September 06, 2005
9/6: The Battle of New Orleans
The SCOTUS section is back. To go there directly, click here.
Hurricane Katrina and its effect on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, not to mention its political and economic impact, continues to be the talk of the blogosphere. Last week, everything else was an afterthought. Now as the initial horror subsides, other conversations are starting to come back -- slowly. Had Chief Justice William Rehnquist died a week earlier or later, his passing would have been a major topic for days. Likewise the re-nomination of John Roberts for that seat. Instead, the former looks like a 1-day story, while the SCOTUS fight is temporarily on hold. More about that in the SCOTUS Blogometer section elsewhere in this edition. Below, more on Katrina, Pres. Bush, FEMA, the media, Iraq and more:
BUSH I: A Miserable Failure?
The New York Times' 9/5 report, "White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage," reinforced liberal bloggers' perception that Bush is to blame for much of the disaster's severity, and that he wouldn't take credit for it. Amygdala: "At last, the White House press is finally simply describing how the White House normally does business, and isn't presenting the normal song and dance from the WH staff as if it were the real story." Left-leaning Brendan Nyhan: "Truly inspiring. Politics always comes first with this crowd." David Sirota: "Oh, but in case you thought Democrats were drawing this simple contrast about Bush's misplaced priorities, think again. As the New York Times reported there is a 'silence' among 'many prominent Democrats.'"
Liberal think tanker Judd Legum posted a screen shot of a 9/2 Bush presser with a helicopter in the background: "Why are members of the Coast Guard being used as a backdrop for Bush's press conference? Don't they have more important things to do?"
There has been criticism of Bush from the right, although it is tempered by stronger criticism of the left and of others' responses. One is a diarist at RedState, who writes: "There is no reason that helicopters should not have been airdropping troops, water, and food into N.O. starting Tuesday morning. There is no reason that our President should have been at a photo op that is going to kill the party in the 2006 elections instead of responding to this mess." Right-leaning Dan Drezner is glad to see the WH getting its act together, but warns, "the criminally slow underreaction from last week could lead to a criminally big overreaction in the next few weeks. ... I guarantee you that a year from now we'll be bemoaning some foreign policy crisis that would have been defused if everyone had kept their eye on the ball in the present."
- At TPM Cafe, Josh Marshall is leading a group effort "picking apart the trail of deceptions and excuses the White House is putting out to duck the blame."
- War and Piece passes along a report that a food distribution point Bush was filmed standing before was actually staged, and was taken down shortly after Bush and the press departed.
- Liberal Bob Fertik raises speculation that during a 9/2 presser, Bush received lines through an earpiece, as was the rumor during the '04 debates.
- Huffington Post's Bob Cesca makes the comparison between Bush reading "My Pet Goat" on 9/11/01 and strumming a guitar on 8/30.
BUSH II: For The Defense
On 9/1, Patrick Ruffini called the left-blogosphere's reaction to Katrina and their targeting of Bush a "hurricane of hate." He lists a few examples, including a "whitewashed" DNC blog entry and what's "about the most substantive thing Atrios has said all day: 'Bush to Victims: Just Die.'"
Right-leaning Balloon Juice: "I have no answers for the cuts in light of all the gigantic spending bills this congress and President have passed and signed. But until we know what happened, and according to the information that keeps coming in, the cuts and unfinished projects had little to do with the actual failure, I would appreciate it if folks would cut the noxious attempts to pin this levee failure on Bush and this administration."
Conservative Ace of Spades HQ: "Reasonable voices are suggesting we not play the blame game. There are, after all, more important matters to attend to at the moment. Well, that's a nice sentiment, but Mayor [Ray] Nagin, Governor [Kathleen] Blanco, Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore started the blame game within hours of the storm's landfall, and they, along with their cheerleaders in the liberal spirit squad in the mainstream media, have run up the score in this game 37-0 before conservatives even had their helmets on."
SoCal Law Blog criticizes Newsweek's Eleanor Clift for writing a column criticizing Bush but not local authorities. Lifelike Pundits goes after the New York Times' Frank Rich for a similar column, calling him a "political looter."
