If enough of the "base" starts talking like Frau Koch, it might even force Roberts and his GOP support team to drop the warm and cuddly spin, and demonstrate just how much of a hardliner the guy really is — thereby stripping some of the radar cloaking off the Stealth nominee. But frantic efforts to polish up Roberts’s ultra-right credentials might further feed wing-nut paranoia about the guy: "If he’s one of us, how come they gotta keep defendin’ him alla time? And why don’ his forehead slope down like ourn?"
Back to Main
July 21, 2005
WB: Another Gau Heard From
Comments
I like it — my own first reaction yesterday was to wonder whether the Christian Right was happy with this nomination (on the grounds that, if they were, then it would be a good signal that the reality community should oppose it)
Also, the Washington Post has a front-pager on the Plame memo — so I guess the “distraction” lasted about 24 hours.
Posted by: CathiefromCanada | Jul 21 2005 6:37 utc | 2
Regarding Barry v. Little, the D.C. welfare case that Roberts argued gratis for the recipients, I would note that it has been a conservative tradition to attack the District government as often and as much as possible. Roberts’ role there is simply another in his long list of conservative credetials.
Posted by: michaelFromDC | Jul 21 2005 6:48 utc | 3
I’m all for Billmon’s strategy of “love bombs”; confuse the fuckers.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 21 2005 6:55 utc | 4
John Roberts and Enemy Combatants
(Chris Floyd)
One of the kowtowing jurists on the appeals panel was none other than John G. Roberts. Four days after he affirmed Bush’s autocratic powers, Roberts was duly awarded with a nomination to the Supreme Court. Now he will be sitting in final judgment on this case – and any other challenges to Bush’s peremptory commands. This is what is known, in the tyrant trade, as “a safe pair of hands.”
Posted by: DM | Jul 21 2005 10:23 utc | 5
Bilmon….brillant! This works on multiple levels. If Dems come out and say..”Oh..he is moderate…in the mainstream. He has already agreed that Roe is the settled law of the land. He is fair and inclusive.” …The Repubs will have to nod their heads in agreement. Then..if the guy gets on the court and starts acting like a rabid asshole…we can point and say that the country was misled (again) by the Republicans.
Posted by: aaron pacy | Jul 21 2005 11:19 utc | 6
I’m going to try that. I’ll confuse the Hell out of the RNC paid posters on AOL. They’ll think I went crazy! And question themselves. Getting a Neocon to question him/herself is like getting a rock to question itself! I’ll let you know what happens.
Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 21 2005 12:08 utc | 7
Coulter is like that homely girl in grade school that raised her skirt behind the gym for a nickel.
Posted by: steve duncan | Jul 21 2005 12:43 utc | 8
I liked someone’s speculation on one of the blog comment sites that Coulter is an amphetimine junkie. That would explain the wild-eyed paranoia, as well as the adam’s apple.
but more importantly-
New Underground attacks in London
this time a nail bomb.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 21 2005 13:01 utc | 9
At Raw Story is an article about Coulter plagerism of quotes from other stories. She is a nut cake waiting to blow her top. She likely follows master Rush and uses oxy.
I think Billmons strategy is a great one. If the wingers believe Bushie has picked a moderate that won’t overturn RvW than they will get disappointed and not show up at the polls in 2006. It will be wingers without a party. They have already threatened dem and rethugs with retaliation if an ultra righty isn’t put on the court. They want their due.
Posted by: jdp | Jul 21 2005 13:48 utc | 10
Billmon has it all backwards, I’m afraid. The way the Coulter item functions in the debate is to allow the White House to say, about Roberts, “Hey, I’m gittin’ it from the right, too”. Criticism from the right allows Bush to portray his nominees (and himself) as mainstream.
It’s only a game, and though Coulter and Malkin may play their deranged, paranoid parts in earnest, the people who provide them with a microphone know how it works.
And no: the tactic of pretending to admire the choice of Roberts won’t work. While the Free Republic knuckle-draggers might think, “duh, if they like it then I have to hate it”, people like James Dobson won’t be dumb enough to fall for it.
Posted by: kth | Jul 21 2005 13:48 utc | 11
Surprise! Lieberman and Feinstein say Roberts is fine with them.
Posted by: ken melvin | Jul 21 2005 14:56 utc | 13
While the Free Republic knuckle-draggers might think, “duh, if they like it then I have to hate it”, people like James Dobson won’t be dumb enough to fall for it.
I’m sure you’re right about that. But the point wouldn’t be to fool the Dobsons, but the rank and file knuckle-draggers — to try to rob Bush of some of the political credit for having delivered the red meat, by making the meat look a little tainted.
And you’re also probably right that this has all been gamed to make Roberts look like a “moderate.” But that’s where the jujitsu comes in – to try to make Roberts look too moderate. Hey, look, mouthbreathers: Ann Coulter thinks so, too.
