The NYT has a write-up of newly confirmed Appeals Court Judge, Janice Rogers Brown: Latest Confirmed Nominee Sees Slavery in Liberalism. The first section highlights some of the main reasons she is considered controversial, while the remainder is mostly biographical.
Indeed, if one reads the basics of her life story, it is not especially surprising that she is an individualist in her thinking, and hence one can see where she derives her views on the potential harms that government can do to individuals.
The piece rightly notes that she is perhaps the most controversial of Bush’s Appeals Court nominees. In fact, I have long thought that the Democrats, had they been so inclined, might could have successfully blocked her candidacy if they had engaged in a real filibuster (i.e., the kind with actual floor extended debate and a commensurate PR campaign).
As such, conservatives who decry the deal brokered by McCain and company ought to re-evaluate their position, as the confirmation of Owen, Brown and (perhaps as early a today) Pryor, certainly qualifies as success.
Also: regardless of one’s ultimate position on Brown, per se, there is no denying that she has a remarkably compelling life story and that she has an impressive resume. Her qualifications are hardly debatable.
As a side note, here’s an eclectic combo:
Her friends describe Justice Brown as a voracious reader, amateur poet and serious intellectual, and her speeches are filled with allusions to writers including Cicero, the apostle Paul, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Beckett, Ayn Rand, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Friedrich von Hayek and the comedian Chris Rock.
June 9th, 2005 at 9:23 am
I was a disappointed that the Democrats did not fight harder to defeat he nomination, even after agreeing to the Gang of 14 compromise. I think that it would have been possible to get 6 or 7 Republicans to vote against her, if an effective campaign had been waged.
June 9th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
“I think that it would have been possible to get 6 or 7 Republicans to vote against her, if an effective campaign had been waged.”
Actually, I think it was the filibustering prior to the compromise that probably killed this possibility. Had the Dems used votes against cloture to merely extend the debate so that an effective campaign could be waged, noting the whole time that they would eventually invoke cloture, then they indeed might have succeeded. But by using the “no cloture possible” filibuster, they:
#1. Effectively killed the possibly of a debate or a serious campaign against her; and
#2. Hardened the positions of even the moderate Republicans on the filibustered nominees.
June 9th, 2005 at 8:18 pm
Brown shares with Clarence Thomas a poor minority upbringing. Interesting that they seem to share similar judicial leanings as well.
June 10th, 2005 at 12:17 am
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