HumblePi
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[h=1]Democrats Accuse Conservatives of a ‘Dark Money’ Bid to Influence Judges[/h]Democrats Accuse Conservatives of a ‘Dark Money’ Bid to Influence Judges - The New York Times
May 12, 2020
Some top Democratic senators on Tuesday accused the Federalist Society of supporting a conservative “dark money” campaign to influence the federal judiciary, including who gets selected to become a judge and how he or she rules once on the bench.
In a sharply worded letter, the senators said they supported a proposal by a judicial ethics panel that would ban membership among judges in the conservative legal group.
The prohibition, the letter said, would help curb the “rampant politicization of our federal courts.” Nearly 30 Republican senators have already written the panel to oppose the proposed ban, as have more than 200 federal judges, nearly all of them appointed by Republican presidents.
Both of President Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court had ties to the group, as did all but eight of his 51 appointees to the court of appeals, an analysis in March by The New York Times showed.
The Federalist Society, which advocates strictly interpreting the Constitution according to what conservatives say was its original meaning, has been instrumental in identifying judicial nominees with legal careers focused on causes that have appealed to Republicans, such as opposition to gay marriage and to government funding for abortion.
“At the end of the day, the Federalist Society is at the center of a network of dark-money-funded conservative organizations whose purpose is to influence court composition and outcomes,”
Democrats Accuse Conservatives of a ‘Dark Money’ Bid to Influence Judges - The New York Times
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I tried to copy the thrust of the democratic proposal without infringing on copyright laws. It's an article that all democrats should read, republicans will only justify it, so there's no point reading it for them.
I'll post what I can of what Chuck Schumer said last night on Lawrence O'Donnell.
"The Federalist Society is a very small group of wealthy, powerful hard-right donors who have sent millions upon millions of dollars of 'dark money' to influence the process and they have had huge success. The Federalist Society is one of the specific agencies that does this and benefits from so much of it, chooses the judges and these judges are against the interests of the American people. These are not judges the American people would choose. They're against the interest of working people. They want to repeal Roe v Wade which is something the vast majority of Americans do not. They side with the big money classes. They were the group that put in Citizens United which allowed all this dark money in politics to begin with and cascaded it. They're trying to undo labor unions in this country.
It's a huge, huge machine and a they start on the law schools' campuses. They set up think-tanks which come up with these ridiculous theories that they then portray through the right-wing media as 'real' theories and as the report points out is that the idea that the courts are down the middle is fading away."
One example of what Schumer is saying happened this past December when Sarah Pitlyk, yet another Federalist Society drone, and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship despite the face she had never litigated a single case in her law career.
William Hubbard, chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, wrote; “Ms. Pitlyk has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal,” “She has never examined a witness. Though Ms. Pitlyk has argued one case in a court of appeals, she has not taken a deposition. She has not argued any motion in a state or federal trial court. She has never picked a jury. She has never participated at any stage of a criminal matter.”
This is how republicans are using Trump and it's the only reason they're going to support him no matter what he says or does, it just doesn't matter to them because they feel it's a trade-off for getting the federal judgeship's run through the Senate and approved despite any objections from democrats. The qualifications of the appointees doesn't really matter, what matters is their ideology and the fact that it's in line with the big money donors and GOP Senate.
In the meantime, Trump is distracting the nation by dangling shiny bright objects of controversy to deflect our attention from what the republican senate's real objective is so it's all fine with them.
May 12, 2020
Some top Democratic senators on Tuesday accused the Federalist Society of supporting a conservative “dark money” campaign to influence the federal judiciary, including who gets selected to become a judge and how he or she rules once on the bench.
In a sharply worded letter, the senators said they supported a proposal by a judicial ethics panel that would ban membership among judges in the conservative legal group.
The prohibition, the letter said, would help curb the “rampant politicization of our federal courts.” Nearly 30 Republican senators have already written the panel to oppose the proposed ban, as have more than 200 federal judges, nearly all of them appointed by Republican presidents.
Both of President Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court had ties to the group, as did all but eight of his 51 appointees to the court of appeals, an analysis in March by The New York Times showed.
The Federalist Society, which advocates strictly interpreting the Constitution according to what conservatives say was its original meaning, has been instrumental in identifying judicial nominees with legal careers focused on causes that have appealed to Republicans, such as opposition to gay marriage and to government funding for abortion.
“At the end of the day, the Federalist Society is at the center of a network of dark-money-funded conservative organizations whose purpose is to influence court composition and outcomes,”
Democrats Accuse Conservatives of a ‘Dark Money’ Bid to Influence Judges - The New York Times
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to copy the thrust of the democratic proposal without infringing on copyright laws. It's an article that all democrats should read, republicans will only justify it, so there's no point reading it for them.
I'll post what I can of what Chuck Schumer said last night on Lawrence O'Donnell.
"The Federalist Society is a very small group of wealthy, powerful hard-right donors who have sent millions upon millions of dollars of 'dark money' to influence the process and they have had huge success. The Federalist Society is one of the specific agencies that does this and benefits from so much of it, chooses the judges and these judges are against the interests of the American people. These are not judges the American people would choose. They're against the interest of working people. They want to repeal Roe v Wade which is something the vast majority of Americans do not. They side with the big money classes. They were the group that put in Citizens United which allowed all this dark money in politics to begin with and cascaded it. They're trying to undo labor unions in this country.
It's a huge, huge machine and a they start on the law schools' campuses. They set up think-tanks which come up with these ridiculous theories that they then portray through the right-wing media as 'real' theories and as the report points out is that the idea that the courts are down the middle is fading away."
One example of what Schumer is saying happened this past December when Sarah Pitlyk, yet another Federalist Society drone, and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship despite the face she had never litigated a single case in her law career.
William Hubbard, chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, wrote; “Ms. Pitlyk has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal,” “She has never examined a witness. Though Ms. Pitlyk has argued one case in a court of appeals, she has not taken a deposition. She has not argued any motion in a state or federal trial court. She has never picked a jury. She has never participated at any stage of a criminal matter.”
This is how republicans are using Trump and it's the only reason they're going to support him no matter what he says or does, it just doesn't matter to them because they feel it's a trade-off for getting the federal judgeship's run through the Senate and approved despite any objections from democrats. The qualifications of the appointees doesn't really matter, what matters is their ideology and the fact that it's in line with the big money donors and GOP Senate.
In the meantime, Trump is distracting the nation by dangling shiny bright objects of controversy to deflect our attention from what the republican senate's real objective is so it's all fine with them.