Clearly, there is a shortage of white men on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only two-thirds of the current court is comprised of white men; if "President" Bush gets his way with John G. "But I Promise Not to Overturn Roe v. Wade" Roberts Jr. -- and it looks like the spineless Democrats in the Senate will sell the American people out and let Bush get his way yet again -- the highest court in the nation will be composed of only seven-ninths white men. God bless America, where anyone can make it -- if he's born a white male, especially into a wealthy family.
Short-term gain, long-term losses
for the Repugnican Party with Roberts?
Forget George Lakoff and his parsing of words.
Republicans/conservatives and progressives have very different views of the role of government and politics, and it's a difference that cannot be bridged by the simple parsing of words.
Republicans/conservatives, especially those in positions of power, believe that government and politics are a tool for the rich and the powerful to become even more rich and powerful. Minimally, Republicans/conservatives believe in preserving the status quo (which is a relatively small group of over-privileged people enjoying an obscenely disproportionate amount of wealth and political power – and a steadily increasing disproportionate amount of wealth and political power).
We progressives, on the other hand (the left one), believe that government and politics exist first and foremost for the benefit of the American people, that politicians and the government should work to lift all boats – not just the yachts.
Although Jesus taught that human nature is such that those who have more tend to get even more and those who have less tend to get even less – which could serve as the Bush regime’s mission statement – which conception of politics and government do you think Jesus would endorse? (Yet the Republicans/conservatives wrap themselves in the mantle of Christianity.)
The difference between progressives’ and Republicans’/conservatives’ views on the role of politics and government is glaringly apparent in “President” Bush’s choice for the replacement for retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Judge John G. Roberts Jr., Bush’s nominee for O’Connor’s replacement on the court, has written that a woman has no constitutional right to an abortion as provided for by Roe v. Wade; has sided with corporate interests over environmental interests; and is OK with public prayer at a public school graduation ceremony. But Roberts, like John McCain, is a conservative who probably will get away with wearing a moderate’s mantle.
But let’s put ideology aside for now; there will be plenty of time for ideological battles later.
"President" Bush had the opportunity to replace O’Connor with another woman. Does O'Connor's replacement have to be a woman? No, but if Bush gets his way with Roberts, only one woman will remain on the nine-member court, although women make up just over half of the U.S. population. (The 2000 U.S. Census put women at 50.9 percent of the population.)
Two -- or 22 percent -- of the Supreme Court justices right now are women, and if Bush gets his way with Roberts, just 11 percent (one) of the justices will be women.
Some representation that women have on the U.S. Supreme Court, eh?
Bush also had the opportunity to replace O’Connor with a person of color. Does a retiring Supreme Court justice have to be replaced by someone of color? No, but according to the 2000 U.S. Census, 69 percent of Americans were white, 12.5 percent were Latino and 12.3 percent were black. Yet as it is, the Supreme Court is 89 percent white (eight justices), 11 percent black (one justice) and zero percent Latino. If Bush gets his way with Roberts, that won’t change.
Some representation that people of color have on the U.S. Supreme Court, eh?
I’m a white male, but, unlike my Republican/conservative counterparts, I’m not so blinded by lust for continued white male domination of the United States that I cannot see how blatantly under-represented women and people of color – and gay men and lesbians, too – continue to be in what we call our “representative democracy.”
With his nomination for O’Connor’s replacement Bush had the opportunity to do the right thing, to break with the tradition of handing plum federal government posts to white males. Of course, as usual, Bush passed on the opportunity to do the right thing.
It looks like Roberts will be confirmed. Because, like McCain, he is a comparatively low-key conservative, he should sail fairly smoothly past the spineless and toothless Democrats in the U.S. Senate. (Predictably, DINO Dianne Feinstein probably will vote for his confirmation and Barbara Boxer probably will vote against his confirmation. Anyone want to take bets?*)
It looks like “President” Bush will get his short-term victory: Naming yet another conservative white male to a high federal government post in order to preserve the status quo, to keep the lion's share of the wealth and the power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.
But I have to wonder what Bush is doing, in the long term, to his party: How long can a party that continues to under-represent just over half of the American population and that continues to under-represent an expanding non-white American population survive in the long term?
And then there’s ideology…
I posted this piece to the Sacramento for Democracy Web site on Wednesday (the "f" word does not appear in the piece only because I wrote it for another Web site...). As a blogger, I generally try to post things that I believe need to be said but that no one is saying or that only few are saying. I am not a news organization, so I feel no obligation to cover every important topic, and I don't want to only repeat what everyone else is already saying. Anyway, it was nice to discover yesterday that I'm not the only one who thinks that "President" Bush's selection of a white male for the Supreme Court is fucked up. Yesterday Salon.com posted this piece by writer Farhad Manjoo (this is an abridged version of the piece; for the full piece, click here):
Not long ago, for fun, I picked up an issue of Stanford Lawyer, the alumni magazine of Stanford Law School, which featured an interview with United States Chief Justice William Rehnquist, a Stanford alum. The interview was a slog; Rehnquist didn't talk about his retirement plans or anything else very important. But I did find one thing in the magazine illuminating -- a photograph of Rehnquist's law class taken at its 45th reunion, in 1997.
