Conservatives Duped by Dobson Over Two Judge Nominees

Amid the chaos and cacophony of threatened filibusters and church-located political rallies organized by ultra-conservative lobbyist/operative James Dobson, why is no one talking about the substance of the hubbub?

The problems with the unconfirmed 5% of Bush judicial nominees is their unfitness for office....unfitness entirely unrelated to faith, abortion, gay marriage and the like. Entirely!

I truly trust that if my super-conservative friends took the time to stop and carefully consider the facts about the two judges in question, they would wholeheartedly agree that these two are unsuited for lifetime judicial appointment.

My conservative friends are being crassly manipulated by emotionalism and broad-brush stereotypes. No person should be unquestioningly worshiped, and that includes Dr. Dobson. He is not an idol...merely another imperfect person, like us, with feet of clay.
--------------------------
From the Center for American Progress....

In all the hoopla and procedural wrangling over the filibuster, the mainstream media and the political elite continue to ignore the real reason for the showdown over seven of President Bush's nominees: they are some of the most extreme jurists in the land with highly questionable records of judicial activism.

Justice Priscilla Owen is a judicial pawn of corporate titans like Enron and Halliburton. Owen has consistently ruled in favor of big corporate interests over individuals and groups. More troubling, she frequently took campaign money from the likes of Enron and Halliburton and then ruled in favor of these very same corporations. In the months prior to a Texas Supreme Court case involving Halliburton, the company donated thousands of dollars to Owen and two other justices. Following these donations, the court declined to review Halliburton's case, saving the company millions of dollars in a workplace dispute. Owen personally authored a ruling that saved Enron-another campaign contributor- hundreds of thousands of dollars and stiffed a local school district.

Justice Janice Rogers Brown wants to repeal the entire New Deal and return the nation to the days when discrimination and unsafe working conditions were left unchecked. Justice Brown is a leading voice of an extreme right-wing legal movement to return constitutional law to its status in 1937, when the federal government had little or no power to enforce child labor laws or other workplace regulations. Brown has called Social Security the "triumph of our socialist revolution." She has consistently ruled against minorities and the elderly, downplaying racial issues and saying age discrimination legislation is harmful to the business community and an "unavoidable consequence of that universal leveler: time."

More than 200 of President Bush's judicial nominees have been confirmed with bipartisan support. Many of these judges were conservative, but not reactionary or hostile to the rule of law and basic legal doctrine. In contrast, Owen and Brown have consistently shown that they are unfit for lifetime appointments and unable to rule in a fair and impartial manner.

The Senate has the right and a duty to oppose these nominees.