But if she has principles, how can she be a Republican?!

How close is the U of IL to the Chicago School of Economics? It;s catching.

i thought irony died when kissinger got a nobel peace prize. maybe this is just to make sure?

Kind of makes the track-covering they are engaged in less appealing.
Hey Julia!

This post is Dugg.

This is really appalling, I consider her to be the greatest traitor to our country since Benedict Arnold. I want history to teach our children that she nearly destroyed our nation for her petty desires.

i thought irony died when kissinger got a nobel peace prize. maybe this is just to make sure?

LOL That pretty much says it all. As I said in the previous thread, people like O’Connor saw Bush as one of their own. They were disappointed in him but they really didn’t disagree with him.

no kidding.

Oh, and it’s important to add that her magical “one-off” ruling has set a legal precedent, Bush v. Gore increasingly being cited. Repercussions from that Supreme Court treachery that will live on.

Sandra Day O’Connor was the swing vote in favor of Dubya in the case of Dim Son vs Gore.

She should also get a free vacation to Baghdad. The land between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers is the most arable in the Middle East. It could be quite pleasant.

I was just looking through their membership:

http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu/about/team

There isn’t a Constitutional specialist or heavy hitter in the bunch. Why does that not surprise me? There are some with ties to some former Republican governors Thompson and Edgar.

An awful legacy and certainly not an ethical one.

Sorry to go OT, Julia, but one of the guys running for the RNC chair sent out a CD with a song about “Barack the Magic Negro”:

http://tpmelectioncentral.talk....._sends.php

Unbelievable.

It did have a good effect in Ohio. Although of course I wish the Court had ruled differently.

What Bush v. Gore means, the panel said, quoting from the decision itself, is that once a state grants the right to vote on equal terms, it may not “by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” Forcing people in some parts of the state to wait many hours to vote as a consequence of the arbitrary allocation of voting machines, for instance, would violate the core principle in Bush v. Gore, the panel said.

Irony died, but Orwell lives.

Her husband had Alzheimer’s for many years. When he was moved to an assisted living facility, he fell in love with another woman; within 48 hours.

http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/12/26.html

So the logic goes something like this. If you make it to the Supreme Court, you are considered by definition ethical. They had this award so what the hey they had to give it to someone.

But the original (illegal) ruling stated it was NOT to be considered a precedent! Go figure.

Well, at least it wasn’t Clarence Thomas . . . .

Is it the one Rush Limbaugh sang on his show?

Yeesh. What on earth can they think this is going to accomplish? The majority of voters who voted for the man, and the majority of americans who approve of him, are going to smack their foreheads and say ZOMG, I forgot I was a racist?

She was a Rehnquist protege — you remember Rehnquist, right? He made his bones in the GOP driving around Arizona intimidating black voters at polling places after the Civil Rights Act meant they had to be allowed to register. Rehnquist made sure it was uncomfortable for them, challenging every vote, accompanied by armed thugs.

These are the other recipients of this award:

Richard G. Lugar (2007)
Carl Levin (2006)
Lee Hamilton (2005)
Thomas H. Kean (2005)
Eliot Spitzer (2004)
Paul S. Sarbanes (2003)
Arthur Levitt (2002)
William S. Cohen (2001)
John McCain (2000)
Russ Feingold (2000)
Paul Simon (1999)
Abner J. Mikva (1998)
Arthur S. Flemming (1997)
A. Ernest Fitzgerald (1996)
Archibald Cox (1995)

http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu/ethics

sadly, it looks like i’m going to have to keep saying this…. it is really not our place to judge our betters. they have reasons for what they do and i’m sure they are good reason. otherwise they wouldn’t be our betters.

Yes, it’s the same guy, and no, this won’t accomplish anything good for the GOP, unless they’re just trying to solidify their base even more!

Rehnquist was also Jim Helmsley’s attorney the second time he was prosecuted for various alcohol charges.

I see that her award was named after an Illinois lawmaker. Maybe they should update it and re-name it after Rod Blagojevich.

