Free Republic

Late last month, as America was ignoring the 24th anniversary of the Senate's rejection of conservative jurist Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, something extraordinary happened: New York Times columnist Joe Nocera admitted the borking of Judge Bork spawned today's toxic political culture. "(R)arely has a failed nominee had the pedigree — and intellectual firepower — of Bork," Mr. Nocera wrote. Judge Bork held conservative opinions, but none could be "fairly characterized as extreme." That didn't deter then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who denounced "'Robert Bork's America' as a place 'in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks...

When President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the most offensive and dishonest assaults against a man by the U.S. Government was launched, and Ted Kennedy hurled the first and immediate lethal blows. Kennedy's successful telling of lies about Judge Bork from the floor of the U.S. Senate was wildly successful, and it was one of the most shameful days in the history of American government. Elena Kagan, Obama's Supreme Court Nominee, is on the record saying she "loved" borking Bork.

Robert Bork to Oppose Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Robert Bork, the pro-life Supreme Court nominee who abortion advocates derailed during his confirmation process, will publicly oppose pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Wednesday. Bork will appear in a conference call sponsored by Americans United for Life. http://www.lifenews.com/nat6443.html

Robert Bork to Oppose Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Robert Bork, the pro-life Supreme Court nominee who abortion advocates derailed during his confirmation process, will publicly oppose pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Wednesday. Bork will appear in a conference call sponsored by Americans United for Life. http://www.lifenews.com/nat6443.html

Mike Barnicle just wrapped up the Obama Parrot of the Week. That's the award I hand out on my local TV show to the MSMer doing his sycophantic best to parrot the Obama party line. Barnicle gave his award-winning performance on today's Morning Joe, in the course of tossing two super-softballs to David Axelrod. Barnicle's first lob was about the difficulties of governing in this hyper-partisan, cable-TV age. His second softball chastised Republicans for their announced intention to oppose Pres. Obama's Supreme Court nominee. Which raises the question: do the names Robert Bork—or Clarence Thomas—mean anything to Mike Barnicle? View...

We do not honor Ted Kennedy's memory by perpetuating his mistakes. Despite all of the live prime time cable TV coverage last night of speeches extolling his legislative accomplishments and willingness to reach across the aisle on occasion, Kennedy's extreme views on foreign policy, judicial appointments and health care are not worthy of emulation. Unlike his brother John F. Kennedy who understood the Soviet menace and America's special mission to carry the torch of liberty throughout the world, Ted Kennedy was a moral relativist when it came to dealing with our enemies. An anti-war and nuclear freeze advocate to the...

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens." -- Sen. Edward Kennedy, floor of the U.S. Senate, 1987. I'm all for remembering a man's good qualities upon his death. But not at the price of ignoring—and denying—history. Yet that's just...

The death of Senator Edward Kennedy from a malignant brain tumor superimposes somber intimations of mortality onto a frequently frivolous political scene. It puts us in mind us of what Wordsworth called the "fallings from us, vanishings" that ultimately reconcile us to our own mortality. As a young man Senator Kennedy became, as he is today, the pillar of a large extended family. We extend our sympathies to his family upon his death. Senator Kennedy became the lion of the Senate and of American liberalism. For better or worse, his legislative accomplishments have done much to shape the United States...

I am deeply grateful for the contribution that Ted Kennedy, who died last night, made to my education. Until Kennedy delivered his intemperate tirade against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the summer of 1987, I hadn’t known that a United States Senator could brazenly lie to his colleagues and the American people and get away with it. I’m not talking about little fibs, or broken promises, or private dissimulations: all that I took as standard operating procedure in a fallen world. No, Ted Kennedy raised — that is to say, he dramatically lowered — the standard by...

Senator Ted Kennedy has died.

Part 3 of a symposium on the career of Judge Robert Bork and the publication of A Time to Speak. Part 1. Part 2.When Slouching Toward Gomorrah appeared, it bore on its dust jacket a few words of mine praising the book and its distinguished author: “The ideological triumph of liberalism among American elites, far from bringing the individual and social enlightenment it promised, has produced unprecedented decay. The principal victims of this decay are the poorest and most vulnerable among us, those most in need of a healthy culture. Bork courageously and boldly states these truths. A judge as...

