Hewitt Blog

Today's federal court decision striking down the Pledge of Allegiance as a violation of the Establishment Clause opens a door for President Bush to approach a podium accompanied by 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael McConnell and say something like the following:

For the past few weeks we have seen Americans suffering mightily, and we have seen tens of millions of Americans responding to that suffering with tremendous generosity. Much of that generosity has flowed through the vast network of America's churches and synagogues, and millions of helping hands will be there to rebuild not just this month or next, or even next year, but for as long as it takes. The compassion that animates the vast majority of these volunteers flows from their understanding of God's love for them and the world. They want to express and share that love. From the time of our founding to the present, we are a religious people, deeply committed to the idea of "one nation under God."

We are also an incredibly tolerant and welcoming people, and have always opened our country to people of all beliefs and none at all. We will continue to do so, and to count them our fellow citizens in full. A pluralistic society must work overtime to accomodate all faiths and those of no faith, but the answer to the questions of how to fashion that accomodation is not to expel God from our public life. That was clearly not the intent of the Framers, and for most of our history, the courts of America did not embrace such a severe rejection of our widespread belief in a creator God.

Lamentably, though, the courts of America, in struggling to match the words of the Establsihment Clause to the realities of a pluralistic society have stumbled down some very wrong roads, and the result was seen in the recent decision of a federal district court in the Ninth Circuit in striking down the Pledge of Allegiance as unconstitutional, a decision rejected by overwhelming majorities of Americans. The Constitution is not so complex a document that voters do not know its intent, and they know its intent was not to ban the sentiments expressed in the Pledge from recitation in our classrooms. Indeed, to ban the Pledge is to ban the Declaration of Independence, and presidential proclamations from 1789 forward to this day. It is an absurd result.

The Supreme Court must and does deal with a great number of crucial issues, but none can be seen as more important than resolving these longstanding issues within a coherent, practical and understandable framework of decisions.

Standing next to me is my nominee for the vacancy on the United States Sypreme Court, Judge Michael McConnell. Legal scholars know him already. The Senate knows him and confirmed him with an overwhelming vote. Like John Roberts, he has made many successful appearances before the United States Supreme Court to argue many cases. He is widely admired as a good, decent, thoughtful man of great integrity.

He is also widely regarded as one of the country's leading experts on the religion clauses of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Though I do not know how Judge McConnell will rule on any particular case or controversy including the Pledge case, and would not ask him how he would rule, or expect him to answer how he would rule on a particular case, I do believe he would bring a unique and vitally needed perspective and learning to a Supreme Court struggling to make sense of its precedents and of the role of faith in our country's past and its future.

Judge McConnell would bring wide learning and appropriate temperment to the Supreme Court, and I think he would also bring to the discussions with his colleagues the sort of insight and learning that they would find helpful as they worked collaboratively to chart a new path in this vitally important and symbolic era.

Judge McConnell is a judge's judge, and a scholar's scholar. As with my nomination of John Roberts, I weighed carefully the background and training as well as the reputation of many fine jurists and lawyers in reaching my decision on whom to nominate. I am confident I have made the right choice. I am confident that a fair hearing will lead to Judge McConnell's rapid confirmation. I urge the Senate to move expeditiously to seat Judge McConnell before November is upon us.

Let the Senate Democrats filibuster the country's leading expert on the religion clauses.

First, visit ReliefConnections.org and register every organization in need of help in the recovery region.

When Senator Leahy pulls the Judiciary Committee Democrats together this morning, do you think he might say something like "Alright, folks, let's try and not make complete asses of ourselves again. That goes double for you Joe. Stay away from sports analogies and Schumer, for goodness sakes, leave the twenty-year old references to amigos out of it. I'll try and not slur my words if you'll let him finish a sentence Ted. Alright, go out there and show the world that at least one of us knows what we are talking about!"

Probably not, but he should. Long ago Lileks remarked on Senatitus, a peculiar condition affecting members of the "greatest deliberative body in the world" that leaves them wholly unaware of their buffoon quotient, which is high even when in recess, and never higher than when preening on national television.

