ConfirmThem

Posted at 3:55pm on Jun. 8, 2009 Open Thread

By AndrewHyman

Comment away. :-)

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Posted at 12:35pm on May 11, 2009 Big Second Amendment Case Coming Up

By AndrewHyman

See www.ArmsKeepers.org. I hope you all are enjoying Spring and Summer! Cheers.

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Posted at 12:50pm on Mar. 10, 2009 Unions at the high court

By Quin

As if we don't already know how many areas of life the Supreme Court can mess up, here's my latest on last month's Ysursa decision -- a win for the right side, but one where Souter and Breyer opened the door for another crack at it.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/QuinHillyer/Unions-lose-a-batt...

It's also worth noting that two other big union-related cases are right now subject to petitions for cert grants: Adcock v Freightliner and Mackay v. Aircraft Mechanics. I don't have the links, but look'em up....

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Posted at 3:47pm on Mar. 4, 2009 Ted Cruz for Texas AG

By Feddie

Let me be blunt. If Texans do not elect Ted Cruz as the state's next attorney general, they do not deserve to live in that fine state.

Ted Cruz is a jurisprudential rock star. His credentials are beyond impressive, and Texans are fortunate to have someone of his caliber offer himself up for public service (yet again). To put it plainly, Ted Cruz is one of the most talented lawyers in the United States, and I encourage all of SA's many Texas readers to strongly support his bid to become the next attorney general of your state.

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Posted at 11:21am on Feb. 24, 2009 Open Thread

By Quin

Have at it, people.

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Posted at 3:02pm on Feb. 5, 2009 Best Wishes to Justice Ginsburg

By Quin

Sad news: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D965IOJ00&show_article=1.
Pancreatic cancer is usually a very bad thing. Our prayers are with the Justice.

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Posted at 10:44am on Jan. 30, 2009 Specter to Obama: Renominate!

By Quin

As reported by our friend Curt Levey, Arlen Specter is now pushing (http://www.committeeforjustice.com/blog/2009/01/specter-to-obama-renomin...) President Obama to renominate up to three Bush judicial nominees: Paul Diamond, Glen Conrad or Peter Keisler.

As a frequent advocate (http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/QuinHillyer/Quin-essential_cas...) of such renominations, especially for Keisler (http://www.examiner.com/a-1278077~Quin_Hillyer__Judge_knot_still_holds.h...) , I wholeheartedly applaud Specter.

That said, why do I suspect a deal is in the works? Why do I suspect that Conrad and Keisler are window dressing for Specter's letter?

Note that Diamond is a Pennsylvania pick, under Specter's purview -- and a very late pick at that: http://www.confirmthem.com/pratter_out_diamond_in.

Diamond and Specter go back together for 30 years. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_S._Diamond) . And elevating Diamond also clears the way for a district judgeship for another longtime Specter insider, Carolyn Short (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202423251503) -- who, it must be noted, has very significant Democratic ties herself. But there is no evidence that either Diamond or Short is particularly conservative. They certainly aren't conservative to the same degree that Roger Gregory (the Clinton nominee renominated by Bush) is liberal. But by appointing Diamond and Short both, Obama could claim to have met Bush's record of bipartisan olive branches on the judiciary -- withOUT really angering the left to the same extent that, say, a renomination of North Carolina's Robert Conrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Conrad) would.(MORE)

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Posted at 3:33pm on Jan. 12, 2009 Renominate, renominate, renominate!

By Quin

Is this a groundswell: http://spectator.org/blog/2009/01/12/nominate-a-bush-judge

PS I thought I had just posted this, but it didn't seem to actually make it on site, so I re-posted. If it turns up twice, forgive me....

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Posted at 10:43am on Jan. 5, 2009 Judge Griffin Bell, RIP

By Feddie

Griffin Bell was a truly great man, and he will be dearly missed by his family and friends.

I was fortunate enough to meet and interview Judge Bell while working on an essay about his tenure on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which you can read here. I cannot even begin to describe what a generous and warm person he was during our brief time together. Indeed, one of the greatest compliments I've ever received about my writing was from Judge Bell, who loved the essay I had written about him.

The United States has lost a great patriot, and the South has lost one of her modern-day heroes.

Please take a moment today to say a prayer for Judge Bell's family and friends.

God Bless you Judge Bell. Requiescat in pace.

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Posted at 2:43pm on Dec. 19, 2008 Welcome Back Open Thread

By aurel

We were off-line for a while. So this is the Welcome Back Open Thread. All yours. . .

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Posted at 9:25am on Dec. 5, 2008 Weekend Open Thread

By aurel

All yours...

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Posted at 4:43pm on Nov. 21, 2008 Open Thread

By aurel

Fire away.

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Posted at 11:10am on Nov. 17, 2008 Site Will Continue! Yea!