Yoknapatawpha County mode ON:

Hmmmm. Maybe the SCOTUS ruling in DimSon v. Gore was divinely inspired by Yahweh hisownself? You know, like in the Epistles of St Paul where he says, “Ya know, I think …, now that’s me not the Lord,” but because somewhere in Timothy it says that all scripture is divinely inspired, so it wasn’t really Paul thinking, but Yahweh thinking for Paul and making Paul think that Paul was thinking for hissownself, which just shows what sense of humor old Yahweh has, so even though Diana Rehnquist and the Supremes said it wasn’t a precedent it really is a precendent because it’s printed up by the Supremes and all, so it really is a precedent.

Faulkner Mode OFF

It’s beyond me how someone can be the swing vote on an abortion like Bush v. Gore and win an award for ethics. One thing is certain: she had her own personal motives involved in that decision.

Yeah. The hard right never much liked her (the only bright spot of the ascension for me was that she had to suck up being replaced by a man who went on the record at the time of hers saying she was an unqualified affirmative action hire). Now she’s made it harder for them to disenfranchise voters.

So pretty much she sold her soul to people who didn’t want it, and now she wants to join the choir on the strength of how nicely she plays the piano in the whorehouse parlor.

Honestly, lady. Your legacy is your bodyguard in hell, which includes the ghost of the Magna freaking Carta. For crying out loud, retire to Florida and grow roses already.

The people giving this award forgot about her wanting to retire but not while a Democrat was in office?

How do they define “partisan”…?

nice

Okay,

Seeing that list of past winners makes it clear that the sort of ethics we’re talking about here is more like ethics-for-the-ethically-challenged than ethics as in moral behavior.

The only name on that list that might even deserve an ethics award is Sarbanes, for his work on the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

Yep and both are not well thought of in AZ ….. except in the wingnut circles…. big brouhaha when O’Conner was in parade this year and huge protest…….

It’s one way to justify horridly run-on sentences.

My American Lit (English) teacher in High School hated Faulkner for that reason. She really didn’t want us reading Faulkner at all. “Read Hemingway, people. Or Strunk and White. Not Faulkner.”

Oh, I dunno - I have a sneaking tendresse for Spitzer and Feingold, even if they maybe weren’t fastidious enough who they hung out with.

it’s probably just their way of getting an interesting speaker to come to speak at the awards ceremony - still it irks the hell out of me.

I missed Feingold on the list.

Don’t know what happened in later years but the first six recipients are all worthy and “won” the award on merits.

They probably ran out of ethical people among prominent elected/appointed officials at that point.

The cast of characters at igpa resembles a Republican Think Tank Oxymoron.
There’s a bow-tie wearing bald guy by the name of Michael R. Cheney. Kinda looks like his brother Dick. /s

I was wondering… ;)

Interesting convolutions, but I getcha, I think…

Those five supremes should have been immediately impeached and the folks who created the Brooks Brothers riot that stopped the recount should have been prosecuted. There were so crimes committed. Media complicity was the least of it.

hey, you.

Sorry, just came tearing through the door from my mom’s, reading backwards…

Feingold is in some strange company there. Now McCain - there’s the epitome of ethics. And Whitewash Lee Hamilton.

Yes, McCain and Feingold it for campaign reform. Kean and Hamilton for the 9/11 Commission. Arthur Levitt is on there too. He was up to his eyes with AIG and was SEC chairman during the Clinton Administration and its deregulation and while Madoff was not being investigated and while the dot com bubble was bubbling along.

All this tells me is that their selection committee has a depth of knowledge that is pretty superficial, as in probably obtained from reading Time and Newsweek.

Amen!

Well, one of them was a congressman from upstate NY named Sweeney, and he’s already self-destructed, but Roger Stone has since claimed that he took down Spitzer (not that I don’t think he’s ganking - er - credit that really belongs to people who don’t keep it hanging in the window, but that is what Joe Bruno hired him to do).

Hah! I hope that Limbaugh’s incessantly played little ditty (created by his racist buddy Shanklin) ends up biting a few of this idiots like a pit bull loose in a steam bath. I wonder if the other stocking stuffers were things like the Graphic Novel version of Mein Kampf, bullwhips, and toy inflammable crucifixes.

…now she wants to join the choir on the strength of how nicely she plays the piano in the whorehouse parlor.

This is a bleeping awesome quote, BTW. And quite apropos.

Janet Reno was AG at the time. Wonder who told her “Hands off” or was that her decision?

