We have one more chance to get it right.

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from consideration for the Supreme Court, President Bush has another chance to appoint a qualified nominee that will interpret the constitution and has a track record that we can reasonably rely on.

But President Bush is not the only one who has received a second chance. Conservatives in the blogosphere have received a second chance also. My own opinion is that we blew it with regard to the Miers nomination when we failed to be vocal enough prior to the announcement of the nomination. Once the nomination is made, it is too late. If President Bush nominates another stealth candidate, I suspect we won't get another chance. The next nominee will not be withdrawn. Even the Miers battle cost the conservative movement something in terms of time and credibility and political "capital."

We should make it clear NOW that if President Bush puts forth a qualified, conservative nominee, we will back him 110%. The same blogswarm/blogstorm that derailed the Miers' nomination can and will carry the day for Judge Brown or Owens or any of the other qualified candidates.

One result of the Miers battle is that the administration has seen what a good blogswarm can do. [The administration should have understood this after Rathergate, but better late than never.] If we start swarming now for a qualified conservative, the administration won't make the same mistake again. A good blogswarm now will also convince the administration that the President has the troops to carry the day in the Senate.

The bloggers don't even have to agree on who is the best nominee. Numerous conservatives have their favorite candidates. We need only make it clear that all of us will fight and swarm for any of the qualified conservatives. I predict that the moderates/stealth proponents will try to appease us by saying that "we can't have a nominee that please everyone."

We don't want to please everyone. We want a nominee that will follow the law, refrain from judicial activism, strictly construe the constitution, refrain from inventing penumbras, etc. And we want the nominee to have a track record that backs up his or her promises.

I have quoted Janice Rogers Brown numerous times on these pages. We know her track record from quotes like this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

While I favor Judge Brown, I and all of the other conservatives would support wholeheartedly a large number of potential nominees.

To the administration, I say "Let's not waste the resources of the new media this time. Let it work for you instead of against you."

To the blogosphere, I say, "Everything you are saying today, keep saying over and over until the administration gets it right. Don't wait for the nomination to be announced. Don't forget about this issue merely because we might get distracted by other issues."

Jonah Goldberg has the right idea. No Gonzales, a thousand times no Gonzales.

Michelle Malkin posts a good roundup.

Blonde Sagacity and LaShawn Barber sound a similar note.

If we all talk about this as much over the next few weeks as we have over the last few weeks, we won't see this mistake again.

P.S. Click here to read why it would be better for a true conservative like Bork to lose than for a moderate like Anthony Kennedy to be confirmed.

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

The United States Supreme Court, however, began in the 1940s to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the 14th Amendment…The historical evidence supporting what the Supreme Court did here is pretty sketchy…The argument on the other side is pretty overwhelming that it’s probably not incorporated.

[“Beyond the Abyss: Restoring Religion on the Public Square,” Speech to Pepperdine Bible Lectureship in 1999]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

A challenge from Harry Reid

Democratic Senators have warned President Bush that a nomination of Judge Janice Rogers Brown (or two others) to be the next Supreme Court Justice would represent an unnecessary provocation and would be met by substantial opposition in the Senate.

I think President Bush should accept this challenge and not shrink from this winnable fight. Nominate Judge Brown.

We can win a confirmation battle this time. The situation is not the same as it was in 1987 when the Democrats defeated Bork. We have a majority in the Senate. The full Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm Brown to the appellate court only a few months ago. The kind of fight Reid promises would represent a betrayal of the "deal" that John McCain and the other moderates created at that time.

Let them explain why Judge Brown suddenly constitutes an "extraordinary circumstance."

Let them explain why they changed their vote this time after voting for Brown earlier this year.

A partisan fight (or a filibuster) over Judge Brown would also expose McCain for the useless jellyfish that he is.

As part of this campaign, we should publicly demand assurances from Chuck Schumer that his staff will not retrieve credit reports on Judge Brown illegally.

This time also we have the full resources of the blogosphere at our disposal. The mobilization of the blogosphere, talk radio and the new media for Justice Roberts was tremendous and should serve as a dry run for a real battle. We had none of those resources in 1987.

A retreat now would have the effect of allowing Harry Reid to run the country for the next 3 years.

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update - Michelle Malkin and Powerline post updates on the Roberts vote and the implications for future nominees.

Quote of the day - Janice Rogers Brown

We no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.


- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

The public school system is already so beleaguered by bureaucracy; so cowed by the demands of due process; so overwhelmed with faddish curricula that its educational purpose is almost an afterthought.

- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

We continue to chip away at the foundations of our success. We dismissed natural law and morality because its unverifiable judgments were deemed inferior to reason. But, then, we drove reason itself from the camp because the most significant of life’s questions defy empiricism. …Only natural law offers an alternative to might makes right and accounts for man’s “unrelenting quest to rise above the ‘letter of the law’ to the realm of the spirit.”

