Join the growing STOP ROBERTS movement

[Guest guest]

WE CAN STOP ROBERTS AND THIS IS HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO IT

 

The Bolton Precedent

 

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.nocrony.com

 

The first thing we need to understand is that we the people have

the unilateral POWER, right now by ourselves, to stop John

Roberts. All that is required is the WILL for us to do it. He CAN

be stopped.

 

The second thing we need to understand is that Roberts represents

game, set and match for the dismantling of EVERY progressive court

we hold so dear. He MUST be stopped.

 

Roberts' proponents say that the president warned us he would put

forward a judge in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. We all know

their extreme biases. And yet in his hearing Roberts has

repeatedly denied that he has any policy values of his own, just

he has denied that he was a member of the Federalist society

(where he had a leadership role). Therefore, he is not only a

reactionary ideologue, he is a LYING reactionary ideologue, a

walking Trojan Horse of right wing policy initiatives. And that

makes him all the worse.

 

HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO IT (a practical plan)

 

Let's get right to the HOW. There are 44 Democratic senators and

one independent. Let us assume we will get no Republican votes

against. It is pointless to appeal to their constituency, who are

in fact in the minority if the truth be known. All we have to do

mobilize our OWN constituency. If we just do that we can have a

filibuster and we WIN.

 

Mobilize means for us, ALL of us, to get serious about getting

people to talk to their members of Congress. That is how the other

side has always done it. This is what we must do:

 

1. WEB SITE ACTIONS

 

All progressive blogs must FEATURE a prominent Stop Roberts action

center. If you have a web page of any kind, the absolute bare

minimum is to have in the top fold of your main index page (if not

on every page of your site) the toll-free Capitol telephone number

(877-762-8762), plus an exhortation to call your senators

specifically to oppose Roberts, and not in teeny-tiny type, but in

large bold type that nobody could miss.

 

If you want to do more, we have a dedicated action page at

http://www.nocrony.com that you can link to. It will send a

personal message directly to both of your senators, and at the

same time you can automatically send a Letter to the Editor of

your nearest daily newspaper all with just one click. You can copy

the " Tell our senators NO " button at the top of this page to put

on your site and you'll have the toll-free phone number right here

too. If you have another action page somewhere you like post a

PROMINENT featured link to that instead, but for heaven's sake DO

something.

 

If you have a mailing list of any kind of your own opt-ins, do a

mailing emphasizing the importance of this action and provide the

toll-free number AND link to http://www.nocrony.com. Direct email

is one of the most effective tools for generating messages to

Congress.

 

2. RADIO ACTIONS

 

All progressive radio personalities must dedicate part of EVERY

show to giving out the toll-free Senate phone number

(877-762-8762) and to rally your listeners to take action on this.

Don't just assume people know it already or can find it on their

own. PROMOTE it. Talk is not enough, not even close. We must

convert advocacy into ACTION. In the same way that a single run of

an ad on your radio station will not have sufficient impact

standing alone, you must make this a recurrent theme of your show

and keep REPEATING it, at least for the next week or so.

 

At the same time you can give out the URL of the main action page,

http://www.nocrony.com, or any other easy to say and remember web

address you like, to get people to email or phone or fax their

members of Congress. In addition all the other things above that

apply to other web sites apply to you as well. Feature the Senate

toll-free phone number and action links and do it prominently on

your main page, your blogs, and ideally on ALL your pages at least

in one of your side columns.

 

And as a listener of your favorite progressive radio show, call

in. Encourage them to get on the case to give out the toll-free

number, and to give out web links and post them on their sites.

Talk about this on the air when they put you on.