By Quin

I have been reliably informed by Erick Erickson, major domo of ConfirmThem's excellent parent site, RedState, that this site will indeed continue as a live site. yea! Hats off to Erick. And hats off to all you readers who keep the conversation lively and erudite. You are the real stars of this show.

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Posted at 11:44am on Nov. 12, 2008 Keep This Site Going!

By Quin

To Andrew, and to the proprietors at Red State: I vote to keep this site going. Even its name should stay the same, as a sort of ironic inside joke reminding everybody that we had to work this hard just to get qualified judges to receive semi-fair consideration. (If the name is just TOO weird, then just put a question amrk after it, as in "Confirm Them??") But from now on, this site could still be used to discuss information about Obama nominees, and to warn if any of them are particularly egregious, etc.

To all the readers out there, I invite you to comment below with many rounds of hearty approval for my suggestion!

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Posted at 12:36am on Nov. 5, 2008 A Confirmthem Blogger Goes on Sabbatical

By AndrewHyman

Here's a link to Senator McCain's very gracious and moving concession speech. He said: "I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here." The present difficulties are grave, and they have virtually nothing to do with economics, in my opinion. But that issue is what decided the election, so there you have it.

It's been an honor volunteering at this web site. As Senator McCain pointed out, nothing is inevitable in this country, so please don't give up hope that truth and justice will ultimately prevail if we keep at it. The election of an African-American president is testament enough that wrongs can be righted, even wrongs endorsed by that new president.

Congratulations to President George W. Bush on some fine judicial appointments, and to Senator John McCain for running a valiant campaign. And congratulations to the other bloggers and commenters at this site who have tried to give them some support.

I'll take leave of blogging at this site for the foreseeable future. We'll get back together when a president nominates judges who have a solid record of supporting the rule of law instead of the rule of men, and who understand the grave damage done when judges exercise power without authority. In the following obnoxious video, replace "President" with "Supreme Court" to see how judges often operate nowadays:

Even if Supreme Court decisions were ipso facto legal (which they are not), that would never begin to justify decisions like Roe v. Wade or Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Those decisions --- even though well-intentioned --- grossly mischaracterized the killing of post-embryonic human lives as a fundamental "right." No decision could possibly be more wrong.

Empowerment or equality of a citizen never requires that the citizen be given a license to commit homicide against a non-threatening victim. The other two branches of the federal government may soon (for the first time) fall in line and endorse that judicial mistake, but the mistake will one day be corrected. Although I am not a Christian, I will quote some pertinent words of Jesus Christ: "forgive them, for they know not what they do."

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Posted at 3:18pm on Nov. 1, 2008 Confirmthem May Soon Get Another Lease on Life --- Or Not

By AndrewHyman

Well, depending upon what happens on Tuesday, it appears that confirmthem may be going into some very deep hibernation pretty soon. There’s an outside chance that that will not happen, but I wouldn’t be placing any heavy bets at this point. MAKE SURE YOU VOTE ON TUESDAY!

I have been very disappointed in Obama’s campaign, and am even more disappointed about what an Obama administration would likely do to this country and the judiciary. It would be wonderful to have someone of his ethnicity as president, but that is no reason to vote for him. And having a female Veep would be wonderful too! I feel like Obama and his allies have treated the voters like mushrooms: keeping us in the dark and feeding us manure. In contrast, John McCain has run a mostly valiant campaign, and perhaps it might yet prevail.

One of Obama’s biggest allies --- the Los Angeles Times --- will not even release a transcript of Obama remarks that it has on videotape. If you don’t think you’re being treated like a mushroom, just listen to prominent Democrat Pat Caddell who said the following on Friday:

Let's assume for a moment that they claim that they had an agreement in their source not to release the tape. Why not the transcript? …. I'm just saying why not release the transcript…. Well, the point is why don't you just release the transcript? That's — that would be the end of this…. If somebody gives you a tape and it allows to you write a story on it you have the right to run the transcript. That's all I'm saying, the — the issue here is journalism and it's the right of the people to know.

And the following video illustrates another outrageous reason why the Obama campaign may win the election and put this website out of business, by its secret and illegal fundraising shenanigans.

And Michael Patrick Leahy explains yet another way that Obama has been treating us all like mushrooms (Obama ought to release his original long-form birth certificate just like McCain has done). Grrr. [Obama was a trans-oceanic traveller during the month he was born, and Hawaii newspaper notices of his birth were automatically printed whenever a parent requested a birth certificate, but here is very compelling proof that he was born in Hawaii. ---AH, 3/1/2009.]

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Posted at 10:25pm on Oct. 29, 2008 Scary Obama Picks

By Curt Levey

An article in November’s ABA Journal, “The Lawyers Who May Run America,” names Harvard Law Professor and Anita Hill counsel Charles Ogletree as the most likely Obama pick to head DOJ’s civil rights division. Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains why that prospect should concern us.