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[IFJ speech at 15, 17]

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

In his famous, all too famous, dissent in Lochner [Lochner v. New York], Justice Holmes wrote that the “constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire.” Yes, one of the greatest (certainly one of the most quotable) jurists this nation has ever produced; but in this case, he was simply wrong.

[Federalist speech at 8]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Curiously, in the current dialectic, the right to keep and bear arms – a right expressly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights – is deemed less fundamental than implicit protections the court purports to find in the penumbras of other express provisions. (citations omitted) But surely, the right to preserve one’s life is at least as fundamental as the right to preserve one’s privacy.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[Concurring opinion in Kasler, 2 P.3d at 602]

Quote of the day - Janice Rogers Brown

A democracy is inevitably transformed into a Kleptocracy.

Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Janice Rogers Brown

In truth, liberalism’s vaunted tolerance and openness is a lie. In America, at least, liberalism is tolerant only of those concerns to which it is indifferent. To those trivialized forms of religious observance which amount to no more than a consumer preference, the culture maintains a posture of tolerance.

Janice Rogers Brown

Speech to St. Thomas More Society (Oct. 15, 1998)

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[Beginning in 1937, t]he court drew a line between personal rights and property rights or economic interests, and applied two different constitutional tests…[I]f the right was personal and “fundamental,” review was intolerably strict. [Federalist speech at 12]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[T]he courts overcame these alleged limitations on their powers with ridiculous ease. How? By constitutionalizing everything possible, finding constitutional rights which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. By taking a few words which are in the Constitution like “due process” and “equal protection” and imbuing them with elaborate and highly implausible etymologies; and by enunciating standards of constitutional review which are not standards at all but rather policy vetoes, i.e., strict scrutiny and the compelling state interest standard.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[Libertarian speech at 7-8]

Quote of the day - Janice Rogers Brown

The dichotomy between the United States Supreme Court’s laissez-faire treatment of social and economic rights and its hypervigilance with respect to an expanding array of judicially proclaimed fundamental rights is highly suspect, incoherent, and constitutionally invalid. [Concurring opinion in Kasler v. Lockyer, 2 P.3d 581, 601 (Cal. 2000), cert. denied, 69 U.S.L.W. 3549 (2001)]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Politicians in their eagerness to please and to provide something of value to their constituencies that does not have a price tag are handing out new rights like lollipops in the dentist’s office.

[Speech to Sacramento County bar Ass’n (May 1, 1996) at 6-7]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.

- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quotes of the day - Mark Steyn and Janice Rogers Brown

Congressman Billy Tauzin once said of his state: "One half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment." Last week, four fifths of New Orleans was under water and the other four fifths should be under indictment - which is the kind of arithmetic the state's deeply entrenched kleptocrat political culture will have no trouble making add up.

Mark Steyn

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority’s zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."

Justice Janice Rogers Brown



Because I am generally content with the current nominee, I will once again begin to use quotes from individuals other than Justice Brown. There is hopefully no need to show the contrast between Brown and the current nominee, as I would have done had the nominee been Clement. I still have a reservoir of quotes from Justice Brown that I will use in the future.

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Democracy and capitalism seem to have triumphed. But, appearances can be deceiving. Instead of celebrating capitalism’s virtues, we offer it grudging acceptance, contemptuous tolerance, but only for its capacity to feed the insatiable maw of socialism. We do not conclude that socialism suffers from a fundamental flaw. We conclude instead that its ends are worthy of any sacrifice – including our freedom . . . 1937. . .marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution. [Federalist speech at 6-7, 10]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Thus, lawyers have secured the right of topless dancers to perform, but have banished prayer from public life. They have won the right for indigents to take over public spaces, even our children’s libraries, and for the mentally ill to live on streets and shout obscenities at passersby. Legal advocates have guaranteed the right of students to be ignorant by opposing competency tests, and ignored their brazen possession and use of weapons in school. [“Politics: A Vision for Change,” Docket (Dec. 1993) at 15]

Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Quote of the day - Justice Janice Rogers Brown

[P]rivate property, already an endangered species in California, is now entirely extinct in San Francisco…I would find the HCO [San Francisco Residential Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance] preempted by the Ellis Act and facially unconstitutional. …Theft is theft even when the government approves of the thievery. Turning a democracy into a kleptocracy does not enhance the stature of the thieves; it only diminishes the legitimacy of the government. …The right to express one’s individuality and essential human dignity through the free use of property is just as important as the right to do so through speech, the press, or the free exercise of religion. [Dissenting opinion in San Remo Hotel L.P. v. City and County of San Francisco, 41 P.3d 87, 120, 128-9 (Cal. 2002)

Justice Janice Rogers Brown