Controversy over the American Bar Association's ratings of potential judicial nominees is likely to continue with the announcement that the bar group will resume its role of evaluating candidates before their nominations. In fact, a soon-to-be-released study by political scientists concludes what conservative groups have long charged: The ratings are biased against potential conservative nominees. Political scientists Richard Vining of the University of Georgia, Amy Steigerwalt of Georgia State University and Susan Smelcer, an Emory University doctoral candidate, will present their findings next month at the Midwest Political Science Association's 67th Annual National Conference. The three academics, all of whom...

Former Supreme Court Justice nominee Robert Bork predicts that President-elect Barack Obama’s judicial nominees will orchestrate a profound sea change in U.S. jurisprudence, legalizing same-sex marriage, restricting or eliminating the death penalty,...

I have decided to keep posting articles I think should be brought to the attention of my readers, but I have to suspend publication of new posts that I write until I get my anger under control. As a respecter of truth and (I think) as a decent person, I don’t want to act in the mean-spirited way that so many liberals do. For eight years now, we have had to contend with a concerted drive by liberals to destroy the reputation and the moral authority of President Bush through a campaign of lies and smears, and even a book...

Clarence Thomas, the only black member on the Supreme Court and a highly respected jurist, was demeaned and insulted for political gain by Senator Obama in Saturday's forum. As a conservative nominee, we well remember the "high tech lynching" that took place by Democrat senators and operatives at Thomas's hearing because he had the gall to be a black conservative who also believed that abortion is wrong. Using a playbook that was originated at a previous hearing for Judge Bork, Thomas was smeared and lied about and private detectives went through his garbage.

An honest disagreement is one thing, but there is a phenomenon going around the internet, mostly at the expense of conservative bloggers like me, known as baiting. These are liberals who get some kind of perverse pleasure by visiting conservative blogs and trying to harass them or tie them in knots. Their favorite technique is to seize on some trivial point or side issue and argue with it, completely disregarding the main point of the article. Another technique is to hunt for some reference that disputes something you have said – easy to do in a world where the liberal...

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club. Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He...

My weblog started as an e-mail discussion group of friends about three years ago. About a year and a half ago I converted it to a blog that has a moderate-right, conservative slant on political and social issues of the day. I still e-mail my original group, which includes both liberals and conservatives, to notify them whenever I post a new article. One thing I have noticed that has become very clear: the liberals in my group have stopped making (usually opposing) comments on my posts. I still get plenty of comments from conservatives and from liberals who just happen...

One issue posed by the normalization of homosexuality, which Lawrence largely accomplishes–the only step remains is the creation of a constitutional right to homosexual marriage–is whether as a society we want a significant increase in the number of homosexuals. Other arguments are largely beside the point. Homosexuals argue that allowing them all the rights of heterosexuals, including the right to marry, is simply a question of justice, of the equal protection of the laws. That argument leaves out of the account the effects of normalization on individuals and on society. It would have force only if there were no serious...

How should parents react when a son or daughter announces that he or she is "gay?" The Supreme Court has adopted a principle that, by its own logic, suggests that the parent should be indifferent, that the question of sexual "oreintation" is nobody's business but the son's or daughter's, and that any contrary attitude is nothing more than bigotry. That answer is not only morally perplexing but has absolutely no plausible connection to the Constitution the Court claims to be interpreting. The Court's answer, however, has everything to do with the modern liberal attitude toward sexuality. That answer was given...

How liberals are using international law to promote their agenda and create a boomerang effect in the United States:  By creating novel new international laws, the New Class hopes to outflank American legislatures and courts by having liberal views adopted abroad (by foreign governments and organizations such as the United Nations) and then imposed on the United States.This approach is working. These new laws boomerang back to the United States; courts now cite the decisions of foreign courts in “interpreting” our Constitution.  Radical decisions on social issues, values, religion, and speech that are made by foreign legislatures and courts...

