Trump Continues to Appoint Unqualified Ideologues to the Federal Courts

At the state level, judges are either elected or appointed by the state legislature and serve for set terms before they have to either seek re-election or re-appointment. Virginia follows the appointment system and the Virginia Supreme Court conducts regular sworn surveys of practicing attorneys as to the competence, demeanor and knowledge of state court judges at all levels. If a judge receives consistently bad survey results, that judge may likely not be reappointed.  The system seeks to protect both the courts and the public from incompetent and/or unqualified judges.  The federal courts have no counterpart system of judicial review and judicial appointments are for life.  The only chance given to weed out unqualified or biased judges is at the judicial confirmation hearing level where supporters and opponents of the appointment get to be heard.  One of the voices heard is that of the American Bar Association which, based on extensive surveys, provides documentation as to whether an individual is qualified for a life time appointment.  The Trump/Pence regime has consistently been nominating a number of unqualified individuals and sadly the GOP controlled Senate has been rubber stamping such nominees to the long term detriment of the judicial system and public.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at one such unqualified nominee who has a documented history of being stridently anti-LGBT.  Here are highlights:

The American Bar Association had no shortage of criticism in its assessment of the Trump administration’s new judicial nominee.

Colleagues found Lawrence VanDyke to be “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice,” the chair of an ABA committee wrote in the scathing letter, the result of 60 interviews with lawyers, judges and others who worked with the Justice Department attorney. Acquaintances also alleged a lack of humility, an “’entitlement’ temperament,” a closed mind and an inconsistent “commitment to being candid,” the letter said. It deemed VanDyke “not qualified” for a spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

The strongly worded review drew equally strong reactions at a Wednesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee — from Democrats who called the ABA findings unusual and troubling as well as from Republicans who called it a low attack from a group they’ve long accused of bias against conservatives. But one charge was particularly upsetting to VanDyke himself: The ABA’s report that he “would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community.”

Asked if that was correct, the nominee struggled almost 15 seconds to find his words. He started to cry.

The emotional response came an hour and a half into a hearing for the latest judicial nominee to draw Democrats’ scrutiny as the Trump administration installs a record number of new, conservative judges. VanDyke quickly came under fire Wednesday for his past positions on issues such as gun control, environmental protections and abortion — as well as LGBTQ rights. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday noted VanDyke’s support for a same-sex marriage ban in Nevada, where he served as solicitor general. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) raised an op-ed VanDyke wrote in 2004 while attending law school, in which he argued that same-sex marriage would “hurt families, and consequentially children and society.” “Fairly damning,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) called it. “Some pretty darned serious concerns,” echoed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), saying the litany of colleagues’ reservations could not be brushed aside. Leahy said he’d never encountered a letter like the VanDyke assessment in his 45 years in Congress.

Republican lawmakers have long called the ABA unfair. . . . But such complaints aren’t universal among Republicans. Amid the fight over Pitlyk, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) pointed out that Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) had also received money from an ABA leader. Graham, in his response, called the organization a “fine group” whose staff he trusts despite what he described as a liberal bias.

While Hawley and other senators charged the ABA with playing politics, Whitehouse said he saw partisan maneuvering in all the criticism.

“The evaluations are narrowly focused, nonpartisan, and structured to assure a fair and impartial process,” William Hubbard, chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, wrote in a statement.

The ABA has deemed 97 percent of the 264 Trump administration nominees it has evaluated to be either “well qualified” or “qualified,” he said.

Hubbard added that the “committee’s work is insulated from, and independent of, all other activities of the ABA and its leadership.”

A full review of Van Dyke's extreme anti-LGBT history can be found on blogger friend Joe Jervis' blog here.  Van Dyke is a right wing Christian extremist whose extreme views would harm non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual litigants who might come before him.  His nomination needs to be rejected. 

The GOP's Effort to Disenfranchise Minority Voters Through Judicial Appointments

Trump's racist judicial nominee, Thomas Farr. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP/REX/Shutterstock

I have written for years now about Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters , first through gerrymandered districts and then through "voter ID laws" fighting non-existent voter fraud.  Now, it has moved to deleting voters from the voter rolls as we witnessed in Georgia.  But even more insidious is the Trump/Pence effort to put avowed racists and white supremacists on the benches of the federal courts where they will have lifetime appointments and can use judicial rulings to undermine minority voting rights. Thankfully, the nomination of one of the most foul individuals selected by Der Trumpenführer was blocked this week by two Republicans, but many other racists and homophobes have slipped through  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the scuttled nomination of Thomas Farr who illustrates the type of individuals Trump is seeking to pack the courts with.  This effort ought to frighten decent people everywhere.  Here are article highlights:

Senator Tim Scott announced on Thursday that he would oppose the judicial nomination of Thomas Farr, who President Donald Trump had tapped to become a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The news ended a suspenseful four days of deliberation for Scott, whose decision cited Farr’s past efforts to undermine black suffrage. His opposition — paired with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s — effectively killed Farr’s bid, which would have secured the Raleigh-based lawyer a lifetime on the federal bench.

