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Flashback: Ted Kennedy on Robert Bork [video via Vimeo]
Vimeo ^ | October 23, 1987 | Bill Moyers.com via Vimeo

Posted on 10/02/2018 12:19:55 AM PDT by beaversmom

“There was not a line in that speech that was accurate,” Bork later said.


TOPICS: History
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1 posted on 10/02/2018 12:19:55 AM PDT by beaversmom
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And more via Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork

Following Bork's nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of him, declaring:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at 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 the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

Bork responded, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate." In an obituary of Kennedy, The Economist remarked that Bork may well have been correct, "but it worked." Bork also contended in his best-selling book, The Tempting of America, that the brief prepared for Sen. Joe Biden, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility."

Television advertisements produced by People For the American Way and narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist. Kennedy's speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork's nomination. The rapid response to Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" speech stunned the Reagan White House, and the accusations went unanswered for two and a half months.

During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper. Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.

To pro-choice rights legal groups, Bork's originalist views and his belief that the Constitution did not contain a general "right to privacy" were viewed as a clear signal that, should he become a justice of the Supreme Court, he would vote to reverse the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork's rejection, and the resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle.

On October 23, 1987, the Senate denied Bork's confirmation, with 42 Senators voting in favor and 58 voting against. Two Democratic Senators, David Boren (D-OK) and Ernest Hollings (D-SC), voted in his favor, with 6 Republican Senators (John Chafee (R-RI), Bob Packwood (R-OR), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Robert Stafford (R-VT), John Warner (R-VA), and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-CT) voting against him.

2 posted on 10/02/2018 12:22:33 AM PDT by beaversmom
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I found this information interesting when trying to learn more about Robert Bork on Sunday night:

The Sad Legacy of Robert Bork
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-sad-legacy-of-robert-bork/266456

Excerpt:

Throughout the long history of court appointments, confirmations had rarely been detailed affairs. In 1962, for example, John F. Kennedy appointee Byron White was questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee for all of 11 minutes. In fact, it wasn’t until 1925 that a Supreme Court nominee (Harlan Fiske Stone) even appeared before the committee and it was another 14 years before a second (Felix Frankfurter) did so.


3 posted on 10/02/2018 12:32:04 AM PDT by beaversmom
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Indeed.

The travesty visited upon Robert Bork was a warning shot across the bow: the DemonRats would defend their "right" to murder the unborn with ferocity and great energy. It is a rallying point and a useful tool the Left will always cherish to keep the minorities as exactly that.

4 posted on 10/02/2018 1:45:13 AM PDT by Sa-teef
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To: beaversmom

To this day, the Democrats hold Ted Kennedy in the highest regards. They call him the “Lion” of the Senate. All the while, he was banging every intern in the building. He often showed up on the floor of the Senate so drunk he could barely speak. Before he turned 38, he had already been responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and had left her drowning overnight while he slinked back home. The indignant left is accusing Kavanaugh of being an alcoholic abuser because of having beer in high school and college (oh the shame of it). They have one thing right - Kavanaugh is no Ted Kennedy.


5 posted on 10/02/2018 4:54:29 AM PDT by richardtavor
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To: richardtavor

Ted unknowingly did us a favor by blocking Judge Bork.

Bork admitted he couldn’t find the individual RKBA in the 2nd Amendment.


6 posted on 10/02/2018 4:58:56 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: beaversmom

And with Robert Bork I realized my INTENSE dislike of ted kennedy—may he rot in pieces!
how someone could lie to the entire country while looking that man in the eyes, is something so psychotic I actually can’t understand it.
One of the GREAT AMERICAN TRAVESTIES!


7 posted on 10/02/2018 6:25:43 AM PDT by bantam
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