 CHUCK SCHUMER IS A DICK!
I've never been to New York City, but as someone who grew up in a big city, there's something about the idea of eight million really rude people living right on top of one another that appeals to me. It feels like home. What more can you say about a city that mourned the shooting death of John Lennon and then made a folk hero out of Bernie Goetz something like 10 minutes later except "Vive, New York, Vive?"
If I'm wrong and both Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani receive their respective parties presidential nominations, we'll get to see the first "subway series" since 1944 (and no, knowing things like that haven't gotten me anywhere in life), and the world will get a taste of what New York's really about. More so if that mutant dwarf Michael Bloomberg runs as an independent.
A Giuliani nominiation in particular would be fun to watch. Right now, everybody is focused on the post-9/11 Rudy - the guy who took charge as the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smouldering. Everybody loves that guy. But they seem to have forgotten the pre-9/11 Rudy. That would be the guy who, when asked why his police department has the disturbing habit of sodomizing Haitians with toliet plungers, responded by punching them directly in the carotid artery and urinating on their prostrate forms before declaring the questioner to be "anti-police." That's the Rudy that New Yorkers voted for twice in record numbers.
And Hillary Clinton is, well, Hillary Clinton.
With the great to-do over Rudy and Hillary, everyone seems to have forgotten the ultimate New Yorker, the state's senior U.S senator, Chuck Schumer. But Schumer hasn't forgotten you. He will get you, my pretty. And your little dog, too.
Schumer is the perfect representation of the city of New York; liberal past the point of reason, too smart by half, arrogant, abrasive, petty, and given to ignore facts that don't suit his almost satanic ends. Frankly, I'm shocked that he isn't featured in the city's tourism commercials the way Ed Koch used to be. Senator Schumer is the walking, talking personification of why most Americans fear and despise New York City. The guy is a dick.
In fairness, being a dick is literally how Chuck got where he is today. You see, during the '98 New York Senate race, he was running pretty much even with the popular incumbent, Al D'Amato. Then D'Amato called Schumer a "putz-head," a statement that - while technically accurate - Schumer was able to successfully brand as anti-Semitic. Schumer was elected to the United States Senate for almost no other reason than because he's a dickhead. I was actually surprised when he opted not to spend his first year in the upper chamber wearing a purple helmet. That would have been an especially delightful visual during the Senate impeachment trial of President Clinton. It also would have been a novel way of showing support for the embattled president.
Despite being one of the loudest voices against the attempts of scumbags like the then-Missouri senator John Ashcroft to block Clinton's judicial nominees, Schumer adopted the same tactics within seconds of Ashcroft's electoral humiliation at the hands of a fucking corpse.
On June 26, 2001, Schumer published an op-ed in the New York Times calling on the Senate to reverse several decades of tradition and begin openly considering the ideology of judicial nominees as opposed to merely their qualifications. In his article, Senator Schumer made the point that the Senate used to consider ideology as a factor in confirmation and had even rejected some nominees on those grounds. However, the most recent example that he could find was in 1845, when James Polk nominated a borderline Know-Nothing to the Supreme Court.
Schumer also correctly points out that ideology played a large role in defeating the 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the High Court. I would argue otherwise. While brilliant and undoubtedly technically qualified, Bork may have also been insane and held judicial views more properly at home in the goddamn Stasi than on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. Also, nominating the guy who carried out the Saturday Night Massacre for Richard Nixon might not have been the deftest political move on President Reagan's part.
Bork is a lunatic who, as recently as 18 months ago, was calling for government censorship of popular culture in direct violation of the First Amendment. His writings over the years and his words during his confirmation hearings indicate that he would have voted to reverse a century of precedent and overrule what the overwhelming majority of American legal scholars and judges see as settled law. While Antonin Scalia is a doctrinaire conservative, Robert Bork is a barking fucking psychopath. The Senate should have gone much further than merely rejecting Bork's nomination. They should have placed him in a straightjacket, smothered him with a pillow and buried him in the Capitol basement. I'm not wholly convinced that they still shouldn't do that today.
The Bork nomination is what is now commonly referred to as "extraordinary circumstances." What Senator Schumer has attempted to do for the last six years is turn those extraordinary circumstances into the standard operating procedure of the United States Senate. Extraordinary circumstances should now be taken to mean "blocking the nomination of anyone who happens to be a Republican." In the World According to Chuck, President Bush should only be naming Democrats to the federal bench. Apparently, winning 1.5 elections is no longer sufficient grounds for Bush to nominate whomever he sees fit.