Farr’s abysmal record on black voting rights is well-documented. As a lawyer for United States Senator Jesse Helms — who, in 2001, Washington Post journalist David S. Broder described as “the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country” — Farr was the “coordinator” of a racist 1984 “ballot security” initiative spearhead by the North Carolina GOP. It included a “postcard mailing to voters in predominantly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge [them] on election day,” according to a 1991 Justice Department memo.

His campaign sent 125,000 mailers to black voters falsely claiming they were barred from the ballot box unless they had lived in that precinct for at least 30 days, and would face jail time if they voted. The result was his successful reelection against then-Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, a black man.

The DOJ recommended the North Carolina GOP be sued for its conduct that November. But Farr’s efforts to thwart black voters continued well into the 21st century. In 2013, he represented the Republican-controlled state legislature defending a voting law that a federal appeals court eventually overruled, saying it had “[targeted] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The law imposed stringent voter ID requirements, curtailed election day registration and early voting, and ended other procedures favored by black voters, . . . . Tellingly, legislators had enacted the law almost immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act that year, allowing several North Carolina counties to change their voting laws without federal “preclearance” for the first time since 1965. 

It should surprise no one that none of this was disqualifying for the Senate GOP. On the contrary, the vast majority still backed Farr’s nomination, with only a handful besides Scott and Flake signaling their reservations in light of his record. This is a feature of modern conservative politics, not a bug. The moral stench engulfing Republicans’ efforts to suppress nonwhite votes is detectable from Georgia to North Dakota. But black political participation has alarmed racist white North Carolinians for far longer.

Efforts to suppress black political power may have been bloodier before, but they are not new. The legacy Farr would have advanced on the bench — and the GOP support he amassed en route — is enough to sour any relief generated by his narrow failure.

That black North Carolinians have endured such a history only to have Republicans subject them to a man like Farr is remarkable, and even more so considering said history’s enduring relevance. Anti-black voter suppression may have narrowed its scope and obscured its intentions in light of strengthening civil rights legislation of late, but for decades, its most effective means — physical violence — was sanctioned gladly by a kleptocratic white elite.

North Carolina’s black population share has fallen dramatically since the era of the coup, from 49 percent in 1897, to 44 percent in 1900, to 26 percent in 2000, to just over 18 percent today. But the progressive resurgence and ballot access reforms that helped Barack Obama carry the state in 2008 and 2012 spurred Republicans to tighten their grip on power, using means both brazenly partisan, racist, and anti-democratic. The GOP’s redistricting efforts in 2010 paid special attention to North Carolina, gerrymandering the state so ruthlessly that, in the 2018 midterms, Democrats won just three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans’ 10 — despite the parties garnering a comparable share of the statewide vote. . . .

This history should matter when considering a nomination like Farr’s. The racist and anti-democratic urge that propels efforts like those he spearheaded in 1984 and advised in 1990, on behalf of Helms, further delegitimizes the electoral process and should be disqualifying. In reality, it is often rewarded. Georgia’s gubernatorial race saw suppression architect Brian Kemp claim victory after seeking to disqualify black voters and refusing to recuse himself from oversight, as secretary of state, in an election where he was a candidate. That Farr came up short attests to Tim Scott’s brief flirtation with morals, as his party’s only black senator. But that may not matter in 2019, when Republicans control two more senate seats and Trump can re-nominate.

GOP Amnesia? Or is It Demagoguery?

I am constantly amazed by politicians who fail to remember their past statements.  Are they (i) suffering from amnesia, (ii) simply cretins or (iii) liars and demagogues?  None of the options is very comforting given the power these individuals weld.   Here's more commentary from Right Wing Watch:

After waging an unprecedented campaign of obstructionism against President Obama’s nominees, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over a rules change that would end the filibuster on certain judicial nominees.

NBC News points out that Republicans are not blocking judicial nominees over “concerns about ideology or qualifications, but over the president’s ability to appoint ANYONE to these vacancies.” This unprecedented blockade leaves Democrats with few options, as dozens of nominees are left unable to receive a simple confirmation vote.

It’s even harder to be sympathetic to Senate Republicans when you remember that just a few years ago, many of the very same Republicans who are today filibustering President Obama’s nominees willy-nilly were vowing that they would never, ever filibuster judicial nominees. Some even declared that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional and un-American.

But that was before there was a Democrat in the White House.

After waging an unprecedented campaign of obstructionism against President Obama’s nominees, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over a rules change that would end the filibuster on certain judicial nominees.
NBC News points out that Republicans are not blocking judicial nominees over “concerns about ideology or qualifications, but over the president’s ability to appoint ANYONE to these vacancies.” This unprecedented blockade leaves Democrats with few options, as dozens of nominees are left unable to receive a simple confirmation vote.
It’s even harder to be sympathetic to Senate Republicans when you remember that just a few years ago, many of the very same Republicans who are today filibustering President Obama’s nominees willy-nilly were vowing that they would never, ever filibuster judicial nominees. Some even declared that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional and un-American.
But that was before there was a Democrat in the White House.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/twelve-republicans-who-broke-their-pledge-oppose-judicial-filibusters#sthash.Nn46rZtZ.dpuf