The picture is one of homogeneity. Most of Rehnquist's classmates look pretty much like Rehnquist himself -- they're all wizened, well-put-together folks who've apparently led successful, well-remunerated lives. Most wear dark suits. Most are bald. Every single one of them is white. Only one alum stands out in the crowd: Rehnquist's eventual Supreme Court colleague Sandra Day O'Connor, radiant in a teal dress, who is one of just two women in the group.
In the half century since Rehnquist and O'Connor graduated from law school, the legal profession, more than most other corners of American life, has become amazingly diverse. A picture of the current Stanford Law class looks very different from Rehnquist and O'Connor's reunion photo. Today at Stanford, as at most other top schools, women make up more than half the student body, and 20 percent of Stanford's students are minorities. More than a quarter of all law professors in the nation are women; at Stanford, Kathleen Sullivan, a lesbian, just stepped down as dean.
Yet look at a picture of today's Supreme Court and you see a group that looks just like Rehnquist and O'Connor's 1952 graduating class. Two thirds of the justices are white men. And now that George W. Bush has picked John Roberts, another white male, to replace O'Connor, the court will become significantly less diverse.
Why did Bush pick Roberts? I understand that the judge is brilliant, well-liked by many in Washington and, as far as anyone can tell, ardently conservative. He also looks easily confirmable; reports suggest he's straitlaced and not the type to harbor skeletons -- or rude videos involving skeletons -- in his closet. But I'm not asking about Roberts' credentials or his jurisprudence.
Instead, I wonder about the political calculation involved in picking a white male, who would be the 105th white male to serve on the court, especially when we know that Bush considered many solidly conservative and easily confirmable women and racial minorities for the job. We know, too, that Bush appreciates diversity; Bush has named more women and minorities to high office than any president before. Even if many of those choices have been objectionable, his impulses are laudable, especially when compared to those of previous Republican presidents. Bush seems to recognize an important principle that's at the heart of why affirmative action is important: Symbolism matters. Americans of every color need to know that they can reach the nation's heights. Bush's first pick for the court, though, closes off that hope.
Purely as a matter of politics, the move is puzzling. Polls show that the majority of Americans would have preferred a woman for O'Connor's seat. Bush says he doesn't follow polls, but he considers at least one of those Americans very important -- his wife, who told the "Today" show last week that she "would really like him to name another woman." Or, if not a woman, why didn't Bush choose a Hispanic candidate? Karl Rove, Bush's political guru, has been itching to make inroads into the Hispanic community, which he thinks can be turned into a permanent, solid Republican bloc. Bush's religious base made clear their opposition to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, but was no other minority candidate suitable for the job?
We do know Bush had several women to choose from -- not only far-right radicals like Patricia Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, but also more sane, yet still quite conservative judges such as Edith Jones.... I wouldn't have chosen a radical like Owen or Rogers Brown over Roberts just to get a woman on the court; but between a woman and a man who share an ideology, I'd choose the woman. Preserving diversity on the court for diversity's sake -- for no other reason than to create a court that looks more like America -- is a crucial goal.
You may say that my argument smacks of sexism -- after all, I'm calling for a woman to be named to the court because she's a woman. I'm discounting her ideology, her philosophy, and choosing her based solely on her gender. What I'm really calling for, though, is for a court that's more representative of the population. It stands to reason that such a court will be better equipped to rule on cases in a way that looks fair to most Americans.
I'm not saying that race or sex affects a judge's opinions in any predictable way; certainly we haven't seen Clarence Thomas ruling in a way that pleases most black Americans. In the same way, I don't believe that women have any greater capacity to decide issues of law more fairly than men; I don't think female judges are more thoughtful about women's issues, or that they're better on the environment, or the death penalty, or the First Amendment, or anything else I care about.
Yet it's undisputable that race and sex do color life; women and minorities face pressures and challenges fundamentally different from those of white men, and those pressures and challenges need to be part of the deliberative process responsible for so many important decisions shaping American law.
What I'm really getting at is fundamental fairness: Women represent more than half of the nation's population. How can Bush justify having an entire branch of federal government ruled by a body composed of only one woman and just one member of a racial minority?
A couple of years ago, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in a case over affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. In the opinion, Grutter v. Bollinger, a 5-4 majority of the court determined that diversity was an important goal to strive for in a law school's student body. "In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity," wrote the court.
When he decided to pick his first Supreme Court justice, Bush ought to have read that opinion; the argument applies perfectly to the court. The opinion, by the way, was written by O'Connor, the woman Bush decided to replace with a man.
*For those unfamiliar with California politics, California has one real Democratic U.S. Senator, Barbara Boxer, and a U.S. senator who is a Democrat in name only (DINO), Dianne Feinstein, whose husband is one of the war profiteers in Iraq. Feinstein is basically Joseph Lieberman in drag. In fact, they might be the same person.
6:02:41 AM 
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