FEMA: The Fermata
At Daily Kos, DavidNYC finds an alarming number of recent headlines re: FEMA incompetence -- "FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations"; "FEMA turns away experienced firefighters"; "FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks"; "FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel"; "FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food"; "FEMA bars morticians from entering New Orleans"; "FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid." FEMA's Michael Brown, largely unknown before last week, is now perhaps the most universally-criticized member of the Bush team. Brendan Loy can hardly believe Brown's statement that "Katrina was much larger than we expected": "Ladies and gentlemen, the man who is in charge of our nation's disaster relief efforts is either a clueless idiot or a shameless liar." Kevin Drum posts a timeline illustrating FEMA and flood control projects, starting in 1/01. He advises: "Read it and weep."
The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman: "The time has come to be exceedingly blunt: President George Bush needs to fire FEMA chief Michael Brown NOW if he is to stem a credibility crisis to convince all but his staunch partisans ... that he truly values sound administration and protection of the public versus political cronyism and political CYA."
Bush himself is drawing plenty of criticism for praising Brown for doing a "heck of a job"; liberal The Heretik puts this disgust in cartoon form. At his blog for Slate, DLC's Bruce Reed writes that Bush should have kept James Lee Witt as FEMA dir. when he took office, just as he kept then-DCI George Tenet. Reed points out that Bush knew well Witt's abilities, because he had praised Witt during the '00 debates.
Michelle Malkin notes that GOP Sens. Trent Lott (MS) and David Vitter (LA) are criticizing FEMA, too.
BUSH V. BLANCO: Doesn't Anyone Blame Reggie Bush? Or Benny Blanco From The Bronx?
Over the weekend, the right and left both seized on a Washington Post article because it indicates both that Blanco fought Bush over control of the LA Nat'l Guard, and that a Bush official claimed Blanco hadn't declared an emergency. Talking Points Memo points out that she did so on 8/26. Later, a TPM Cafe diarist notices that the correction doesn't include a "regrets the error" line: "Why? Perhaps because this wasn't an error in reporting per se, but an error in judgement -- a reporter trusted a liar, and the Post printed the liar's lie." Atrios makes the Post his "Wankers of the Day."
Vodkapundit: "The 'it's all Bush's fault' meme has obviously taken hold in the land of the moonbats. I can only chuckle wryly in anticipation of the hoops they'll have to jump through to explain away this: 'Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.' That's an AP story from August 28, the day before Katrina made landfall."
At TPM Cafe, Larry Johnson compares "Bush vs. Blanco" and lays blame with Bush -- Blanco declared emergency on 8/28. The American Street's Hesiod points up an interview Blanco gave on 8/29 in which she appears to have expected greater help from FEMA.
In the Bullpen: "Why didn't Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and actually force the hand of Nagin to do something about the order? It appears now that even three full days before the hurricane hit, President Bush urged Blanco to do so. She declined." Althouse: "I can't imagine letting even one person die to protect my political reputation. How many people died because of self-protective decisions like what this article suggests Blanco did?"
In a 9/5 CNN interview, Nagin claims Blanco said she needed 24 hours to decide whether Guard troops were needed. Conservative Lorie Byrd: "If the Mayor's version of what happened is correct, I think it is what many would describe as a smoking gun, and the Mayor's story places it firmly in the hands of Gov. Blanco."
NAGIN: The Wheels On The Bus
Conservative Junkyard Blog is one of many conservative blogs to post a photo of hundreds of school buses left unused in N.O. flood waters. JYB terms it the "Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool." GOP Bloggers writes, "Nagin has been blasting away at everyone associated with the recovery effort," but why "didn't Nagin do more to evacuate the city?" Liberal Kenosha Kid rounds up similar thoughts from other conservative blogs, and disagrees about this picture's significance: "Based on nothing more than an AP photo, various denizens of the pajama brigade have come to the conclusion that the only thing that went wrong with Hurricane Katrina was the failure to deploy school buses."
Liberal economist Brad DeLong picks up a T-P report that as of 7/05 Nagin and others had announced to N.O.'s poor that they were "on their own" in the case of an evacuation: "New Orleans did not have a functioning government as of the summer of 2005. This is a catastrophic failure of local governance -- much worse than FEMA's failures. You would think that somebody -- somewhere -- would have called Washington and said, "You know, New Orleans doesn't have its act together enough to have a hurricane evacuation plan." And that somebody, somewhere -- in Washington or in Baton Rouge -- would have cared."
In the same CNN interview above, Nagin is asked about the city's evacuation plan, and responded: "Which one?" USS Neverdock: "Absolutely stunning! The mayor admits he is totally unaware of his own disaster plan, his own plan featured on his own city's website."
BUSH ADMIN: Quick -- To The Undisclosed Location!