Posted by: Billmon | Jul 21 2005 15:17 utc | 14
While I think Billmon’s idea is fucking brilliant, it could seriously backfire if Bush gets another appointment. If the idea gets out that he appointed a Souter-type moderate, then the pressure might really be on for the next justice to be a rightwing wackjob.
After all, remember that Bush I followed Souter with Thomas.
Posted by: Matt Newman | Jul 21 2005 15:23 utc | 15
If liberals say that Roberts is main stream and OK with them then the right will be forced to quiz him on his positions during the hearings?
Posted by: ken melvin | Jul 21 2005 15:38 utc | 16
I agree with kth.
The only way to win on Roberts is to use him to show the lower and middle class Republicans that this regime is only interested in them as insertion orifices. I go back to the Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky v. Williams case again because it’s so awfully clear that what we have come across in Roberts is a serial abuser of the law and everyone we want it to protect.
In this case, Williams lost the ability to do her job because of carpal tunnel syndrome. After a few years of giving her work she could still do, Toyota fired her because her job-caused injuries left her unable to do the job Toyota assigned. Now, you might think that the Americans with Disabilities Act would actually protect a worker from being treated like a disposable Kleenex. And it used to.
But Toyota and Roberts knew a good opportunity when they saw one. Ask someone what they think of a work “disabled” by carpal tunnel syndrome, and many will doubt if that’s anything more than a wimpyness problem. What Roberts and his kind saw was an opening of doubt through which they forced a revolution in labor law. When even people like our own slothrop poo-poo the carpal tunnel aspect of the case, they are falling into a trap. What gets veiled by the smell of CTS is that the case establishes these precedents:
1. Companies can injure a worker then fire her for getting injured.
2. Work has been defined as “not a major life activity” and therefore not protected by the law.
This is why Roberts gets the big money. Let me repeat that point:
2. After Toyota v Williams and despite clear Congressional intent to protect workers, work is not what the ADA covers.
What else has been unprotected since November 2001?
3. The ADA also does not protect one’s ability to reproduce and raise children.
4. The ADA does not protect one’s ability to clean one’s own living space.
Roberts ‘achievment’ in Toyota v Williams has nothing to do with carpal tunnel syndrome specifically. It was explicitly an announcement to corporate management (some of whom would have happily kept protecting their workers so long as other companies also had to bear that cost) that people are a disposable commodity and that no law will protect workers from corporate sophistry.
So why the hell not plaster this all over Robert’s forehead? Why not publish that Roberts argued to allow violence against women because (again the same reasoning) the law could be redefined to not protect anyone in particular? There’s nothing to lose from making this clear to as many people as possible. How the hell else do you expect to win people over to progressivism?
Look, it’s simple. Roberts rapes the law so that corporations and illegitimate regimes can rape us.
Now, if you find me bent over and bleeding as Roberts walks away from the scene and tell me, “Roberts and his backers can’t be defeated now, stay quiet,” how the hell do you expect me not to join the fascists? Why shouldn’t I take a job telling everyone how fantastic it is to be fucked by real men. The argument for staying quiet is already saying, fuck it, cover for the rapists, don’t embarrass the family.
The thing I don’t need right now is to be nauseated by my own allies. So, if you talk and act like enablers, don’t expect to end up with any friends left.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 15:40 utc | 17
…remember that Bush I followed Souter with Thomas.
Thanks Matt Newman. No disrespect to the brainstorming here, but I think that’s exactly what this particular attempt at jiujitsu would most likely produce.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 15:44 utc | 18
A friend of mine who’s a liberal legal academic has told me that some very conservative legal academics he knows (i.e. folks with some sort of clue, unlike Fräulein Coulter) have expressed similar doubts about where Roberts really stands. I wouldn’t invest much hope in such concerns (we all know that while enemy identification is a wingnut specialty, it is often not reality based), but it’s interesting nonetheless. And I doubt that such concerns expressed privately are just a Br’er Rabbit-style political tactic.
Posted by: BenA | Jul 21 2005 15:55 utc | 19
Oops, I made a mistake. The ability to clean house was cited as evidence that Williams was not disabled. What was actually considered a disposable set of abilities included:
1. raising hands above shoulders
2. gripping things
3. lifting things over 10 pounds
4. ability to accept job assignment from employer that broke your body
nothing major there
And this is not just Roberts, but a slew of people de-defining disability such that even a person wheelchair bound because of cerebral palsy has been defined to be outside legal protection because that person has a professional degree!
Caught in a viscous catch 22 workers with these conditions are “too functional” to be “disabled” yet can be fired for the “nondisabling” conditions. The Supreme Court virtually de-defined disability into thin air.
