Court Limits Use of Race to Achieve Diversity in Schools: This WaPost story reports that the Supreme Court "threw out school desegregation plans from Seattle and Louisville, but without a majority holding that race can never be considered as school districts try to ensure racially diverse populations." Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion, saying that the desegregation plans, "which categorize students on the basis of race and use that in making school assignments, violate the constitution's promise of equal protection, even if the goal is integration of the schools." According to Roberts;
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote.
Talk about an inside-out, illogical train of thought here. In order to stop the discrimination of race in schools, the school districts cannot implement desegregation plans to reduce racial discrimination because because such desegregation plans discriminate on the basis of race. The Roberts Court pretty much shot down Brown verses the Board of Education here.
In a sense, I'm not surprised by this decision. President Bush was given the incredible opportunity of replacing a moderate conservative Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Conner, with a hard-lined conservative ideologue, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. you are going to see even more of these types of decisions. What is scary here is that this latest Supreme Court decision again shows that Court's make-up will be a central issue in the 2008 elections. If a Republican president is elected in 2008, you can expect that Republican president to be able to select at least two Supreme Court justices over two presidential terms. And that Republican president--be it John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, or even Fred Thompson--will be pressured by the hard-lined Religious Right to select hard-lined ideologues to the Court.
Bush Won't Supply Subpoenaed Documents: Another Washington Post story that I'm not really surprised about. According to the Washington Post;
The White House said today it would not comply with congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony relating to the firings of federal prosecutors last year, setting up a potential constitutional confrontation over its claim of executive privilege.
In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees, President Bush's counsel, Fred F. Fielding, said the White House refuses to turn over documents that were subpoenaed by the two committees on June 13. The deadline for handing over most of them was today.
"I write at the direction of the President to advise and inform you that the President has decided to assert executive privilege and therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents," Fielding wrote in the letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Now this response was for the subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary Committee for documents relating to the U.S. attorney scandal, and testimony of President Bush's former counsel Harriet Miers, and Sara M. Taylor, who was the former deputy assistant to President Bush and is currently the White House director of political affairs. The Bush White House is allowing current and former officials "to speak to the committee only under strict limitations. Specifically, Bush has insisted that the officials not be compelled to testify under oath, that their testimony not be recorded or transcribed and they speak to a limited number of lawmakers in private."
President Bush is forcing another political confrontation against the congressional Democrats. And just as the Bush White House has rejected the subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary Committee, it is also only a matter of time before they reject the subpoenas issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the warrantless spying program. I would say that there is a sense of defiant hubris within the Bush White House. The Bush administration was able to stare down the Democratic Congress on the Iraq troop funding bill and withdrawal timetables. And it is not just the troop funding bill here. President Bush vetoed another stem cell bill on June 20, 2007--despite a bipartisan appeal to the bill and an overwhelming American public that supported the measure. There is this sense of hubris within the Bush White House, where President Bush is going to do whatever he damn well wants to do, and Congress and the American people can go to Hell if they don't like it.
This is a dangerous situation here. Not only is this Bush White House being besieged with problems and scandals of their own creation, but it also shows just how out-of-touch with reality, and volatile this administration has become. This administration has been caught trying to politicize the U.S. Attorney's office, and then lying about the firings to both Congress and the American people. Now that Congress is trying to investigate into the administration's role in the scandal, the Bush White House has embarked on their own confrontational stance of rejecting the congressional subpoenas, stonewalling the investigation, and still lying about the White House roll in the attorney firings. I will say that this latest White House rejection of the subpoenas is an attempt to run out the clock on President Bush's term before Congress can fully realize the extent of this administration's wrongdoings. And here I wonder if President Bush does have an advantage in this attorney scandal. There is no doubt that the Bush administration will use the courts in avoiding to comply with handing over the documents and having Bush officials testify before Congress. This constitutional challenge will end up in the Supreme Court. The big question here is how will the Roberts Court decide on this constitutional question--specifically with Chief Justice John Roberts, and associate justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas? Will they base their decision on the rule of law, or their political ideology and possibly their allegiance to the Bush administration--especially Roberts and Scalia. I can't answer that question.
