Free Republic

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...