As Ruth O’Brien put is, the Supreme Court “turned the ADA on its head” by giving employers “the right to discriminate” and “the freedom to decide against hiring people who had limiting impairments.” (Crippled Justice)
A glaring result of that ruling is that of a person with cerebral palsy was denied the status of “disabled” because she had a pharmacist education. Even Jeffrey Gorman, a paraplegic, was challenged by Kansas City lawyers as to whether he was disabled or not by claiming his mobility impairment was mitigated by his wheelchair.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 16:20 utc | 20
This may be one time where multiple messages (and messengers) are good. Following Billmon’s idea and trumpeting Roberts’ “moderateness” and attacking him for being the hired gun for Corporate Amerika are not mutually exclusive. Some of us can praise Roberts for being a moderate who has declared that Roe is settled law, both alarming the LGFers and establishing a platform from which we can express shock and horror at his treachery when he (inevitably) screws women (and men too) over by endorsing restrictions on abortion. The rest of us should focus on his work as a Party hack — the guy’s only been a judge for 2 years — and how he has consistently sided with Big Corporations and Big Government against the People. If nothing else, we’ll confuse the Right so much that they won’t know which argument to counter. And it will set us up when we find out that Roberts and Scalia were twins separated at birth, except that Scalia got liberal.
Posted by: Aigin | Jul 21 2005 17:03 utc | 21
The thing I don’t need right now is to be nauseated by my own allies.
c’mon. I merely point out ADA disability assessment seems to me to exclude repetitive motion syndrome. Based on the reasoning of the Court, I don’t believe the Toyota decision is definitively rightwing. The problem is the ADA itself, especially Title I-job accommodations.
The recourse someone w/ these disabilities has is permanent disability assessment by SSA, along with SSI/Medicaid. But, that means indigence, not work, which is actually not so bad if you live in NY and not LA–the benefits can be quite adequate. Really, the only way to get permanently disabled into work is via affirmative action, never title I of the ADA.
I’m not sure employment is all that great anyway. Good state benefits are better than assemblyline work. But, that’s another arg.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 17:35 utc | 22
citizen
In a way, you argue that value of disabled person exists as commodified labor power. arbeit macht frei.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 17:44 utc | 23
I wasn’t clear about this, but your argument in particular didn’t nauseate me. Rather, ignoring what sort of precedenta are being set is what nauseates me. The problems of repetitive motion syndrome are just the way the magician distracts people from uncovering the trick. And the trick here is a precedent.
Precedent: that disability does not include inability to do the job assigned once the job itself has broken the worker’s body. This trickery is not based on language in the law but based on fake reasoning from the Congress’s assessment that 43 million Americans are disabled. It is all smoke and morrors (or wind as rgiap says) and none of it the kind of law once could respect and support.
Nowhere have I said that “work makes free.” Everywhere I have been defending the idea that language should mean something. And when words and things cease to match, we are dealing with dictators. I am nauseated if my allies ignore that modern society only remains healthy when meaning is defended. To ignore the way that meaning keeps personal interests and societal interests compatible is to enable the sickness.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 17:58 utc | 24
I am nauseated if my allies ignore that modern society only remains healthy when meaning is defended. To ignore the way that meaning keeps personal interests and societal interests compatible is to enable the sickness.
i may be off the mark here but this case seems to me an example of using a condition, one thats somewhat ‘new’ and a little controversial, to make sweeping generalizations about levels of disability ,is this the ‘meaning is defended’.
the average person who doesn’t understand the nuances of law would assume when one becomes disable on the job they are going to be protected. to turn around and say ‘you can’t use your arms but look you can use you feet’ twists the meaning of the concept of protection. if i can’t use part of my body because in essence’gave it up’ for the company and the company turns around and is able to say lets not address your disability, lets address your abilities, you still have quite a few, that is an obstruction of the meaning.
Posted by: annie | Jul 21 2005 18:30 utc | 25
Post in haste, repent at leisure
I wrote that last post in a hurry before running out. I’ve mischaracterized my original post where I mentioned being nauseated by allies. At that time I was referring to the possibility of hearing people I know and respect praise Roberts as a wonderful choice. Not that I don’t respect tactics, but the pit of my stomach would be falling, falling, falling into pure ill as I would be forced to contemplate the price we would pay for letting people think we supported the sort of world Roberts is on the make for.
That nausea is merely a feeling I expect you would all come to feel after your words of approval were quoted back to you at the next nomination when we get Mr. Lew Cipher, or perhaps a female justice, Belle Z. Bub.
No, the wheels are falling off this gravy train, and there is precious little to be gained by associating your good opinion with these men of ill repute.
The problem with the current Democrats is not that they lose, but that they lose with such utter lack of style. I will take Billmon’s advice ‘bent’ and say, sure, let’s praise Roberts but only by making absolutely clear that we are satiring.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 20:36 utc | 26
John G. Roborts – Better Than Human
The new generation of Supreme Court justices are based on a new kind of robot known as snake or serpentine robots, a class name that celebrates the historic roots of the conservative cause of Edenic perfection and knowledge.