Noting that the Navy has hired Halliburton to help repair bases damaged in MS, Blogs for Bush warns readers in a header: "Prepare for the Halliburton bashing." Liberal Echidne of the Snakes comments: "Those Halliburton boys must have been born covered in Teflon. Nothing sticks to them. Doesn't matter how they have performed in Iraq ... The sun always shines on them."
Discussion of Sec/State Condoleezza Rice shoe-shopping, playing tennis and seeing "Spamalot" on Broadway was widespread. NYC gossip blog Gawker brought the story to an audience beyond regular readers of liberal blogs.
Gawker sister blog, Wonkette, searched the Newseum's front-page archive for headlines like "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet," which DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff claimed on "Meet the Press" led him to react slowly. Wonkette finds only alarming reports, such as the T-P's banner: "Catastrophic," and surmises the "Dodged" headline "exists primarily in Chertoff's mind."
Juan Cole compares Defense Sec. Don Rumsfeld's nonchalant attitude toward looting in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam to the denunciations of looting in N.O. this past week: "So I guess it just depends on whose property is being destroyed and looted, whether Bush bothers to send in US troops to stop looting."
Vanity Fair's James Wolcott: "A question: Where the eff is Dick Cheney? With Rumsfeld, Condi, and Laura Bush making cameo appearances ... his absence is all the more conspicuous, raising questions in my mind if no one else's about the state of his health. If he's not ill, his status as inhuman monster is confirmed."
RECRIMINATIONS: Just Like With Laura Palmer's Death, We're All To Blame
Threshold State assembles a very long list of who's to blame, based on arguments from the left and right, and links to blog posts or MSM stories to illustrate each supposed culprit.
Right-leaning EU Rota points out that, according to a series of quoted T-P reports from the 90's, that then-Pres. Clinton put money for flood control efforts on a "hit list," and in '00 opposed funding for an N.O. project because it didn't meet environmental standards.
A diarist at liberal MyDD wrestles with Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) response to the disaster -- there are positives and negatives. But as a Dem sen. who votes with the GOP often, "you don't get what you want. You don't even get a portion of what you want. What you get is screwed. And so do your constituents."
Liberal bloggers, including DCCC's The Stakeholder catch Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) complaining about the Bush admin's response last week, then a few days later, saying most of the "problems have been at the state level."
Rossputin writes, the "environmental radicals" who "hate capitalism, free markets, and rationality" see an opportunity in Katrina: "For them as well as for the somewhat less radical scientists Katrina represents a great opportunity to use hyperbole and junk science for fundraising, getting grants, and generally panicking the public for their own cynical purposes."
Orcinus has plenty on conservative "race vampires," starting at the fringe with David Duke and moving center-ward: "Like something that came crawling out of the flooded cellars, the ugly side of right-wing extremism has surfaced in the wake of the disaster in New Orleans -- and, as usual, it's beginning to seep into the discourse from mainstream conservatism too." Malkin(s) Watch finds Steve Sailer comparing black Americans unfavorably with Japanese in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake: "While Michelle is making caring noises about the fate of the poor black children, her VDare friends are showing their true colors." At Huffington Post, Max Blumenthal notes that Christian right leader Rick Scarborough is "blaming Katrina on gay marriage, man-on-horse sex, and Israel."
At last week's NBC benefit concert, rapper Kanye West went off-script and slammed Bush for not caring about African-Americans, among other dubious/disputed claims. NBC later edited it down for the West coast feed. Ragged Thots: "The so-called 'conscious' rappers are the ones most likely to go off on some stupid-fool political rant that can make an-already tense situation worse. ... That said, NBC had no business editing out West's rant." More recently, ex-first lady Barbara Bush is coming under fire for saying it's "sort of scary" that refugees are saying they'll stay in TX, and that relief efforts are "working very well for them." Force Against Something: "She's making it sound like it's a good thing that people have had their homes destroyed and their family killed, that way they can 'move on up' to nicer states, and receive hand outs and donations."
Lefty Steve Gilliard notes a report of how a young N.O. man commandeered a bus, then drove himself and others to safety in Houston. The report hints that he could be charged with theft. Gilliard heads the post: "Jailed for saving lives."
Re: Katrina, Ezra Klein is a voice in the wilderness: "This is not something to politicize. It's really not. As the days drag by, we'll uncover a slew of administrative and economic failures, some negligent, some short-sighted, some idiotic, some accidental. The blame, I promise, will spread wide."