Frankly, I think Mr. Bush missed a fantastic opportunity to shut down shitheads like Schumer forever. This could have been done by nominating that known commodities to the Senate that would have been very difficult for them to reject and still appear to be anything resembling honest. Names like Orrin Hatch and John Danforth come to mind. Both are well regarded in the Senate, would have been the easiest confirmations in the world, and neither would lead to the loss of a Republican seat.
Instead, Bush briefly considered naming that gospel-singing ghoul Ashcroft to the Court before he learned that he could only just barely be confirmed as Attorney General. While finding a senator is a good idea, an even better one is to find someone who wasn't actively loathed by all 99 of his collegues. Just sayin'.
But now that he's in the majority, Schumer's going thirteen steps further. He's no saying that the Senate should reject all of Bush's nominees, except in "extraordinary circumstances." Although it remains unsaid, one presumes that such an extraordinary circumstance would be the nomination of Chuck Schumer to the Supreme Court of the United States.
And you know what? This is among the most useless arguments I've ever heard. The Senate isn't often enraged by sitting justices, but the presidents who nominated them in the first place sure as shit are. Bush 41 remains disappointed by David Souter. Reagan was said to be disappointed by Anthony Kennedy. Ford regretted nominating John Paul Stevens - a Chicago arch-conservative at the time - until the day he died. Nixon was disgusted by Harry Blackmun. Byron "Whizzer" White turned out to be far more conservative than J.F.K ever expected him to be and Truman often referred to nominating Tom Clark to the bench as his biggest mistake as president. Far more often than not, sitting justices become decidedly more liberal than the presidents who named them.
With the exception of White, no justice since 1950 has moved to the right upon assuming the bench. It just doesn't happen that way, teenagers. For all we know, Chief Justice Roberts could join the American Communist Party in five years. If there currently is no American Communist Party, Roberts might just start one. Stranger things have happened.
For a case in point, let's look at the Big Daddy of them all, Earl Warren. President Eisenhower sought to name a stalwart conservative to the Court upon assuming office. As governor of California, Warren was largely responsible for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Most people would suggest that that's a pretty conservative nominee.
Instead, Warren turned out to be the most revolutionary force for the liberal cause in the entire Twentieth Century. Civil rights, privacy rights, and the rights of criminal defendants were all expanded in ways that would be unimaginable without Earl Warren as Chief Justice. More than perhaps any other single person, Warren made the United States what it is today. And it's important to remember that Warren was a Republican governor and vice-presidential nominee, nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican Senate. Ike later called the Warren appointment "the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made."
Eisenhower was too hard on himself. There was nothing in Warren's record that suggested that he would be the justice that he was. Indeed, virtually everything in the record indicated that the opposite would be true. There's no way that Eisenhower could have known how Warren would have voted on the Court, just as there's no way that any president can. On the other hand, the United States Senate voted 98-0 for Scalia knowing precisely what his judicial beliefs were.
Is it possible that, say, President Kucinich nominates a justice who assumes the bench and immediately begins moonlighting as the bassist in a White Power band? I suppose, but if history is anything to go by, the overwhelming statistical likelihood is that a justice nominated by a conservative president will become more liberal the longer he or she sits. Between Nixon and Reagan alone, seven justices (including two chiefs) were put on the Court. Guess what? The Court didn't become markedly more conservative and virtually all of the Warren Court's precedents were repeatedly upheld.
Fourteen justices have been named since 1969, all but two of them (Souter and Ginsberg) by Republican presidents. And not only has the Court not moved discernibly to the right, in cases such as Lawrence v. Texas, Kelo v. City of New London, Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, it has moved further to the left than even the Warren Court could have anticipated. And all of the decisions cited above have been handed down in the last five years - after a generation of Republican appointments.
If anyone thinks that George W. Bush is some conservative super-hero who is capable of reversing that trend, they're a friggin' idiot. Does Chuck Schumer really believe that Bush is smarter than his father, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Ford, Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower? That would be pretty stunning because no one else does. But that belief is inherent in Schumer's assertion that President Bush has the ability to create an army of robotic conservative judges (or judgebots) that will destroy the midnight basketball programs and abortions that he holds so dear. Okay, maybe Cheney can - he's the goddamned Lizard King. He can do anything! Bush, on the other hand, is unequal to the task of getting a majority of the Republican caucus to vote for an immigration bill.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so harsh. After all, this president has managed to turn a country without any trees into Vietnam, so I would probably do well not to misunderestimate him further. But all of the available evidence seems to prove that Al D'Amato was right about Schumer. He's a dick!
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Loser By: Beck From: Mellow Gold
PermalinkLabels: Fun With Politics, I Fought The Law, I See Monsters, The Smart Boy Blues
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