Senate Blocks Effort to Revive Immigration Overhaul: There is really not much to say on this, except that the Bush administration's desire for an immigration reform bill is completely dead. President Bush was hoping for an immigration reform bill to prop up his own failing legacy, and tout some type of second-term success. Immigration reform will not happen--at least not on George Bush's watch. From The New York Times;
WASHINGTON, June 28 —The Senate voted today to effectively block efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, meaning that the issue is most likely dead until after the 2008 elections.
Needing 60 votes to bring debate on the contentious bill to an end — a step called cloture — and move it toward passage, proponents of the bill could only muster 46 votes in favor today, with 53 opposed.
In the debate leading up to the vote, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said, “If we do not invoke cloture, the bill is dead.”
Today’s vote reverses the Senate’s action on Tuesday, when, with a lot of encouragement from President Bush, the Senate voted, 64-35, to keep working on the bill, which would establish a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country.
MSNBC News has President Bush's response to the Senate vote;
Responding to a stinging political setback, President Bush sounded resigned to defeat.
"Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people, and Congress' failure to act on it is a disappointment," Bush said after an appearance in Newport, R.I. "The American people understand the status quo is unacceptable when it comes to our immigration laws. A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find common ground. It didn't work."
Here is President Bush's remarks on the immigration bill on YouTube;
Day of Campaigning for a G.O.P. Noncandidate: This is a small New York Times story reporting how former Senator Fred Thompson is campaigning in South Carolina as a non-candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. On June 26, 2007, Thompson was in Nashville, Tennessee, campaigning as a non-candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. Fred Thompson is playing the "White Knight" for a GOP electorate that is disgusted with the current crop of Republican candidates. Thompson will hold off announcing his candidacy for as long as possible, as he continues to campaign as a non-candidate, and raise money for his campaign. I'm still guessing that Thompson will announce his candidacy sometime during the Fourth of July week. It is a perfect week to play up the GOP "White Knight" theme to save the Republicans from the disaster of the Bush administration. But even if Thompson doesn't announce his candidacy during the Fourth of July week, it is only a matter of time. Fred Thompson is in the presidential race.
Grand Obstructionist Party: The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting post showing how the Republican Party has obstructed congressional legislation while at the same time labeled the Democrats as "obstructionists." According to Carpetbagger;
I knew it was bad; I didn’t know it was this bad.
* Senate Republicans have obstructed almost every bill in the Senate — even ones with wide bipartisan support.
* So far, in the first half of the first session of the 110th Congress, there have been THIRTEEN cloture votes on motions to proceed — each one wasting days of Senate time. (110th Congress, Roll Call Votes #44, 51, 53, 74, 129, 132, 133, 162, 173, 207, 208, 227, and 228)
* In comparison, in the first sessions of the 108th and 109th Congresses combined, there were a total of FOUR cloture votes on motions to proceed.
For literally years, Republicans, with a 55-seat majority, cried like young children if Dems even considered a procedural hurdle. They said voters would punish obstructionists. They said it was borderline unconstitutional. They said to stand in the way of majority rule was to undermine a basic principle of our democratic system.
And wouldn’t you know it; the shameless hypocrites didn’t mean a word of it.
Why hasn’t the Democratic Congress had greater success passing legislation in its first six months? Because 239 separate pieces of legislation have passed the House, only to find Senate Republicans “objecting to just about every major piece of legislation” that Harry Reid has tried to bring to the floor.
It’s not only shameless, it’s cynical. Republicans expect to get away with this nonsense because they assume most Americans don’t even know what a filibuster is. They figure, the more they obstruct, the worse Congress looks — and with a Democratic majority, that means the GOP will blame Dems for the Republicans’ delay tactics.
Indeed, it’s quite a vicious cycle. Dems bring up a bill … Republicans block the bill … Dems tell voters to be patient … Republicans blame Dems for failing to deliver on their policy agenda. And if Americans aren’t paying attention, they fall for the con.
[....]
The GOP is awful at governing, but they’re great at whining.
The GOP is awful at governing, but they're great at whining. Can't say it any better than that.
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