[Vision2020] The N.R.A. at the Bench

Thu Dec 27 11:43:21 PST 2012

So the NRA gets to decide who gets to be on the supreme court?

OK, then I guess we should bypass congress and just let them decide in the
future.

Yours in more mass killings,

Andy Boyd

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Gary Crabtree
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2012 11:07 AM
To: Art Deco
Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The N.R.A. at the Bench

Ms. Greenhouse, in her zealous effort to tar the NRA and the GOP seems to be
glossing over a very important fact. Sotomayor is one of only three federal
appellate judges in America to issue a court opinion saying that the Second
Amendment does not apply to states. 

http://orderinthecourt.org/Cases/Maloney-v-Cuomo

The NRA had every reason to view this appointment as a major salvo in the
war on private firearms possession and oppose her vigorously.

Sadly, not vigorously enough.

g

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>
wrote:

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> 

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> December 26, 2012, 9:00 pm

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> The N.R.A. at the Bench

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> By LINDA GREENHOUSE

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> There has been plenty written about
the National Rifle Association in recent days. But nothing that I've seen
has focused on the gun lobby's increasingly pernicious role in judicial
confirmations. So here's a little story.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Back in 2009, when President Obama
chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, the White
House expected that her compelling personal story, sterling credentials, and
experience both as a prosecutor and, for 17 years, as a federal judge would
win broad bipartisan support for her nomination. There was, in fact, no
plausible reason for any senator to vote against her.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> The president's hope was Senator
Mitch McConnell's fear. In order to shore up his caucus, the Senate
Republican leader asked a favor of his friends at the National Rifle
Association: oppose the Sotomayor nomination and, furthermore, "score" the
confirmation vote. An interest group "scores" a vote when it adds the vote
on a particular issue to the legislative scorecard it gives each member of
Congress at the end of the session. In many states, an N.R.A. score of less
than 100 for an incumbent facing re-election is big trouble.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Note that the N.R.A. had never
before scored a judicial confirmation vote. Note also that Sonia Sotomayor
had no record on the N.R.A.'s issues. (True, she voted with an appeals court
panel to uphold New York State's ban on nunchucks, a martial-arts weapon
consisting of two sticks held together with a chain or rope, commonly used
by gang members and muggers.http://orderinthecourt.org/Cases/Maloney-v-Cuomo
- which, before the Supreme Court later ruled otherwise by a vote of 5 to 4,
it didn't.)

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Never mind. The N.R.A. had all the
reason it needed to oppose Sonia Sotomayor: maintenance of its symbiotic
relationship with the Republican Party. Once it announced its opposition and
its intention to score the vote, Republican support for the nominee melted
away. Only seven Republicans voted for confirmation.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> One senator, Lisa Murkowski of
Alaska, said by way of explaining her "no" vote that her constituents had
expressed "overwhelming concern" about Judge Sotomayor's views on the Second
Amendment. However, Senator Murkowski told the National Journal at the time,
"I am a bit concerned that the N.R.A. weighed in and said they were going to
score this." She added, "I don't think that was appropriate."

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> The following year, after the
N.R.A. opposed Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court and announced that "this
vote matters and will be part of future candidate evaluations," Republican
support for another nominee without a record on gun issues shrank to five
senators.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> At least Supreme Court confirmation
debates take place in the light of day. Members of the public can tune in
and decide whether they are persuaded that Elena Kagan represents "a clear a
present danger to the right to keep and bear arms," to quote the N.R.A.'s
statement of opposition to her nomination. (Justice Kagan had never owned or
shot a gun, but since joining the court has taken lessons and gone hunting
with Justice Antonin Scalia, pronouncing the experience "kind of fun.")

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> But the N.R.A. has begun to involve
itself in lower court nominations as well, where it can work its will in the
shadows. It has effectively blocked President Obama's nomination of Caitlin
J. Halligan to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia Circuit that has been vacant since September 2005, when John G.
Roberts Jr. moved to a courthouse up the street. The president has submitted
the name of the superbly qualified Ms. Halligan to the Senate three times.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> When the Democrats' effort to break
a Republican filibuster failed last year, Senator Murkowski was the only
Republican to vote for cloture, perhaps liberated by the fact that she won
her last election as a write-in candidate, thus freeing herself of party
discipline - which in the Republicans' case effectively means discipline by
the N.R.A. In this year's Republican Senate primary in Indiana, the N.R.A.
spent $200,000 toward the successful effort to defeat the incumbent, Richard
Lugar, attacking the six-term senator for, among other sins, having voted to
confirm "both of Barack Obama's anti-gun nominees to the U.S. Supreme
Court."

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> When I wrote a year ago about the
fate of Caitlin Halligan's appeals court nomination, I tried to puzzle out
the basis for the opposition. Silly me, I thought it had something to do
with Republicans not wanting a young (she had just turned 45), highly
qualified judge sitting in the D.C. Circuit's famous launch position (hello,
John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Warren
Burger . . .)

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Now I realize it's not about
anything so sophisticated. It's about the N.R.A., which announced its
opposition days before the cloture vote last December. It was only the
second time in the organization's history that it had opposed a nomination
at the non-Supreme Court level. (The first was Abner Mikva in 1979, a former
member of Congress from Chicago who won confirmation and who later served as
President Bill Clinton's White House counsel.) In a previous job as New York
State's solicitor general, Ms. Halligan, a former Supreme Court law clerk
who is now general counsel to the Manhattan district attorney, had
represented the state in a lawsuit against gun manufacturers. So much for
her.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> So that's my N.R.A. story. The
question is what anyone can do about it. The N.R.A. has embedded itself so
deeply into the culture of Republican politics that it would take a
cataclysm to break the bonds of money and fear that keep Republican office
holders captive to the gun lobby's agenda.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> Well, a cataclysm just occurred, a
few dozen miles from my office at Yale Law School. (My late father-in-law
was born on a farm in the Sandy Hook neighborhood of Newtown.) There will be
legislative proposals, and members of the Senate and House will debate them,
maybe even enact a few, and people back home can decide what they think. How
to get a handle on the gun problem is not my point. Rather, I want to offer
the judicial nomination story as a canary in the mine, a warning about the
depths to which the power of the gun lobby has brought the political system.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> My point is this: It is totally
unacceptable for the N.R.A., desperate to hang on to its mission and its
members after achieving its Second Amendment triumph at the Supreme Court
four years ago, to be calling the tune on judicial nominations for an entire
political party. Free the Republican caucus. Follow Lisa Murkowski's lead.
Recognize a naked power play for what it is. Voters who think they care
about the crisis of gun violence in America are part of the problem, not the
solution - they are enablers if they aren't willing to help their elected
representatives cast off the N.R.A.'s chains. Call for an end to the
cowardly filibuster against Caitlin Halligan, whose nomination the president
resubmitted in September. The next time a senator announces opposition to a
judicial nominee, demand something other than incoherent mumbo-jumbo. Tell
the senator to fill in the blank: "I oppose this nominee because ____." If
there's an answer of substance, fine. That's advise-and-consent democracy.
But if, upon inspection, the real answer is "because the N.R.A. told me to,"
we have a problem. Based on these last few years, I think we do.

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> 

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

 <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/> 
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