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March 3, 2000
BULLETIN BOARD
The White House Bulletin, a daily review of the news, ran a lengthy item today on NR's lead editorial, "McCain and His Friends." It reports, "Some social conservatives in Washington, including members of conservative media outlets, celebrated the National Review's editorial. . . viewing it as a mirror image of the fight 'for the soul of the conservative movement' between McCain and George W. Bush." The Bulletin goes on to quote one of us on the point of the editorial: "Ponnuru said, 'Look, our magazine takes a big-church approach. . . . We spend a lot of time trying to keep the movement together. . . . [O]nce in a while something happens in the movement and we feel it is necessary for us to weigh in. This is one of those times.'"
THE SHARPTON DEMOCRATS
Thank you, Jeff Greenfield, for asking Bill Bradley and Al Gore to justify their overtures to Al Sharpton, given the simulated outrage they've shown over George W. Bush's campaign stop at Bob Jones University. (Sharpton graces the cover, if that's the right verb, of our latest issue.) The responses were certainly instructive.
First Gore said that "in America we believe in redemption"; he provided no evidence, of course, that any has taken place. Then he said, "I did not meet with Reverend Sharpton publicly. I met with him privately." (And that's supposed to make it better, not worse?) He continues, "And I talked with him about some of the concerns that I have. I — I will not violate the privacy of that conversation. But these subjects were discussed." (Either there's some zone of privacy around this conversation or there's not; if Gore is going to present it as evidence in his defense, he has to spill.) "And I will point toward a couple of facts. Number one, he received something like, I think, 131,000 votes in the last New York City election. He is undeniably a person to whom some people in the city look as a — as a spokesperson." (Couldn't Bush say that Bob Jones U. has influence over some people, too? Wouldn't Gore respond that that's why it should be shunned? Gore's administration didn't go soft on Joerg Haider just because he got votes. Basically, what Gore is saying here is that political expediency is its own justification.) Then it gets worse: "And, you know, there is a racial divide in the way people in different races perceive certain events. I would not be so quick to completely dismiss what he has to say about some of these issues." (So: It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand.)
Then Bradley was up. He, too, led off with the need "to allow people the right to grow" and "to evolve." He goes on to say that Sharpton "has in many cases kept the lid on otherwise dangerous situations that were beginning to develop." (Keeping the lid on dangerous situations he himself "developed," in the manner of all protection rackets.)
Gore took another turn: "Look at the number of rabbis who went to join Reverend Sharpton in his organizing of demonstrations and pickets following the Abner Louima case. . ." (Some of his best friends are rabbis.) Then Bradley again: "The real question here is how do the voiceless get a voice? . . . It sometimes takes someone that rubs a part of the population the wrong way in order to get the attention focused on the issue at hand. I view his activities in that light. . . . [T]hat's where I think you have to see him in that tradition of civil rights in this country." (Sure, part of the population objects when someone incites murder and falsely accuses law-enforcement officials of raping a black girl. But Martin Luther King, Jr., was controversial too!)
Disgraceful.
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
The Washington Post today came out for the confirmation of two Clinton nominees to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals: Marsha Berzon and Richard Paez. Accusations that the duo inclines toward "judicial activism" — the Post's sneer quotes, not ours — are not justified. Oh really? Berzon was long affiliated with the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice, two outfits that basically exist to promote a latitudinarian view of judicial power (and, in the case of the Center, campaign-finance restrictions too). Paez, meanwhile, has struck down, as an unconstitutional restriction on free speech, a Los Angeles law prohibiting aggressive panhandling — a law passed after a man was stabbed to death for refusing to turn over some money. As Ann Coulter has remarked in Human Events, "Just hope Judge Paez doesn't get his hands on any laws against extortion, bribery or robbery. 'Stick 'em up' could become constitutionally protected speech."
The Ninth Circuit is already top-heavy with liberals. No circuit's rulings are overturned more frequently by the Supreme Court, often unanimously. (The Post deals with this pattern by declaring that "diversity among circuits is healthy," which we'll remember the next time Fourth Circuit Judge Michael Luttig, a legal conservative, upholds a ban on partial-birth abortion or strikes down an overreaching federal law.)
Then there's the fact that these nominations were made by an administration that has an explicit litmus test in favor of one extra-constitutional decision, Roe v. Wade. None of the administration's judicial nominees should be confirmed. But these two, in particular, deserve to be voted down next week.
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Updated By:
Ramesh Ponnuru - Senior Editor
John J. Miller - National Political Reporter
Kate Dwyer - Editorial Associate
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