RUMINATIONS: Katrina And Her Nasty Parlor Tricks
At The American Scene, Ross Douthat calls Katrina the "anti-9/11," arguing that 9/11 was a "tragedy well-suited to the neoconservative vision, and Katrina is better suited to a paleoconservative view of the world": "9/11 allowed people, and especially writers (myself included), to strike quasi-Churchillian poses, tell "hard truths" and talk tough about what needed to be done to defeat our enemies. It made us feel awful, but it also made us good about ourselves. Whereas the only lessons of Katrina are that life is dark and death is everywhere, that nature isn't our friend and that Americans, too, can behave like savages under duress, and that all the blessings of liberalism and democracy and capitalism can't protect us from the worst." At TNR's &c., Noam Scheiber picks up from there, arguing that Katrina "cuts to a central dilemma for conservatives, which is that, at the level of worldview, they simply aren't able to accommodate an event like Katrina. They want to be able to say that government's job is basically to defend us against external enemies and criminals, and that short of that it's every man for himself." In a subsequent post, Douthat disagrees; Scheiber then adds an update to his post above. New York Times' David Brooks also used Douthat's column as a jumping-off point for his 9/4 column.
NBC anchor Brian Williams, at the Daily Nightly: "In a strange way, the most outrageous news pictures of this day may be those of progress: The palettes of food and water that have just been dropped at selected landing zones in the downtown area of New Orleans. It's an outrage because all of those elements existed before people died for lack of them: There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history."
In a post for TPM Cafe, ex-Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) argues that Katrina shows the relevance of his "Two Americas" explanation of America's class system.
Re: an AP report that as many as 10K may have died as a result of Katrina, Outside the Beltway cautions: "The toll from Katrina will be horrific, but the truth is we have no idea how many people were killed and likely won't for quite some time. Indeed, given that the most likely victims were quite poor and off the radar screen, we may never know the precise number."
Center-left Mystery Pollster, on post-Katrina polls showing no real change in Bush's approval ratings: "One can speculate all night long about the similarities and differences among these surveys and which methodology is most reliable under these circumstances. But the bottom line is that all of these surveys use methodologies that are less than optimal methodology and we will need complete surveys conducted over three or more nights to be able to come to truly reliable conclusions."
Not a few conservative bloggers are aghast that NOPD officers are being sent on vacation to Las Vegas. Paul at Wizbang disagrees with them, including his fellow Wizbangers, on this: "The town is flooded and largely abandoned. There is nothing to patrol. These guys need to leave. They need to sit in a hotel room and cry for a few days. ... In a few weeks, when the water gets pumped out, these guys will be called on to do a job that few of us want to do. They'll be retrieving corpses that are weeks old... Some of the corpses will be their friends."
THE FUTURE: What Do We Do Now?
A Daily Kos diarist argues for a series of related "Katrina/FEMA/BushCo disaster" strategies: "Everyone, everywhere. Find a way to help: donate money, donate supplies, open your home"; "Everyday folks, inside the disaster: Share your stories, good and bad"; "Everyday folks, outside the disaster: Continue to raise hell"; "Mid-level politicians: Keep the buzz growing"; "Top-level politicians: Wait for the moment, then strike."
Hugh Hewitt proposes a new model of disaster relief. Jeff Jarvis writes, "Let's be honest: The web, too, was not fully prepared for the disaster of Katrina." In a lengthy post, he assesses the current resources of the web, and offers ideas on how to better organize for future events.
The Senate Dems' relief plan for the coming week makes the rounds, at Eschaton and Daily Kos, and smaller sites such as Oliver Willis.
Reuters reports: "Two key U.S. senators said on Friday they will open a bipartisan investigation into what they described as an "immense failure" of the government response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina." Whiskey Bar's Billmon rewrites the lead: "Two key U.S. senators said on Friday they will launch a bipartisan coverup..."
Michelle Malkin: "A prediction: Some of the stories being circulated about rape, murder, and havoc in New Orleans are not going to hold up under scrutiny. This is not to minimize the countless horrors that have occurred in Katrina's aftermath. But the truth of what happened is awful enough without having to embellish it." She cites a few examples, such as Randall Robinson retracting the rumor that Katrina victims were eating corpses to survive.
At his personal blog, Matt Yglesias considers socio-economic roadblocks to N.O.'s recovery, asking whether landlords would spend their insurance money to rebuild "wrecked structures" or would they "take the money and buy some stocks?" He adds that "childless professionals," always a transient group, will surely relocate. Plus, it's "hard to imagine" N.O. attracting "bond investors in the near future and equally hard to imagine how they'll be able to get things up and running without taking on debt." Oregon Commentator: "There are too many who have died or lost everything they have for New Orleans to ever be the same. But the city's infrastructure can and will be rebuilt, and I for one plan to be there for Super Bowl XLIV."
