By Nicholas Stix
My partner-in-crime, David in TN, who sent me this disguised political advertisement, wrote yesterday,
We have early voting in Tennessee. Yesterday I voted against each of these judges.
The North Dallas Gazette, where this appeared, is a racist black newspaper serving Dallas’ black middle and upper-middle class.
Note that while Charles Grant keeps complaining about the Judges’ Republican opponents not giving the judges’ side of the story, Grant doesn’t, wither. All he does is smear the opponents, while not spending any time showing examples of their probity, say, by giving examples where they ruled against Democrat hobby horses.
The people of Tennessee have the right to vote on whether to retain these three judges in question, but Grant refuses to admit that. Instead, he acts as if the people were obligated to rubber stamp the recommendation of a commission of lawyers. Then why have an election at all?
He keeps howling about “special interests,” but the “special interests” he’s talking about are white folks. He acts as though black supremacism were both constitutional, and the will of the people.
I looked up the justices in question at Judgepedia, which identifies all of them as liberal, Cornelia Clark as quite so, and one, Sharon Lee, as extremely so.
Gary R. Wade
In October 2012, political science professors Adam Bonica and Michael Woodruff of Stanford University attempted to determine the partisan ideology of state supreme court justices in their paper, State Supreme Court Ideology and 'New Style' Judicial Campaigns. A score above 0 indicated a more conservative leaning ideology while scores below 0 are more liberal. Wade received a Campaign finance score (CFscore) of -0.14, indicating a liberal ideological leaning. This is more liberal than the average CF score of -0.02 that justices received in Tennessee. The study is based on data from campaign contributions by judges themselves, the partisan leaning of contributors to the judges or, in the absence of elections, the ideology of the appointing body (governor or legislature). This study is not a definitive label of a justice, but an academic gauge of various factors.[11]
Cornelia Clark
Political ideology
In October 2012, political science professors Adam Bonica and Michael Woodruff of Stanford University attempted to determine the partisan ideology of state supreme court justices in their paper, State Supreme Court Ideology and 'New Style' Judicial Campaigns. A score above 0 indicated a more conservative leaning ideology while scores below 0 are more liberal. Clark received a Campaign finance score (CFscore) of -0.4, indicating a liberal ideological leaning. This is more liberal than the average CF score of -0.02 that justices received in Tennessee. The study is based on data from campaign contributions by judges themselves, the partisan leaning of contributors to the judges or, in the absence of elections, the ideology of the appointing body (governor or legislature). This study is not a definitive label of a justice, but an academic gauge of various factors.
Sharon Lee
Political ideology
See also: Political ideology of State Supreme Court Justices
In October 2012, political science professors Adam Bonica and Michael Woodruff of Stanford University attempted to determine the partisan ideology of state supreme court justices in their paper, State Supreme Court Ideology and 'New Style' Judicial Campaigns. A score above 0 indicated a more conservative leaning ideology while scores below 0 are more liberal. Lee received a Campaign finance score (CFscore) of -0.81, indicating a liberal ideological leaning. This is more liberal than the average CF score of -0.02 that justices received in Tennessee. The study is based on data from campaign contributions by judges themselves, the partisan leaning of contributors to the judges or, in the absence of elections, the ideology of the appointing body (governor or legislature). This study is not a definitive label of a justice, but an academic gauge of various factors.[8]
Consider also the following, closing passage from the Judgepedia article on Justice Gary R. Wade, which contradicts Charles Grant’s assertions as to the ethical purity of the justices he supports.
Other senate Republicans have also expressed concern that the judicial conduct board is not thoroughly investigating complaints against judges. Tennessee's house majority leader, Gerald McCormick, also supported the senate hearing. McCormick has been critical of the recent efforts by the three justices to coordinate their campaigns to remain on the bench. "They need to be replaced," he told the TN Report.[12] McCormick accused the justices of acting like "partisan Democrats" and criticized what he called their "aggressive" efforts to raise funds "so they can keep their jobs."[12]
Power grab in Tenn. judge elections could have national implications
By NDG Staff [sic]
July 22, 2014
North Dallas Gazette
No Comments
By Hazel Trice Edney
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – An attempt to unseat three judges in an upcoming Nashville, Tenn. election is nothing less than a “raw power grab” by right wing special interests using big money to buy control of the courts, says the head of a non-partisan organization of lawyers this week.