Justice Scalia’s argument about the death penalty has two aspects. The first concerns the duty of the judge; the second has to do with the respect owed by Catholics to the Pope’s call for the virtual abolition of the penalty in Evangelium Vitae. As to the first, the duty of the judge, there can, it seems to me, be no reasonable disagreement. The Constitution several times explicitly recognizes capital punishment, leaving legislatures free to choose or reject that sanction. Most American legislatures have chosen it. By what warrant, then, can a Justice of the Supreme Court abolish what the Constitution...

An Open Letter to the Press in Western Carolina From: John Armor, Candidate for Congress, 11th District Date: 16 March 2006 re: certain comments by Deborah Potter on behalf of Congressman Charles Taylor Ladies and Gentlemen, Below is an exact and complete copy of an e-mail that Charles Taylor's Press Secretary, Deborah Potter, sent to Don Yelton, a friend of mine. (For those who don't know me, I'm a lawyer and author who lives in Macon County, and I'm running against Taylor in the Republican primary.) The Potter e-mail refers to me as "Armor and his bunch of left-wing radicals...

It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...

Old blowhards don’t fade away, we learned again last week, they just serve as Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was almost two decades ago that Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.) chaired the confirmation hearings that gave America a new verb: to Bork. When President Reagan nominated U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, it was Biden who led his Democratic committee colleagues Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Patrick Leahy of Vermont in what was then the unprecedented trashing of a nominee of unquestioned professional qualifications and unblemished character. In 1991, in a committee still chaired by...

The culture war begins during your child's school day By Kevin Fobbs The new year brings a new round of assaults upon our nation's families who are sitting in their homes — possibly quite unaware that the very framework that our Constitutional framers crafted together is being splintered apart by a movement that has undertaken an almost unholy war against every possible touchstone that reflects our values in the public place, in the courthouse, in the legislature, but more importantly, in the classrooms that dot the landscape of our nation's neighborhoods. The Culture War is not a phenomenon that is...

Source: This letter is taken from Chapter 17, page 571 and 572, of the book Reagan – A Life in Letters which is Edited with an Introduction by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson with a Foreword by George P. Shultz. Editor’s Note: Robert Bork, a distinguished legal scholar and member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was nominated for the Supreme Court on July 1, 1987. The confirmation proceedings were protracted and contentious. The nomination was defeated in the Senate 58-42 on October 23, 1987. The Democratic majority in the Senate made...

The following is an email that I received from a friend regarding Judge Robert Bork's letter to the Wall Street Journal... "Eric Felten's essay on the dry martini is itself near-perfect ('Don't Forget the Vermouth,' Leisure & Arts, Pursuits, Dec. 10). His allusion to constitutional jurisprudence is faulty, however, since neither in law nor martinis can we know the subjective 'original intent' of the Founding Fathers. As to martinis, the intent may have been to ease man's passage through this vale of tears or, less admirably, to employ the tactic of 'candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.' What counts...

What has long been true has now become obtrusively apparent: There exists a fundamental contradiction between America’s most basic ordinance, its constitutional law, and the values by which Americans have lived and wish to continue to live. That disjunction promises to become even more acute as the United States, along with Europe, moves toward the internationalization of law. Several things are to be observed about these developments. First, much constitutional law bears little or no relation to the Constitution. Second, the Supreme Court’s departures from the Constitution are driven by “elites” against the express wishes of a majority of the...

It is premature to pronounce the job completed, but with the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for a seat on the Supreme Court, George Bush has substantially narrowed the rift with his conservative base he created with his nomination of Harriet Miers. Ms. Miers, a woman of many fine qualities, was perceived as simply lacking the constitutional sophistication to withstand the pressures of a liberal Court majority and its allies in the academy and the media sufficiently to help bring the Court back from its self-assumed role as a political rather than...

