The Federal deficit is currently over 400 billion.
{ 4 comments }
John Emerson 04.18.05 at 1:27 pm
Sullivan is bad even when he’s good. Bush is anti-intellectual, and he presents a populist image, but it’s fake. He primarily represents people with money, and he’s suckered some people without money into supporting him. McKinley or Harding would be the best historical comparisons, and they weren’t populist. (Populists are in a hard way in these United States.)
Teddy Roosevelt was a sort of fake populist, and the Bushistas would like that to be the official comparison, but Roosevelt was a literate book-writing guy who actually accomplished things in his pre-Presidential life.
All that can ever be expected from Sullivan, or Hitchens, is an endless series of ingenious, provocative stances.
Anderson 04.18.05 at 1:33 pm
Oh, thanks, Ted, for brightening my day. I’ll just toddle off and drink the cyanide now.
Otto 04.18.05 at 2:56 pm
“Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 211 Judges to the Circuit Courts. Democrats have appointed 122. Since 1969, Republican Presidents have appointed 813 trial Judges to the District Court bench while Democrats have made 508 such appointments.
If the Federal Judiciary is comprised of a bunch of liberal activists, it is the GOP who put them there.”
On judges, there’s a lot of slight of hand between Republican and conservative appointments. You can have Republican appointees who are not conservative, Republican conservative appointees who turn out not to be as conservative as expected after appointment, and you have to note that the whole concept of what is means to be a conservative or liberal judge has changed alot since 1970s, not least because of the mobilisation against Roe.
So yes, it’s the GOP that put many of these judges there. It was the business establishment wish-washy let’s make a deal with the big unions country club GOP which has been very largely destroyed by the grass-roots mobilisation GOP as Franks outlines in The Trouble with Kansas. Tony Perkins is likely fully aware of this.
des von bladet 04.19.05 at 6:09 am
Over on sci.lang the coinage “squink” for an abundance of evasive misinformation is now generally accepted. It would be good if it caught on widlier, selon moi.
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