I confess, I am addicted to Slow Joe Biden. If he comes on the tube, I have to stop and stare, like every driver crawling past an overturned semi with ambulances and firetrucks and stretchers everywhere. Biden is quite simply the only cartoon with flesh I have ever seen, a wholly ridiculous fellow, but one who is completely unaware of his own absurdity. When I learned yesterday of his extraordinary record in law school, the picture grew even more complete. Smarmy. Obsequious. Thin-skinned.

Please, please, please run for president Joe.

Schumer is a close second --far, far smarter than Biden, and if anything his superior in ego as well. Schumer is nearly as compelling a small town political dinner theater show as Biden, but Biden is the champ. And we get more today, and another nominee in the wings.

Speaking of Lileks, he's on jury duty. Now, counsel, how would you like that face to show up in your box? I am hoping some Twin Cities sharpie is reading this and asks during voir dire about Hummels and Chuck E. Cheese.

So Jarvis says good things about the new CBS blogger, and I wander over, willing to give anyone a try. What do I find? Why, praise of CBS journalists!

[F]or the most part, reporters have remained calm, balanced and unemotional even in the face of the most unspeakable circumstances. They've hidden their outrage beneath a veneer of objectivity. They've seemed, to many observers at times, not quite human.

Katrina was different.

"When you see people suffering the way they were — especially when you're in America — it's hard not to put your heart on your sleeve," says CBS Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts, who anchored the CBS Evening News' Katrina coverage from New Orleans. "The complete failure of the federal response effort provoked outrage in people who are normally impartial observers. I don't think we should start pointing fingers, but I think we can reflect the sense of outrage on the ground and how that outrage affected us."

Then he gets really edgy, quoting the boss at CBS news:

We’d like to highlight one example of CBS News taking a harder line than viewers have come to expect. During a special report on Katrina on Sept. 6, “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant posed this question: "In the end, what will have caused more deaths — Katrina itself or the government's incompetent, sluggish response?"

That comment and others like it left media watchers and news professionals debating the sometimes blurry line between advocacy journalism and straight reporting. "I think Peter (Van Sant)'s comment is right there on the line, but I think it's on the right side of the line," says CBS News President Andrew Heyward. Since President Bush, acknowledged that the relief effort had not gone well, Heyward says, there’s no reason a reporter should shy away from doing so himself. "At a certain point a reporter's job is to call a spade a spade." Heyward says Van Sant would have crossed the line had he called for officials to be fired, but he sees no problem with having journalists react to stories as human beings. "Sometimes I think reporters confuse fairness with a kind of tit-for-tat blandness that runs the risk of insulting a viewer's intelligence."

This is riveting stuff: John Roberts on how great CBS is, and Andrew Heyward on how a CBS correspondent walked right up tot he line it would be impermissable to cross. Thrilling, absolutely thrilling.

Contrast the lame effort by CBS to take us "inside" the moribund news division of a static old media dinosaur with WalMart's new blog, "Stories of Hope." Yes, Walmart. The company was already committed to surging facts onto the web, and now it is upping its online efort by collecting the sort of stories that ordinary Americans enjoy reading. No long winded essays here, but stories and facts.

Maybe the CBS blogger can hang out with the WalMart blogger and get some tips.

Off to watch "As Slow Joe's World Turns and Burns."

Today's memo from publisher Jeff Johnson:

TO: Times Managers and Supervisors

FROM: Jeff Johnson

SUBJECT: Editorial Page

I'm pleased to announce today that Andrés Martinez, Editorial Page Editor of the Los Angeles Times, will now oversee the op-ed page and Sunday Current, in addition to his responsibilities for the editorial page. The change is effective immediately. Reporting to Andrés will be Michael Newman, Deputy Editorial Page Editor; Nick Goldberg, Editor of the op-ed page; and Bob Sipchen, Editor of Current.

Andrés is a great writer and journalist who has done an outstanding job changing the editorial page through a significant revamping of our approach to opinion journalism. I look forward to seeing The Times continue to engage readers on critical issues, including those of importance to the Southern California region.

Michael Kinsley, who has served as Editorial and Opinion Editor since 2004, is resigning from the paper.