ASSISTANCE: Blog Samaritans
As of 9/2, the Instapundit/TTLB-led fundraising effort had brought in $368,521 from 1.4K+ blogs. By late this a.m., that figure was up to $1,180,160. As of same, Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief raised $161,947.
- Liberal Skippy the Bush Kangaroo's "challenge" has raised over $10K.
- Conservative Babalu Blog has raised $5K.
- Michele Catalano is arranging to send school supplies to children displaced by Katrina.
- Chuck Simmins now counts $400M+ in overall monetary donations toward hurricane relief.
- PayPal has frozen Katrina-related donations from online message board Something Awful donations routed through it; the company wanted proof of a service being delivered to the "customers." Something Awful gives an update, this a.m.
- A contributor to Blogcritics says he refuses donate to Katrina relief. While many in the comments thereafter disagree vehemently with this argument, it does spark a heated debate.
BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Reverse-Recrimination
Captain's Quarters compliments Clinton for standing up for taking CNN's Suzanne Malveaux "to task for playing partisan politics with the Katrina relief efforts" and questioning Bush's handling of the situation: "Clinton took over this interview because he knew that Bush 41's response would just be considered the normal response of a father defending his son, and that Bush had too much class to go after Malveaux. ... Thank you, Mr. President, for reminding people that our focus should remain on the difficult work ahead in rescuing the victims and starting the recovery process. Anklebiters, nitpickers, and partisan hacks should step aside and let the grown-ups take over." In an unrelated post, PoliPundit's DJ Drummond echoes the sentiment.
Liberal blogs, such as Alternet's Peek, have called attention to FNC's Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera for reporting the "truth" about Katrina's devastation, "despite Hannity's best efforts." Johnny Dollar's Place hosts video of Geraldo saving an elderly woman trapped in her home.
THE MARCH OF BLOGS: History In The Blogging
New York Times chronicled the extraordinary efforts the Times-Picayune went through to keep publishing. At his bog, book publisher Rex Hammock writes, the T-P's Breaking News Weblog "deserves a Pulitzer." Jeff Jarvis agrees: "The Pulitzer committee would do journalism well to separate the content from the container, the medium from the message, and recognize good journalism wherever and however it happens." News reader RSS feeds for NOLA.com can be found here.
On the same day, the Times ran a piece on Notre Dame law student/self-proclaimed "weather nerd" Brendan Loy, whose blog Irish Trojan foresaw the danger Katrina posed, and who castigated Nagin for not evacuating the city sooner. As mentioned in the article, Slate's Mickey Kaus suggested that Loy's blog "should maybe be in the Smithsonian, if you can put a blog in the Smithsonian." Note: The correction added 9/6, which misspell's Loy's name, is otherwise very amusing.
IRAQ: But Not In The Same Way The Muppets Took Manhattan
Washington Post reports, insurgents "asserted control over the key Iraqi border town of Qaim on" 9/5, "killing U.S. collaborators and enforcing strict Islamic law."
Left Coaster's Steve Soto sees the invasion of the town, on the Syrian border, as indicative of larger issues: "It's been two and a half years since our invasion, and Rummy still hasn't sealed the borders." Democratic Veteran finds a way to tie it all up in a bow: "Well, you know all that 1600 Crew policy works so well, that here it's actually birthed an 'Islamic State'" amidst the thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars spent. Rove's next task: tying Zarqawi to Blanco."
Right-leaning Winds of Change's Dan Darling sees the move as "strategically stupid ... since anyone who's studied guerrilla warfare can tell you that guerrillas always lose big when they start acting like a conventional military and try to take and hold territory." Conservative Countercolumn is similarly optimistic: "There is an opportunity here. They've exposed themselves to attack, but have no hope of holding the town."
Lefty blogger Juan Cole goes after liberal hawk Christopher Hitchens in a piece for Salon. The subhead goes: "The British hawk gives 10 reasons why Americans should be proud of the Iraq war. He goes 0 for 10." It is a response to Hitchens' recent article in the Weekly Standard.