Hell, Tom Kean. If he’d never done anything but raise that charming son of his, I’d think he’d contributed plenty to lack of ethics in government, but add it up with his conflicts of interests and the outrageous whitewash of 9/11 and it’s pretty easy to see how he and O’Connor got the same award. Or, for that matter, how he and Christie Todd “pay no attention to the asbestos in the air vents” Whitman got elected NJ Governor from the same political machine…

OH yeah, there’s a photo with all the culprits id’d on Democrats.com website. Looking for the link, now.

I don’t know about that. I know a lot of people that think very highly of Sandra Day. The law school and the Federal Courthouse are named for her as well I might note. Bush v. Gore was a certifiable abomination and O’Connor has admitted her regret. Does that make it okay? No it does not. But she is a pretty impressive lady who cares a great deal and has a very impressive life’s body of work. I have never agreed with her political philosophy, not in the least, but she does not have an unethical bone in her body. She is, and has been, wrong on many issues in my opinion, but that does not make her dishonest or unethical. There is a difference, and that ought to be remembered.

O’Connor has admitted her regret

linky please? was it a major address? an oped in a major us newspaper or law journal?

JMO, someone who took part in the conversation reported and did not recuse herself from Bush v. Gore is not a person of unblemished ethics.

It is in Jeff Toobin’s book

Couldn’t find it on Democrats.com. But WaPo did it too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....Jan23.html

Here’s what some of the others went on to do:

No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries.

No. 7. Roger Morse, another House aide, moved on to the law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. “I was also privileged to lead a team of Republicans to Florida to help in the recount fight,” he told a legal trade magazine in a 2003 interview.

No. 8. Duane Gibson, an aide on the House Resources Committee, was a solo lobbyist and formerly with the Greenberg Traurig lobby operation. He is now with the Livingston Group as a consultant.

No. 9. Chuck Royal was and still is a legislative assistant to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a former House member.

No. 10. Layna McConkey Peltier, who had been a Senate and House aide and was at Steelman Health Strategies during the effort, is now at Capital Health Group.

Does she regret what she did or that it worked out so badly?

I don’t know about that.

Her legacy will be forever tainted. And I think the story in Julia’s post rightly calls her ethics into question. How could she possibly participate in any ruling on Bush v Gore when she’d already indicated her desired outcome, publicly, to others? She had a personal stake in the outcome of a case she ruled on: almost the textbook definition of a transgression of judicial ethics.

Let me rephrase that, I heard Jeff Toobin discussing that in relation to his book, I assume he wrote about it. She has also indicated that to several people privately in Phoenix from direct reports I have heard. Although I know you don’t generally take people’s word for anything on the ground even if it is right in their purview of operations.

That is bunk. There is a long history of justices that have held on to retire under their party’s term in the Presidency. There is one doing that right now on the Democratic side. That does not mean that was the basis for her vote.

Although I know you don’t generally take people’s word for anything on the ground even if it is right in their purview of operations.

are you trying to pick a fight or just in a bad mood?

That is the reason why the supremes should NOT accepted the case for review. There were too many who had a personal stake…… Rehnquist anyone?

It was unethical for her not to recuse herself from Bush v Gore given that she had an inherent personal bias.

Neither, just noting that I had been apprised of some snippy comments you made about the Napolitano issue some time back.

Then what, exactly, does she regret?

”Regret” does not cut it.

New post

I heard Jeff Toobin discussing that in relation to his book, I assume he wrote about it. She has also indicated that to several people privately in Phoenix from direct reports I have heard

thanks.

the reason i asked is that there is a very big difference between expressing regret and making amends. in my book amends would start with an admission to the people harmed - which would be us. the fact, if it is indeed a fact and not just my ignorance, that she has made not public statement of regret does not make me inclined to judge her well.

No Gooper who voted in FAVOR of Bush V Gore needs to use the word “partisan” the rest of her life. She ARE one.

selise @ 66: AMEN!

Clearly, Bush v Gore was NOT a ”case” that should have been directly decided by the Supreme Court, a partisan body by definition.

echo, clearly, answereth not.

if you are going to negatively characterize comments i made on another thread, and on another topic, please do quote (or at least link to) the comments you are referring to and compare them to the comment of yours i was replying to.

p.s. to the mods - i think i may be breaking the rules by referring to a previous thread. if that’s the case, i beg your indulgence in order to defend myself.