Is "miered" the new "borked"? Robert Bork's failed nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 spawned the verb "borked," defined loosely as getting rejected in an unseemly, even unfair, manner. Now there is talk online about whether Harriet Miers' withdrawal of her nomination to the high court will give rise to the term "miered." While liberals led to the opposition to Bork, it was conservatives who brought down Miers' nomination. A contributor to The Reform Club, a right-leaning blog, wrote that to get "borked" was "to be unscrupulously torpedoed by an opponent," while to get "miered" was to be "unscrupulously...

Ten days ago I wrote about the Miers nomination in light of Judge Bork's introduction to a new book of essays on SCOTUS. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, Judge Bork weighs in with a denunciation of the Miers nomination, which includes the fairly astonishing sentence: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative (amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while maintaining its unconstitutionality). This is the same as arguing that "Except for opposing Hitler and later warning of...

"I am convinced, as I think almost all constitutional scholars are, that Roe v. Wade is an unconstitutional decision, a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority. I also think that Roe v. Wade is by no means the only example of such unconstitutional behavior by the Supreme Court." This bit of public truth-telling was committed by Robert Bork, then a professor at Yale Law School, when he testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on June 1, 1981. Ironically, Bork made this statement about Roe in the midst of testimony in which he explained why he opposed...

Bush shows himself to be indifferent, if not hostile, to conservative values. With a single stroke--the nomination of Harriet Miers--the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That's not a bad day's work--for liberals. There is, to say the least, a heavy presumption that Ms. Miers, though undoubtedly possessed of many sterling qualities, is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. It is not just that she has no known experience with constitutional...

TO BORK VS. TO MIER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Yesterday on air Hugh Hewitt suggested to me that we here were trying to Bork Miers. No. This is new SCOTUS verb time. Andrew Breitbart just came up with over IM: to MIER: to put your own allies in the most untenable position possible based upon exceptionally bad decsion making. Secondary defintion: While steadlily going in reverse in the driveway of your own home, intentionally abruptly pressing gas pedal as to crash into garage door for no apparent reason. They'll be teaching this in AP Government classes before long. Posted at 02:26...

Bork speaks out on CNN w/ Wolf Blitzer. Video below 1. Click on link below, then look for the "FREE" button, click on it. 2. Wait for download ticket counter to expire, click on filename (BorkOnCNN.rm) Click here to download video (Real Player)

Legendary conservative jurist Robert Bork is "borking" Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, trashing her nomination as a complete and total "disaster." Asked by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Friday night if he was impressed by Ms. Miers, Bork replied: "Not a bit. I think it's a disaster on every level." The Yale-trained judge said he didn't like the Texas attorney because she hadn't developed a "constitutional philosophy." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," he told Carlson. "I'm afraid she's likely to be influenced by factors,...

A conservative uproar erupted over President George Bush's recent appointee to the Supreme Court. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But several key Republican senators say she not the best candidate. MSNBC-TV's Tucker Carlson talks to former judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork about the Harriet Miers' nomination. He says it's, "a disaster on every level" because she has "no experience with constitutional law whatever". The nomination is a "slap in the face" to conservatives. TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC HOST: Are you impressed by the president’s choice of Harriet Miers?

Robert Heron Bork (born March 1, 1927) is a well-known conservative legal scholar and former judge who advocates an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution. .... On October 23, 1987, the Senate rejected Bork's confirmation by a 58-42 vote.

Other critics have expressed concern about her lack of experience grappling with constitutional reasoning. Robert Bork - whose nomination to the high court was rejected by the Senate in 1987 - called the choice of Miers "a disaster on every level." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," Bork said Friday on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson." "It's kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years."

ROBERT BORK CALLS THE HARRIET MIERS NOMINATION "A DISASTER" ON TONIGHT'S "THE SITUATION WITH TUCKER CARLSON" SECAUCUS, NJ - October 7, 2005 - Tonight on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson," former judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork tells Tucker Carlson the Harriet Miers' nomination is "a disaster on every level," that Miers has "no experience with constitutional law whatever" and that the nomination is a "slap in the face" to conservatives. Following is a transcript of the conversation, which will telecast tonight at 11 p.m. (ET). A full transcript of the show will be available later tonight at...