“It is a raw power grab is what it is. Their campaign against these justices are [sic] based on a series of lies, half-truths, misstatements and material omissions,” says Charles Grant, president of the bi-partisan [Ha!] Nashville Bar Association (NBA), which has endorsed the retention of the judges. “It has huge implications nationally because if they can do it here, they can do it anywhere.”
The situation involves three Tennessee Supreme Court Justices Cornelia A. Clark, Sharon Gail Lee and Gary R. Wade, all up for retention on the court by the vote on Aug. 7. They were originally appointed by Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Opposing the judges are namely Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey and other Republicans backed by wealthy political operatives, some from outside the state, including the billionaire Koch brothers [Boo! Hiss!] of Wichita, Kans., according to widespread media reports. Among Ramsey’s tools is a 30-page Power Point that attempts to scare voters by claiming – in part – that the three judges are soft on the death penalty and “anti-business”.
Grant says the claims in the Power Point are blatantly false and undermines the integrity of the process.
“It is chock full of misstatements, it’s misleading, it has substantial omissions, sometimes it attributes to these judges opinions that were written by the Court of Appeals for example. And when confronted with all of this misleading information that he is putting out to the public about the quality of these justices’ work, he will come right out and say, ‘It’s not my job to tell their side of the story,’” says Grant, the NBA’s first Black [sic] president. “What is it that they hope to accomplish? They hope to control the court. [As opposed to his side controlling it.] That’s what they hope to accomplish. They don’t want independence. They want control.”
[Charles Grant is as phony as a three-dollar bill. He doesn’t for one minute believe in judicial independence. He wants to maintain control, but he’s sneaky about it, while the liberal judges’ opponents are being open.]
In Tennessee media reports, Ramsey has defended his conduct by saying, “I’m telling my side of the story and they’ll get to tell their side of the story. Every campaign tells half of the story…They tell their side of the story and the people decide.”
Adding to the difficulty of clarifying their records is the fact that judges can’t speak out to defend themselves in the same manner as someone running for a political office. Because of codes of conduct, they must appear impartial at all times and avoid public confrontations that could warrant a conflict of interest later. They can’t speak publicly on specific cases. Neither can they ask for financial contributions.
[Liberal judges have the entire MSM to troll for them.]
Voters would need to research deeply [ridic!] to unearth the real facts pertaining to the three judges, Grant says. For example, though Ramsey contends they are soft on the death penalty, they have actually affirmed 90 percent of the death penalty cases before them, Grant says. As for the “anti-business” charge, “It is not the justices’ jobs to be leaning one way or the other. That is not what we want them to do. We want them to decide the cases based on the facts and the law without favor, without prejudice to one side or the other.”
The historic principles that have allowed for major progress in America are also at stake, Grant says.
“If Supreme Court judges had been subject to special interests, we would never have had Brown verses [sic] Board of Education. We would never have had the landmark decision that dismantled segregation and state-enforced discrimination through laws like Jim Crow and racially restrictive covenants and red-lining by banks and all of those things that enforce racism and racial oppression. So we need to have some kind of check on this power to make sure the basic constitutional rights and the bill of rights are protected.”
[But the decisions and laws he’s defending all violated the U.S. Constitution, and especially, The Bill of Rights (e.g., freedom of association!), not to mention most state constitutions.]
In a nutshell, the 40-year-old “merit selection” process by which judges are chosen in Tennessee is quite common in states across the U. S. [That doesn’t make it good, or suggest that the public should blindly follow it.] Candidates are intensely vetted [yeah, right—politically vetted, to make sure no constitutionalists get through] through a bi-partisan nine-member judicial evaluation commission, which then recommends three judges to the governor for any vacancy on the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court.
[Apparently, Grant needs to look up the definition of the word, “recommend.” He has confused it with “mandate.”]
