Yawn
With the president's lame duck status looming larger than ever, DNC Chairman Howard Dean said President Bush was facing a test of his leadership and called on him to condemn Karl Rove's desperate and divisive attempt to help the Republicans regain their political footing....
Democrat National Chairman Howard Dean declares Republicans are "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead." Now my lousy US Senator Durbin has likened me and my military comrades to "Nazis" (Durbin later apologized, essentially confessing he wouldn't have to say such things if Bush wasn't so evil).
Given that fewer people have died at Guantanamo Bay than in the passenger seat of Ted Kennedy's car, Durbin's hyperbole was a bit overstated.
As I say on the cover of my book, it's that they've taken over the party of Lincoln. You could just look at the electoral map and you know that. It's the old Confederacy....There are people that essentially are the old David Duke crowd -- the Northern European, white, Protestant, small town, middle and lower-middle classes -- and their time has come. They're tired of all these foreigners that came in after '48 or after the Civil War, and all those two million Jews and all those Southern European Catholics -- those dusty people -- all those. They feel it's time to take back America. In essence, this is the revenge of the South for losing the Civil War.
But Tony Gabriele has charted a middle ground:
Have you joined the church choir, Babble? I asked as I strolled over. Or is that supposed to keep the mosquitoes off you?
"I'll have you know this is a judicial robe," Babble answered with dignity. "I'm just trying it on, in preparation for my new career?"
What new career? Stunt stand-in for Judge Joe Brown?
"Bigger than that. I'm going up to Washington and putting in for one those openings for a federal judgeship....Look, the Republicans and the Democrats in the U.S. Senate have been having big fights over what judges to appoint, right?"
Everyone knows that, it's big news lately.
"But it's been going on for years. And for years, we've heard Republicans complaining that when the Democrats were in power, they appointed a bunch of crummy, no-good activist judges, true?"
That's what they said.
"And now that the Republicans are on top and are trying to get their choices on the federal bench, what are the Democrats saying? The same thing, that the Republicans' judges are a bunch of crummy, no-good judicial activists."
So they say.
"Then it's obvious. I know how to give both sides what they want. If the Democrats and Republicans both agree they hate activist judges, then I'm their boy. At my confirmation hearing, I will promise to be the most non-activist judge they ever saw....I will be so non-activist, you won't hardly be able to get any activity out of me. I will do as little work as possible. I might not even come into work most days. I'll just phone the court and say, 'Sorry, but I washed my writs last night and can't do a thing with them.' When I do come to work, I won't write any legal opinions. I won't even have any opinions....I've got my official judicial flipping coin. Heads it's the plaintiff, tails it's the respondent....And I'll be famous for the shortest legal opinions in history. I'll just write, 'Whatever.' How can anybody object to that?"...
Sounds cool to me.
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