I don’t understand how O’Connor can be defended. The case was resolved in a way that suited her needs to end her career on a suitable partisan musical chairs round and whatever she has said since to whomever has not added up to any effective intevention in 8 years of bad decisions, many of them by the current/future Supreme Court.

She could have taken the high road and ”settled” for being replaced by a legitimate Democratic President.

For that I would be happy to see her recieve an award or whatever named after her.

i don’t understand either. would be willing to reconsider if we could hear/read her side of it - either justification or apology. but absent that, i stand by my first comment re irony.

Oh give us a fucking break O’Connor.

It’s BAD ENOUGH this partisan strumpet voted for eight years of Gooper fascism but now we’re not going to be spared her insulting our collective intelligence with her lily-liver alibis too?

Just stay in Arizona and die!

Oh also GO FUCK YOURSELF Judge Quisling.

One thing I don’t recall seeing much of in the US press (though it was a big deal overseas) is that she was pretty blunt about receiving death threats if she didn’t retire (and implying that intimidation of SCOTUS judges was more routine than you might expect).

Did that story make much of a splash here and I just missed it?

– MarkusQ

Yes, I remember it. She spoke at Georgetown in March 2006 (Delay, among others, was her target earset).
Nina Totenberg reported on it, although my first link to the speech was, curiously, European: The Guardian

I remember this O’Connor quote being reported after the Georgetown University speech:

We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

At the time, I was impressed that someone from our Government was speaking out, a Republican no less.

But like Selise said above, I don’t remember O’Connor apologizing for her role in handing the keys to the White House to the US Supreme Court’s Selected President. I was hoping she would wax philosophic about the dangers of rolling with America’s first unelected president.

Yes, she was threatened; her and Justice Ruth Gader Ginsburg. Threatened in a chat room because they sometimes look to foreign laws or court rulings when making their decisions. Ginsburg said the threats were made by Republicans. She spoke out against Republican interference in the courts and the danger of the US falling into a dictatorship. The audio of her Mar 9/06 speech at Georgetown University is available here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/s.....Id=5255712

Threats here:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pap.....-death.php

In her speech, she criticized Republicans who criticized the courts. She said they challenge the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans.

O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms.

The founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect independence, people do.

O’Connor says we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/....._0310.html

Obviously, I was typing while you were submitting..

We hit the same websites. Good summary you provided, bluebutterfly.

Thanks…

Her warnings were very explicit weren’t they? She expected something like the Patriot Act to be enacted. She is smart and saw the light long before anyone else did. Very clearly she warned that the Republicans were trying for a dictatorship. Seems to me she was correct.

Not curious at all. If Americans want to know what is going on in their country, they would be well advised to go to foreign websites. That is where I find such things as Israel, Iran, and Irag news. Not going to get much reality in the MSM.

The Guardian is one of the best for up to date news.

There was a time when American newspapers could make an equal claim to quality. Oh, well.

The first Patriot Act passed in 2001. I suppose you are referring to the Second Patriot Act, renewed in 2005? and signed by Bush in March 2006?

Sandra Day O’Connor
Appointed by a president (who may
have had Alzheimers from his first official day)
to fultill a campaign promise, some say.

Alas,her legacy would have been far more
had not she cast the vote that broke the tie
forbidding a recount in Bush v Gore.

I don’t think that Supreme Court Justices should be allowed to serve until they want to retire. For all we know, they could be suffering (or not) from some of the mental issuses of aging; on that note, the founding fathers idea of them serving for life, I feel, needs to be re-thougt. These people should NOT be serving until they die or retire. This is perhaps one of the nation’s largest problems, in my opinion. We need fresh, new YOUNG people in this government who understand what it is that the country needs. These old people (not disrespect with the word) simply cannot be aware of all of the nations’ problems as they sit in their robes in their ivory towers.

Time for a change of the Constitution.

That question startled me for a few seconds. I am used to referring to the Patriot Act as the done deal it is now. I stand corrected.

Did you ever read the 2001 act? There is no way that 132 page document was produced between Sept. 11/01 and Oct.23/01. Congress critters did not read and/or understand it between the 23rd and the vote on the 26th. It would have required lawyers to explain many portions of it.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.go.....56.107.pdf

Rehnquist was a good example of that. His FBI file was huge. A guaranteed job for life is a blanket immunity for bad decisions.

http://william-rehnquist.com/m.....temId=1921