Open Thread * A Focus on The McLaughlin Group & Thoughts on PEBO’s Future Choices for the USSC
By SusanUnPC on December 4, 2008 at 5:00 PM in Current Affairs, Open Thread, Supreme Court
I love watching The McLaughlin Group (transcripts | podcasts). I often watch it two or three times, thanks to my DVR, because I want to catch everything, and I often miss important remarks the first time ’round. ( Say, I’ve heard — via some grapevines — that Mssr. McLaughlin loves the ladies. Maybe that’s why he left the priesthood so long ago. (I’m so silly sometimes.))
Actually, I learn a great deal from that program, and do wish it were an hour long. I hang on to every word that Pat Buchanan and John McLaughlin utter. Eleanor Clift, sadly, has become my least favorite panelist ever since she drank the KoolAid last year, and her critical thinking has suffered — she just mouths the typical talking points we’ve all heard all week long on every cable news channel. She has nothing NEW to add, or rarely.
And, even when I was a Daily-Kos-lovin’ regular Kossack diarist (@ 2005), I loved TMG (The McLaughlin Group). And I never understood why it was verboten to say that I liked the show, or why there was a regular FRENZY about getting PBS to cancel the show. Whatever for? Because PBS was bowing to the wishes of the rightwingers in Congress who control their purse strings? Call me STUPID, but I have to ask this: Shouldn’t the elected “rightwingers” have as much say about funding PBS as the leftwingers? Ditto NPR?
Ideally, I suppose, no elected officials should mess with PBS’s and NPR’s programming. But obliterating all supposedly “rightwing” programming? That’s anti-democratic, and it proves why the leftwing can never be allowed to RULE our nation because their level of censorship will be more extreme than that of the rightwingers, I fear.
And why do the lefties ASS-u-ME that if anyone, like me, watches TMG, his or her thinking will be irrevocably damaged? That viewers can’t discern for themselves which POVs they prefer?
That someone like Pat Buchanan, whose astonishing memory for U.S. history is mind-blowing, should be silenced? God, I could listen to Pat Buchanan all day every day, and never be bored. I wish MSNBC would use him more. I wish Fox News would give him a huge deal, and give him an hour show!!! I wish he could replace Rush Limbaugh!!!
Clarence Page is another not-so-favorite contributor, but this that he said last Friday was very funny:
Search here to find the stations that carry TMG, and on what days and at what times.
HERE is the panel on PEBO and the USSC:
The Supremes
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: (From videotape.) I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The Supreme Court is just what its name suggests — supreme — supreme over all the other 16,000 judicial bodies in the United States. The court’s nine justices interpret law and they set precedent for years to come. The nomination of these justices is by the president, and it is arguably his or her most enduring power.
These justices commonly outlive the nominating president’s terms. All nine of them serve for life, if they so wish. Thirty-two percent resign or retire. As a consequence of lengthy service, the justices’ age can be quite seasoned. In the current court, one of the nine is an octogenarian, John Paul Stevens. Three of the nine are in their seventies — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Question: Why will it be easier for President-elect Obama to assess nominees’ judicial philosophy than for other presidents who have done so, or to do so? Do you understand the question?
MR. BUCHANAN: Sure.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you understand the question, Eleanor?
MS. CLIFT: I can guess at it. (Laughs.)
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Why is it going to be easier for Obama?
MS. CLIFT: Because he’s thoughtful and he’s a former constitutional lawyer.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: There you go. MS. CLIFT: And he understands that he needs to keep a balance on the court, which is now evenly split between left and right, with one swing vote, and the three most likely justices to retire are on the left. And so he needs — the best he can do, from my perspective, is to keep the court where it is and not let the right take over.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: He’s a lawyer. And in addition to that, he taught constitutional law for many years, did he not?
MR. PAGE: At the University of Chicago, one of those incubators for justices.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The University of Chicago. So he also knows what questions to ask the interviewee in order to discover what his judicial philosophy is —
MR. BUCHANAN: Let me say, John —
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: — or hers, correct?
MS. CROWLEY: Well, that’s right. He does have the background. But let’s be honest. I mean, when the country elects a president, they elect a political philosophy. So he’s not going to appoint conservative judges, and that’s his prerogative not to. We’re looking at between one and three vacancies, possibly, starting with John Paul Stevens, who’s about 89 years old. There are others. Ruth Bader Ginsburg —
MS. CLIFT: Eighty-seven, I think.
MS. CROWLEY: — is not in the best of health, and so she might retire as well. So there will be vacancies here for him. And he has made it clear that he wants somebody who is going to be able to reflect his political philosophy and approach the law that way as well.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, more on the Supreme Court from Obama.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: (From videotape.) And we need somebody who’s got the heart to recognize — the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Can you live with that, Clarence?
MR. PAGE: Well, we’ve seen that with Sandra Day O’Connor, her experience as a woman being discriminated against, in spite of her stellar qualifications. She said that had an impact —
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, he’s saying —
MR. PAGE: — on her — MR. MCLAUGHLIN: — you’ve got to have heart. That’s what he’s saying.
MR. PAGE: Right, right. And the candidates know this. I remember Clarence Thomas sounding very eloquent and passionate about his sympathy for the accused, and then once he became a justice, showed very little of it in his decisions. So I think, you know, there’s part of some salesmanship of —
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, what’s the primary — is heart the primary —
MR. BUCHANAN: John, heart is not primary. This is an absurdity.
MS. CLIFT: No, it isn’t.
READ ALL of the panel’s discussion of issues on Friday night.
I wish i’d spent more time hunting around for some of John McLaughlin’s priceless comments and his astonishing predictions — he is SO prescient (!). But perhaps all of you will do some huntin’, and you’ll share what you find.
OPEN THREAD!!!
by Ronald Scott
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