Liberal TomDispatch compares Iraq and Katrina, noting they both share "Revelations of unexpected superpower helplessness"; "Planning ignored"; "Lack of Boots on the ground"'; "Looting," and more. TomDispatch notes that the Bush admin. has "regularly insisted that we had reached the turning point" in Iraq, and asks :what we should think of the President's repeated statements of Katrina 'confidence,' his insistence that his administration can deal successfully with the hurricane's aftereffects and is capable of overseeing the successful rebuilding of New Orleans."
Center-right Ann Althouse writes, liberal blogs have "tried very hard to link Katrina to the Iraq war. I'm sure such efforts appeal to those who are already against the war, but I tend to think most Americans would find them obtuse or offensive."
MISCELLANY: Any Other Week But This One ...
- New York Observer's Politicker reports that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) might be polling herself re: her upcoming SEN re-elect bid, and floating the possibility of disavowing a WH'08 run.
- In a post that comes as a surprise to many readers, RedState co-founder Josh Trevino announces his resignation from the board, citing "differences of vision and purpose."
- Markos Moulitsas announces that he and Jerome Armstrong have changed the focus of their book on the Dem party. He lists the new chapters, explains the new outline, and asks readers to suggest a new name for the book.
- Conservative Betsy Newmark argues against Sen. Daniel Akaka's (D-HI) "Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005," and explains what it's about.
- Tom Maguire notes a "breakthrough for Times coverage (in a small holiday weekend story dominated by Katrina) ... The specific source named in the subpoena is known to Miller, the judge, and the prosecutor -- refusing to identify sources has nothing to do with it. Now, was Bob Dole's description so absurd that the Times felt obliged to provide more background, or is this a crack in the wall hinting at the reporter revolt Arianna is waiting for?
- Las Vegas Review-Journal's John Brummett: "My name is John. I am a blog-surfer. I am about to allow myself to be engaged by a right-wing blogger. I regret it already, and I'm not even to the second paragraph. ... It's good that it's free speech. It's bad that so much of it is insane."
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: You Can Gouge Me Anytime
Libertarian Megan "Jane Galt" McArdle writes "In praise of price gouging": "[H]igh prices don't just make people want to drive less; they make people want to supply more. ... rices of everything rise after a disaster, and a good thing too, since that encourages people and material to flood into the damaged area, where they're needed most. When well-meaning politicians impose "anti-gouging" laws, they slow the flow of resources to repair the damage. So let's all do our part by grinning and bearing higher oil prices, and remembering to be nice to our friendly neighborhood price gougers. But you don't need to thank them; after all, they're just doing their job."
LEST WE FORGET: In Bloom
INDC Journal's Bill Ardolino shares his latest IM conversation with Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein, the 13th in a series:
INDCBill: dude
INDCBill: I am totally getting into these Harry Potter books
proteinwisdom: So you've said.
INDCBill: they're good
INDCBill: I want to start a school for magic here in the States
INDCBill: modeled after an English boarding school
INDCBill: except with better food
INDCBill: and less ritual buggery
proteinwisdom: Again with the gay angle.
proteinwisdom: I bet you have pictures of weightlifters hanging on your walls -- which you tell yourself are there "just to keep me motivated."
proteinwisdom: Am I right?
INDCBill: no
INDCBill: I have a poster of Orlando Bloom
INDCBill: in a pirate outfit
proteinwisdom: Mmm
proteinwisdom: Well, I can't blame you for that.
SCOTUS SPECIAL: Because He Would Not Step Down From The Court, The Court Stepped Down From Him
How the blogs are responding to the passing of SCOTUS Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and the re-nomination of John Roberts to replace him:
REHNQUIST'S LEGACY: Too Close To Call
Chris Geidner, the self-proclaimed Law Dork: "I never met the Chief, but my knowledge of the working Supreme Court has been only that of the Rehnquist Court. ... I did not agree with many of his decisions, but that analysis is for another time and another place. For now, the Court is without the man who has -- in many ways, great and small -- defined it for me."
Carol Platt Liebau at Confirm Them: "He was an honorable man and a worthy justice. My only contact with him was at a Christmas party at the Supreme Court in 1993; I will never forget him standing by the piano in a big room at the Court, leading the Christmas carol sing-along. He stood for conservative judicial principles on the Court for many years. In the pre-Scalia and pre-Thomas era, he was often alone in his opinions . . . but he was right."