As the name suggests, Roborts possesses multiple actuated joint reasoning, thus multiple degrees of freedom. This gives Roborts superior ability to flex, reach, and approach a
huge volume of law cases with infinite numbers of configurations, both logical and imaginative.
This redundance in configurations gives this class the technical name: hyper redundant Roborts. Ideally, the future Robort design will consist of three degrees of freedom stages – rights, logic, and peace.
John Roborts, or blue dragon, is a remote-controlled robot designed by
William Rehnquist Institute of Technology’s professor Karl “Tokyo” Rove.
the snake-like Roborts crawls through actual legal protections for human beings using six tracks, two on each side of its three-part body. it is equipped with a camera
and microphone to search for victims, and can bend at the joints or roll over on its side to maneuver through rubble, and crush plaintiffs.
Now, if this kind of hyper modern technology isn’t progress, what is? John G. Roborts, a Supreme Court justice for all progressives.
so… hungry…
Not yet Roborts! patience
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 21:35 utc | 27
It’s a Gordian knot at this point and these details don’t matter.
falling into pure ill as I would be forced to contemplate the price we would pay for letting people think we supported the sort of world Roberts is on the make for.
The commoners have become so dependant on the corporate structure that instinct drives them to support it no matter if they consciously want to or not. It’s the Daddy of the house, the supporting structure. So now it’s apparent that the Daddy is abusive and the people have to eat at his table. What can you do? Take your crayons and hide in your room? Talk back and get slapped? Try to talk rationally with a Daddy who has no time for you? Blow up the house and be out on the streets? Put a water moccasin in Daddy’s bed and if he dies of poisoning have to provide for yourself?
We’re in deep. Stuck. Roberts, Shmoberts. It’s going to take genius to get out of this trap.
Posted by: jm | Jul 21 2005 21:40 utc | 28
i>The problem with the current Democrats is not that they lose, but that they lose with such utter lack of style.
And the use by you of the Toyota case as an example of why Roberts’ nomination should be opposed was inadequate, at least the way I read the case, and based on what I know about disability rights.
The only point of opposition to Roberts is that he is, as you say, a cipher–which is a thin reed to use (as they say in the law) as a cudgel to beat back his nomination. But, has any SC nominee ever lost based on perceived inexperience? I don’t know.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 21:41 utc | 29
“falling into pure ill….on the make for it”:
Citizen’s quote.
Posted by: jm | Jul 21 2005 21:42 utc | 30
Slothrop,
Are you saying the loss of ability to carry things heavier than 10 pounds is not a disability?
Remember, the court stipulated this loss of function and did not wishy-washy around about carpal tunnel syndrome. What they did set out as a logical precedent for other cases is that most people don’t need to lift things over 10 pounds, therefore no disability.
For conversation’s sake, I have no idea what you mean by “as I read the case.” Please consider what are the precedents being set.
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 21:56 utc | 31
Again, the case tackles the question of disability assessment in the Act. Perhaps I’m parsing too much for you, but in my opinion, the use of assessment criteria specific to ADA (“substantial life activity”) different from the way SA establishes existence of disability (“activities of daily living”), was done by Congress in order to “accommodate” business and not disabled people. The decision is not unreasonable; what was always unreasonable was the employment portion of the ADA itself. The lawmakers fucked up in 1992, not the Court in 2005.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 22:08 utc | 32
in my opinion, the use of assessment criteria specific to ADA (“substantial life activity”) different from the way SA establishes existence of disability (“activities of daily living”), was done by Congress in order to “accommodate” business and not disabled people.
Slothrop, it may be your opinion that Congress wrote the law to accommodate business, but that opinion has no legal standing. Legally, and politically, the law covers business and employee, accommodates both.
The term “substantial” (or “major”) life activity is precisely the term I am discussing, and the decision goes a good bit past “reasonable” when it makes an inscrutable decision that “classes of activities” can only mean activities shared by a majority of the population in a post-agricultural society. Now that was using their imagination! Based on this little legal novelty, they pretended that this new term makes things like gripping tools not “major life activities” for blue collar workers.
reasonable?
Posted by: citizen | Jul 21 2005 22:36 utc | 33
Don’t get me wrong–I agree w/ your outrage, but I was only pointing out the ADA has always been defective, which is a lawmaking problem. If I was to adjudicate the ADA, I would probably make the same decision as the majority in Toyota, if only because I’d be one of those “non-activist” judges mediating the intent of lawmakers.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 23:10 utc | 34
If anything, the case demonstrates the difference between lawmaking and adjudication. Perhaps I’m going too far to demonstrate the difference with your example, citizen. But, the difference does exist, and exposes how the general public tends to overestimate judicial power.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 21 2005 23:27 utc | 36