 

We must communicate to our members of Congress in every way that

this is a deal breaker for us. This particular nominee is a threat

to absolutely anything else Congress might try to do in the

future, as he UN-legislates from the bench. Any democrat who votes

for this nominee or even for cloture must never hold public office

in any capacity again and they must be made to understand this by

our emails, our faxes, our phone calls, and our letters to the

editor. We stopped Bolton (at least in the Senate) and we can and

will stop this nominee as well. To any remaining doubting Thomas's

we say this to you, " Defeatism is the treason of our own minds. "

 

THE ARGUMENTS:

 

1. CONCEALMENT OF CRITICALLY RELEVANT DOCUMENTS

 

Some people thought that the compromise on the filibuster would

doom any opposition to offensive nominees, and indeed, some very

offensive ones were allowed to pass to obtain that compromise. And

yet, just three days later the Senate sustained a filibuster of

John Bolton (which continued to hold), on the grounds that the

administration was refusing to disclose documents relevant to the

consideration of the nominee. That is exactly the situation here.

They have totally frustrated any meaningful opportunity to

cross-examine this nominee by stonewalling access to any of his

memos from the last 20 years, materials that previous

administrations have always disclosed as to other Supreme Court

nominees.

 

The senators on the other side and the nominee in particular have

repeatedly complained about being asked about 20 year old

documents. Well, guess what, because of the bad faith refusal of

the administration to cooperate that's all we have to work from.

Mr. Roberts the lawyer would never even consider trying a case

without access to ALL the documents and evidence he had a RIGHT

to review. And just like Bolton, this nominee must be rejected

until and unless all relevant documents are produced.

 

2. AN UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT HAS NO PREROGATIVE

 

The primary argument we have heard from the other side is that

he's the president's choice and that should be enough. They are

saying in essence, " Ha, ha, we won the last election, too bad. "

And yet now, just 10 months later, Mr. Bush is the most UNPOPULAR

second term president in history. His bad judgment in crisis after

crisis has brought shame and destruction to our country and cost

thousands if not tens of thousands of innocent American lives.

There are now too many dead bodies for even them to hide, though

they've tried that in New Orleans too. Bush's nominee Bolton, who

he stubbornly rammed through over the objections of the good

judgment of the Senate, has done nothing but create chaos and

disruption at the UN already, to the dismay of even our closest

ally, Great Britain. His selection of partisan cronies for FEMA

management positions crippled that agency's ability to protect us.

We no LONGER trust the choices of Mr. Bush.

 

If there were to be an election today, with his popularity in free

fall, there is no doubt Bush would be soundly defeated. And by

calling on people to contact their members of Congress, what we

are doing is calling for a NATIONAL REFERENDUM, by email, by fax,

by phone call and by letter to the editor, not only on this

nominee, but on the Bush presidency. If the other side wants to

rest their argument on whether this president has any mandate,

then let us demonstrate just how little support Bush actually

retains. Roberts will wreck the Supreme Court just as Bush has

wrecked every other aspect of our lives, and we must speak out now

to stop the looming catastrophe.

 

Indeed, even the last election would certainly have gone the other

way had it not been for widespread vote fraud and suppression,

COMBINED with the corrupt collaboration of the corporate

mainstream media in suppressing or ignoring any stories negative

to Bush's election prospects, and exaggerating the importance of

any stories smearing his opponents. Just yesterday there was a

story on the AP wire service with the headline " Roberts DODGES

questions about abortion, " and yet within hours the word " dodge "

had disappeared from the site and was REPLACED with a spin

job using the word " rebuff " and the word " abortion " was gone

too. This is scary, SCARY stuff. There's a Greek chorus out there

of big media voices trying to sell the public on this nominee like

it's a foregone conclusion, but still they have NOT heard from we

the people yet. Be ye not conned, this is not over no matter what

the talking heads say.

 

3. ROBERTS HAS NOT BEEN CANDID ABOUT HIS TRUE AGENDA

 

Who are they trying to kid? We ALL know exactly how Roberts is

going to rule. He's going to vote AGAINST us, we the people, and

in favor of every corporate special interest, in favor of absolute

power for the chief executive, every single time and without

exception. They know it, we know it, and Roberts himself knows it.