Liberal Yale prof Jack Balkin writes, Rehnquist meets "most of the indicia for future greatness. He has thrust himself into most of the important constitutional controversies of his generation. He has written opinions that produced considerable subsequent discussion and litigation. And he has longevity." But ultimately the matter rests on political judgments of future generations. "If, in the long run, many or most" of his positions -- against the "sex-equality doctrine," against "affirmative action and the expansion of civil rights litigation" and for "state sovereignty at the expense of federal regulatory power," and "that great exercise of judicial restraint, Bush v. Gore" -- become admired, Rehnquist "will be regarded as a great Justice, perhaps even one of the greatest."
CAP's Supreme Court Extra considers Rehnquist's legacy: Since his elevation to chief in '86, he "translated" the rightward shift of U.S. "political conditions into concrete changes in constitutional law" -- mostly on issues "where the traditional and ideological conservatives could agree, such as in reducing the size of government and enhancing the authority of law enforcement." Plus, Rehnquist "oversaw a substantial increase in the Court's own power," including Bush v. Gore: "And in deciding these questions, it showed remarkably little deference to the elected branches. In short, we became a more court-centric nation during Rehnquist's chief justiceship. Whether this constitutes a lasting change in the distribution of governmental power -- or instead just a temporary shift due to fortuitous circumstances -- will, in many respects, determine Rehnquist's legacy."
The WSJ's James Taranto posts a partial transcript of star atty Alan Dershowitz's appearance on FNC minutes after Rehnquist's death was announced. In it, Dershowitz criticizes Rehnquist harshly as "one of the most judicially active judges" on the SCOTUS, a hypocrite for having "violated everything he had written for the previous 25 years" in Bush v. Gore, and referring to him as a "Republican thug." Taranto defends Rehnquist, and re: judicial activism, argues, "his eagerness to paint Rehnquist as a 'judicial activist' ... shows that this is an argument the left has lost. Rather than defend, say, Roe v. Wade (in which Rehnquist dissented) as a justifiable work of judicial activism, they invent tendentious redefinitions of the term in a transparent attempt at judicial jujitsu." As for the "thug" line, that "seems plain hateful." Dem pols "presumably are clever enough not to spit on Rehnquist's grave, but they may well direct similar invective at whomever President Bush chooses to succeed the chief."
At Huffington Post, Dershowitz argues the case against Rehnquist, summarizing: "Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power speaks volumes about the current state of American values." He mentions his FNC appearance, Sean Hannity's rudeness toward him, and resulting e-mails, a few of which were "overtly anti-Semitic."
Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte: "Summary: We are f---ed. Choice is gone. And as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, states will start outlawing contraception, and eventually the ideologically run court will find that there's no right to privacy, period, and contraception protection will be gone. The only thing I can say now is that people who have enough children or don't want any at all -- get sterilized while you still can." Earthjustice's Judging The Future, on Rehnquist: "Racist. Period."
TigerHawk notes that the AP uses "left-wing jargon" in their canned Rehnquist obit: "If you Google 'Rehnquist five' you get a grand total of 186 hits (as of this Googling), most from palpably left-wing sites such as Democratic Underground."
Dan Drezner: "[H]is greatest legacy for the Court might be his management skills -- he was a vast improvement over both Burger and Warren in that capacity."
IMPACT: Coming To Terms With The Near Term
PrawfsBlawg's Douglas Berman: "Though I can assess the impact of the new vacancy on sentencing jurisprudence, I am far less able to assess the political dynamics surrounding this new opening. My guess is that President Bush's advisors and others will encourage the President not to be too concerned with short-term political realities when making an appointment with such long-term legal consequences."
In a later post, Balkin writes: "Bush's decision to switch Roberts to the Chief Justice slot is prompted by short-term tactics. But it may have long term repercussions." The conservative-for-a-conservative switch "might make Roberts' confirmation marginally easier, particularly when Bush's political capital has been debilitated by the combination of the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, problems with Iraq, a weak economy and rising gas prices. Given that Bush still wants to pursue an ambitious second term agenda, he needs to expend as little political capital as possible now. He is calculating that confirming Roberts as Chief might allow him to give his conservative base a relatively easy victory with relatively high salience because of the symbolic importance of the position of Chief Justice."
Confirm Them, on the Roberts re-nod: "[B]y nominating him now, the President has ensured" that liberal John Paul Stevens "won't serve as Chief Justice on even an interim basis, which is a good thing." However, the chance exists for the MSM and the left to "start claiming that Roberts was nominated to replace Rehnquist, and all the whining for a 'moderate' to replace Justice O'Connor will start up again." At sister site RedHot, Mark Kilmer points out, Stevens already is acting Chief right now: "It's an administrative job ... but I don't suppose there's any reason to feel reassured."