Almost as disturbing is the Journal’s speculation about Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as Obama’s Attorney General and Professor Cass Sunstein as White House Domestic Policy Adviser. The article also names the very scary Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a top Obama Supreme Court prospect.

For the Journal’s speculation about McCain picks, see here.

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Posted at 8:17am on Oct. 29, 2008 Courting the right message

By Quin

Today at NRO, Ed Whelan has the best summation I've seen yet (better than any I've done) on what's at stake in the courts if Obama wins. Great stuff: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzAyNTQ3NGM3ODFlOGFkY2QwNmQ4ZGI1MzN...

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Posted at 12:23am on Oct. 28, 2008 Obama Would Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution?

By AndrewHyman

There's been quite a lot of discussion recently about Senator Obama's 2001 radio interview endorsing wealth redistribution, and implying that the Warren Court could have gone a lot farther than it did. Anyway, here are the full, unedited radio interviews from 2001. He's obviously a very smart fellow, but I think it would be best to keep him in the Senate.

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Posted at 12:05am on Oct. 25, 2008 A Couple Items From the New Republic

By AndrewHyman

Jeffrey Rosen gets at least one thing right in his article in the latest issue of The New Republic:

This year, for the first time since the New Deal era, a single election really does have the power to transform the Court--at the very moment that voters, rightly concerned about the tanking economy and the war in Iraq, are looking the other way.

And, the New Republic also has some positive polling news for McCain-Palin:

Strategic Vision has McCain narrowly ahead in both Florida and Ohio, and gaining ground in Pennslyvania. Strategic Vision is a Republican polling firm, and indeed has had a 2-3 point Republican lean this cycle, but nevertheless, these represent significant improvements for McCain in all three states from Strategic Vision's last set of polling. Rasmussen, meanwhile, has him narrowly ahead in North Carolina -- actually the first North Carolina poll that he's led in some time -- and closing his difference with Obama in New Hampshire, where his taxation message may be selling well.

So, it's still very much an open question who will win the election, though Obama definitely seems to have an edge now.

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Posted at 8:10pm on Oct. 24, 2008 I'd Like to Spread a Silly Rumor

By AndrewHyman

There's a silly rumor going around that Sen. Obama was born at Coast Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya and that his paternal grandmother has confirmed it.

Senator Obama long ago released what is known as a short-form birth certificate from Hawaii. However, he has not released his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii. Why not release it? John McCain's is already publicly available. I'm 99% sure that Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, but it's strange that he's refusing to prove it.

National Review's Andy McCarthy has weighed in about this, and so has Greta Van Sustern of Fox News. The short form released by Obama is here. An example of a long form birth certificate from Hawaii is here.

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Posted at 3:20pm on Oct. 23, 2008 DoJ, Home of Lefties

By Quin

On Tuesday I wrote this column: http://www.dcexaminer.com/opinion/columns/QuinHillyer/Quin-essential_cas..., on how and why the Ohio Sec. of State is getting away with condoning vote fraud. Turns out that I actually UNDERreported the DoJ bias in favor of Obama, http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/10/justice-defense-department-emp.h..., which helps explain why so little has been done about vote fraud, especially in Ohio.

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Posted at 2:36pm on Oct. 19, 2008 Powell Wants Obama Appointing Judges (As Does Gaddafi)

By AndrewHyman

General Colin Powell is a former Secretary of State for whom I have great respect. But today he erred by endorsing Senator Obama for President. One of General Powell's stated reasons is that he "would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court." I would too. But the written opinions of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito have not been politically "conservative" at all. Rather they have been honest applications of the law as written, without adopting any political ideology, including their own. That is in stark contrast to the kinds of judges who would be appointed by Obama.

I came across another Obama endorsement today, from the leader of Libya:

"There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency."

I don't know or care if Obama was ever a Muslim. What worries me much more is Gaddafi's discussion of foreign "contribution campaigns" from the Middle East and Africa. Those "contribution campaigns" that Gaddafi spoke of would have been averted if Obama had not become the first major-party presidential nominee since Watergate to turn down public financing. John McCain spoke about this today, saying that the gigantic amounts of money raised by the Obama campaign jeopardize post-Watergate reforms. Last month alone, Obama raised $150 million. So far, the identities of donors who gave more than $200 million to Obama haven't been divulged because they're below $200 apiece.

Today, McCain said on "Fox News Sunday" that this breaking of the dam may be very dangerous, and he's right. Obama declined public financing, whereas McCain accepted it, and that's one of many solid reasons to vote for McCain, notwithstanding what General Powell recommends.

It seems that for Senator Obama, the ends justify the means. And the same would be true of his judicial nominees.

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Posted at 6:34pm on Oct. 18, 2008 Open Thread

By AndrewHyman

And here's a Q&A with John McCain from Human Events.