That's why all the most extreme reactionaries in the country are

so hot for this guy. And the shame of it is that this nominee will

not even admit he has an opinion on PAST cases upon which we have

come to trust on and rely. Even worse, for all his theoretical

legal platitudes about stare decisis he has been breathtaking in

leaving the door open that under him it would be open season on

revisiting just about every progressive court decision of the last

100 years, if only a case were to come before him.

 

The Republican senators on the judiciary committee have repeatedly

encouraged the nominee to NOT answer questions on the merits, to

be evasive and call it integrity. Roberts has testified at length

and said absolutely nothing of substance, like the enormously

slick lawyer he is. But one interesting thing he did say is that

as a lawyer he could take EITHER side of a case and make a

reasonable argument. And you better believe that in ruling against

us time after time, he will always find a CLEVER way to make

extremism sound reasonable, and that is precisely why he is so

dangerous. He said it is not the job of a lawyer to have a

position on the issues, but ultimately it IS the job of a judge.

The law is not just a mechanical exercise in applying precedents

to the facts. All judges have values that they bring to every

case, which they at last must fall back on. And in not disclosing

the agenda that his entire career strongly suggests that he has,

he does NOT deserve and cannot be trusted with the job of a

Supreme Court judge, let alone chief justice.

 

The American people now understand that they were sold a

dishonest bill of goods in the last election and are having big

time buyer's remorse. As recently as a year ago Mr. Bush seemed

to many like a wise and capable leader, but now many more realize

the depth of his perverse bad judgment. The only reason why he has

not ALREADY been called out for impeachment for his many crimes

and catastrophes is because the Republican party cares more about

their own power than the good of the American people. He has

wrecked our economy, our budget, our military, and in the exercise

of his criminal negligence now an entire major U.S. city. But

still he will be removed eventually. It is not so easy to remove

an equally destructive Supreme Court chief justice.

 

And superficially Mr. Roberts may seem like a nice, reasonable

guy. That is the biggest lie of all. His hearing responses bear an

uncanny resemblance to a press conference with Scott McClellan,

only infinitely more smooth. He might as well have said over and

over, " Again, we're not going to get into playing the agenda

game. " In fact, for all we know he is WORSE than the flaming

reactionary that peeks through some of his early memos, he's just

gotten a lot better at concealing it. A person who claims to stand

for nothing is the very DEFINITION of someone with an agenda. If

he would just be honest with the American people, we might

consider him on that basis. His failure to evidence any such

candor makes his rejection mandatory.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

Nobody expected Roberts to beat himself. We all expected a

masterful exercise in dodging any questions about what he really

stood for. The reactionary elements who are pushing this guy were

not going to repeat the Bork mistake, who spoke freely and was

quite forthcoming about his positions on the issues, and who left

a wide paper trail of statements, writings and speeches. Instead

they have spent decades grooming a stealth candidate, with little

visible record, and are trying to hustle him into the top slot of

the Supreme Court before anybody else can get a handle on what

they are really voting for.

 

Never before has a judge been pushed upward with such rash haste.

The idea that a president with plummeting popularity should have

carte blanche to appoint any closet reactionary he likes is

absurd. We don't want a pig in a poke for chief justice. Give us

a nominee for the Supreme Court with a track record. Give us a

nominee with enough opinions out there so that we know who it is

that is actually going to control every aspect of all of our

lives for the rest of all of our lives. Tell your senators that

if Roberts gets the job IT WILL SURELY COST THEM THEIR OWN. They

will get the message and we will win.

 

We stopped Bolton and everyone thought it was a miracle. It was

not. We generated 30,000 emails opposing Bolton, each to two

senators. And we're going to stop Roberts, all we have to do is

believe. It is said that evil can only prevail when good people

do nothing.

 

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.nocrony.com

 

Forward this email to everyone you know, and encourage its

posting on blogs and websites.

 

originally posted by The Pen to