HARRIET MIERS OUTSHINES BORK Unlike the Patron Saint of Originalism, Miers Will Defend Our Freedom Judge Robert H. Bork has come to represent in many conservative minds the gold standard of legal sagacity against which provincial upstarts such as Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers must be weighed.  In truth, however, Bork provides a poor example of conservative jurisprudence. Even as simple a phrase as, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" has long confounded Judge Bork. Harriet Miers suffers no such confusion.Following a July 1, 1992 incident in which a crazed gunman slew...

He was as divisive a Supreme Court nominee as can be imagined. But Democrats should hope they get a pick like him. Here’s why. About halfway through John Roberts’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, I found myself grappling with a strange and surprising emotional reaction: I was pining for Robert Bork. For anyone with a sense of history watching Roberts artfully bob and weave through his face-off with the Senate, it was hard to ignore the hovering specter of the goateed strict constructionist, whose ordeal in the upper chamber took place exactly eighteen years ago this month. In no small part,...

Bork: 'Brilliant' Roberts the Best Conservatives Will Get By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Correspondent September 07, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - One-time Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork Tuesday lashed out at the high court and the U.S. Senate for politicizing the judiciary and offered little hope to conservatives hoping to see Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, overturned. Bork said the possibility is "virtually nil" that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned in the next 10 years, even with John Roberts presiding as chief justice and a more conservative jurist replacing Sandra Day O'Connor. "I simply do not know if...

AFTER SPENDING the last month reading countless briefs and memos written by John G. Roberts Jr., it is clear that he would very likely change the law dramatically in key areas such as privacy rights, separation of church and state and racial justice. Democrats need to oppose Roberts for the same reasons they fought against Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. in 1969, Harold Carswell in 1970, Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991. The parallels to the fight over Bork are striking. Bork was nominated to replace Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had been the high court's swing vote...

Lessons from a Supreme Court nominee's defeat. For liberals and conservatives alike, the touchstone for beleaguered Supreme Court nominations is the rejection of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Supreme Court nominees had been rejected before, 27 times, but never with so much orchestrated fury. Usually the nominees were lesser jurists, if not lesser intellects, if not lesser men, than was (or is) Judge Bork. The Senate rejected George Washington's nominee for chief justice, John Rutledge, in 1795 because of his position on a treaty. Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger Taney was blocked in 1835, though Jackson later nominated Taney successfully...

CNN Live Today July 1, 2005 KAGAN: All right. Panelists, we'll be back to you in just a moment. Interesting person to talk to on the phone right now. Robert Bork on the phone, somebody who got almost to the Supreme Court. The judge nominated in 1987, a nomination that did not work out in the way that Judge Bork, I think, you would have liked. Your comments today on Sandra Day O'Connor and her legacy on the court, please. JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FMR. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Well, she's a very nice person, but she is -- as a justice,...

The nomination of John Roberts brings up the recurrent and crucial question of who is to govern America and, therefore, what is to be the course of our culture and morality. It is hardly surprising, then, that the power seekers of the left-wing wolf pack are on the prowl, attacking Judge Roberts with their customary mendacity. "With every passing day, it is becoming clearer that John Roberts is one of the key lieutenants in the right-wing assault on civil-rights laws and precedents," proclaims Ralph Neas, the far-left ideologue who heads People for the American Way. Not to be outdone, Sen....

"Estradification": In the spirit of confirmation battles spawning a new lexicon (e.g., "Borking") the Washington Times reports today [http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050721-115711-9900r.htm] on what some Republicans are calling "Estradification"--requiring the Justice Department to turn over internal legal memoranda written by Roberts while he worked in the SG's office. The refusal by the White House to surrender these sorts of documents was the basis for the Estrada filibuster (hence the name) as well as the current Bolton stalemate. Regardless of the merits of the request, it seems highly unlikely that the White House will surrender these documents. The tone of the article suggests that...

What do the nomination of a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor, constitutional law, and moral chaos have to do with one another? A good deal more than you may think. In Federalist No. 2, John Jay wrote of America that "providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs." Such a people enjoy the same moral assumptions, the cement that forms a society rather than a cluster...