When the eight-year term is up, the judges are re-evaluated by a commission which then makes a public recommendation on whether the judge should be retained. If the commission decides against the retainer, the judge is subject to a popular election. If the commission decides for the retainer; then the judges go on the ballot for the public to review their record and to review the recommendations and to determine whether or not they should be replaced.
[The second popular option is also an election.]
After this rigorous process, Clark, Lee and Wade were all recommended for retainer by the commission of non-partisan lawyers and citizens. Yet, the judges are now under a partisan attack.
[No, they are getting a partisan defense by a racist, political hack who supports rule by lawyers.]
With the rigorous campaign to unseat and replace them, Grant fears the judges’ retention bids could realistically fail because of the potency of the smear campaign and the money that is backing it.
[What’s wrong with rigor? The only smear campaign is the one attacking the Koch Bros., Ron Ramsey, and other Republican opponents of these liberal judges.]
“It is about buying influence. They are going after these justices because these justices do not cow tow to special interests. They do their jobs. They call the balls and strikes as they see them,” Grant says. “When a special interest or group wants to target a judge, it’s kind of easy to identify, to take one of their one hundred opinions or whatever, to misstate the facts or misstate the law or completely mislead.”
Grant and the NBA are not alone in their advocacy for fairness in the process. On July 15, a bi-partisan group of district attorneys came forward to support the three judges saying they have outstanding records and deserve to be retained. Also, Republican Mickey Barker a former chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court, has been quoted as calling the anti-retention campaign “frightening” because it would turn the Tennessee Supreme Court into a “partisan branch of government.”
[News flash: The entire judiciary has long been a “partisan branch of government,” and it is the left wing of the Democratic Party, going back at least to FDR’s 1937 “revolution” on the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt threatened to pack the court, by adding up to six leftwing justices, in order to stifle all judicial independence that might resist his New Deal power grabs, that made it that way. In response, the USSC meekly submitted to FDR. Ultimately FDR replaced five justices, including one conservative, who resigned in disgust, which led to the Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which Grant praises to the skies, arguably the most corruptly partisan ruling in Supreme Court history.]
Trial lawyer Lew Conner, also a Republican, recently held a fund-raiser of his own to assist the judges in their retention bid. “This is about a system being wrongfully attacked, and Ramsey is the attacker,” Conner was quoted in the Tennessee Watchdog.
Grant says the bi-partisan outrage is simply due to the knowledge that a politicized judiciary could lead to a rogue court which could make decisions based on political whims and allegiances instead of the facts of the cases before them.
[Doesn’t it just warm your heart, to hear racist black political hacks sing hosannas to judicial independence? Charles Grant must have been leading the fight against “Barack Obama’s subversion of judicial independence… except that he hasn’t.]
He concludes, “Lawyers don’t want judges beholding [sic] to special interests. None of us do. Lawyers don’t want to walk into court thinking that the scales of justice are already tilted toward one party before we’ve had an opportunity to present our case,” Grant concludes. [What a liar.] “The only way to win is to educate the population. If you want an independent judiciary; you have to understand when it’s under attack by partisan special interests.”
In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren saw that Nixon might win the presidency that fall and resigned so that LBJ could appoint a liberal to succeed him. LBJ then picked his crony Associate Justice Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Republican and Southern Democrat senators filibustered and Fortas had to withdraw in October 1968. This forced Warren to stay until Nixon was able to appoint Warren Burger as Chief Justice.
Fortas was forced to resign the Court in 1969 because of accepting payoffs. He also had been working with LBJ while a Justice, writing Johnson's 1966 State of the Union address for example.
David In TN
In Chicago, we too have a judicial retention ballot. I ALWAYS vote NO for all of them. ALL Chicago judges are anti-gun and as far as I am concerned, unworthy of their oath of office to DEFEND the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteWe need politicians who will run on an explicitly anti-Black agenda: Pro-Death Penalty, pro-gun, anti-public union, lower taxes and LESS free lunches for their kids. Let the Black ADULTS pay for THEIR children's meals, NOT the taxpayers.