At the SCOTUSBlog, Marty Lederman explains why a new nomination is needed.
Supreme Court Nomination Blog and RedState both mention speculation that Roberts had been a possible for the Chief job months ago, before a single vacancy materialized.
CONFIRMATION: A Whole New Ballgame?
MyDD's Scott Shields: "Roberts had been O'Connor's replacement. Now he's Rehnquist's. As my wife points out, this gives the lie to the GOP claim that Roberts is a moderate. If he's conservative enough to replace Rehnquist, he's no moderate."
A diarist at TPM Cafe: "Isn't is time to reject any more nominees put forth by President Bush? With seven Justices left on the Supreme Court this year, why don't the Democrats take a stand and shut down consideration of any more judges at any level until the Katrina Disaster has been fixed and blame has been dealt to the guilty parties?" The SCOTUS should be left as-is "for at least six months, maybe until a new Congress can be elected." Swing State Project's Tim Tagaris: "The Republican spin is already that Roberts was the moderate choice and now the president has the ability to pick a 'strict constructionist.'"
Liberal Ezra Klein looks ahead: "Democrats, smartly, are pounding home the fact that Roberts is Rehnquist's replacement, and O'Connor should thus have her seat filled by a candidate exemplifying her imagined virtues: moderation, pragmatism, occasional liberalism. But what they say won't be nearly so important as what they do. If they lay down for Roberts, given the gravity and meaning of his appointment, Bush will be freed to nominate whomever he wants."
Popular betting/trading site TradeSports has several lines on Roberts' nod. One is based merely whether he will be confirmed; and another category allows one to guess the total affirmative votes. His confirmation is all but a foregon conclusion, and most assume he will get at least 60 yes votes. Most assume he will get 70 votes, but there is a rather steep drop-off.
THE REPLACEMENTS: Hurricane Justice?
Ex-RedStater Josh Trevino, at his previous blog, Tacitus writes, "It is not commonly understood by persons who are not social conservatives what a new Supreme Court nomination means to that group. Social conservatives have embraced the President in expectation of this moment. ... John Roberts was not the delivery they demanded. Social conservatives were rightly appalled at having to support a man who averred to Senator Durbin that 'Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land...'"
Conservative Robert Alt, at Bench Memos: "While I despise all this talk of weather-based identity politics, there is one 'hurricane-state native' whose name has not been mentioned: Janice Rogers Brown. She hails from Greenville, Alabama, which is in the southern part of the state (i.e., hurricane country). And, as long as we are talking about identity politics, as an African-American woman, she shares a common racial bond with those who were hit hardest in the New Orleans metropolitan area." Captain's Quarters is for Brown as well. Volokh Conspiracy's Orin Kerr, on why it probably won't be her: Brown, a "hard core libertarian is not likely to vote in a consistently conservative way ... It's hard to know if Brown's libertarian worldview would carry over to war on terror questions, but they might. Given the perceived importance of such questions in the future, I think it's somewhat less than likely" that Bush would tap her.
Liberal David Corn: "In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, might Bush look to" N.O.-based Edith Clement, or African-American Brown. "After all the recent talk about poor black people being shafted in New Orleans by the US government, Bush might enjoy standing in the Oval Office with Brown and talking about her personal story." Erick Erickson makes the case for Clement. At Bench Memos, K.J. Lopez calls the open seat "The Hurricane Seat." Later, NRO's Mark Levin picks up the term, and notes how Edith Clement has been suggested by some, including Susan Estrich: "The notion is that it would be a wonder symbolic act on the president's part to the people of New Orleans. I sure hope this kind of thinking isn't taken seriously by serious people, especially the president. ... The symbolism is among the elites. And it would be short-lived even among them. If anything, this shows how completely out-of-touch some people are with the public."
UCLA law prof Stephen Bainbridge guesses at odds on the next pick:
Gonzales 2-1
McConnell 5-1
Clement 10-1
Brown 20-1
Hugh Hewitt: "It does make the next nomination marginally more difficult, but a Judge [Michael] Luttig or a Judge [Emilio] Garza, or a Judge [Edith] Jones would be worth fighting for (my order of preference), and Senator [Sam] Brownback [(R-KS)] as a nominee puts a conservative's conservative on the court with little static from Senate Democrats bound to clear the way for one of their own."
Note: In case you find yourself wondering, yes, this is the longest Blogometer to date.
Posted by at September 6, 2005 12:43 PM
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