Please join me in congratulating Andrés and wishing him well in his new assignment.

JEFF JOHNSON

The editorial pages have changed? Does he mean the radical innovation of adding Margaret Carlson? Or the introduction of Robert Scheer?

And when is someone going to tell the Times to update its web page in real time?

New York's Chuck Schumer actually used time in today's hearing on the suitability of John Roberts to be the Chief Justice of the United States for perhaps 30 years or more, to ask Judge Roberts whether he regreted having used the term "illegal amigos" in a White House memo from more than two decades ago.

This is what pases for seriousness from Democrats: Are you now, or have you ever been, so insensitive as to use the term "amigo?"

Senator Schumer: So my question is not the substance, but do you regret the tone of these memos, do you regret some of the inartful phrases you used in some of those memos, for instance, a reference to "illegal amigos" in one memo?

For a display of Slow Joe Biden's stunning grasp of the rules of baseball, see Radioblogger.

If Slow Joe can't even read a rulebook generally understood by most Little Leaguers, can he be expected to grasp the finer details of ConLaw? See also this comment from Patterico on Beldar's blog.

NOTE: I had originally written that Schumer objected to the term "three amigos," when in gact his outrage was directed at the term "illegal amigos."

My friend Todd Sousa who on Saturday led a convoy of relief trucks into the recovery area from Orange County, California checked in from New Orleans this evening, and told the audience about the Pastors Resource Council of Baton Rouge which is organizing the distribution of the masive influx of aid into that part of the disaster area. The Council's number is 888-966-6600.

The area needs everything but used clothes --they have too many used clothes. Everyone else with relief supplies, come on down. Call from the road or before you leave to let them know what is en route, but the need is epic, and everything that comes in gets turned around and goes out asap to the distribution network of churches.

Over at ReliefConnections.org the first appeal for aid has been received, from Walnut Valley Vineyard Church, which is collecting relief material on behalf of Baton Rouge Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Please urge other groups in need of assistance to post those needs so that efficient linking of supplies and need occurs.

The collapse of the opposition to Judge Roberts is almost visible in today's questions from Democrats. Judge Roberts is so well prepared and so extraordinarily reasonable and informed, that Democrats are coming off looking silly at best (and churlish at worst, as with Senator Kennedy's repeated interruptions of the nominee.)

In fact, the tactics used by the Democrats suggest they aren't even fighting very hard. Assume --correctly-- that nothing any Democratic senator can say will in any way change the dynamic that is moving towards a huge yes vote on the nomination. The only thing that can change that dynamic is (1)an explosive revelation which is nowhere in sight nor likely to appear or (2) something that Judge Roberts himself says.

Given that the only hope the left has of defeating this man who will be Chief Justice --God willing-- for 30+ years is something that he himself says, the Democrats' long winded and almost endless set-ups to their questions are in fact great favors to Roberts, allowing the judge to in effect run out the clock while not appearing to do so. The Democrats should be asking short, simple, and open-ended questions --hundreds of them-- but they cannot bear to forfeit the television time so they chew up their only hope --the time that Judge Roberts spends talking-- and their opposition is thus perfunctory.

They aren't even trying very hard. If it was a fight, you'd suspect the fix was in.

The additional great benefit of the proceedings as they unfold is that the next nominee will in effect get to read the roll of Roberts' putt in preparation for his or her own hearing. Once the Roberts' answers are given and absorbed into the Senate's records and he is confirmed, a new nominee delivering substantially the same answers to what will no doubt be substantially similar questions will also be as confirmable as Judge Roberts, especially if that nominee is other than a white male. For if the next nominee gives the same answers to the same questions, but a senator who voted for Judge Roberts' confirmation then votes against a Judge Jones, a Judge Owens or a Judge Garza, the question will arise as to why, and the presumption will have to be a non-substantive one.

Still, the superb performance we are watching is the best argument for the appointment not of a judge of a particular background, race or gender, buf for the appointment of a brilliant mind experienced in the very subjects being discussed this week. Nominate a Judge Luttig or a Judge McConnell, and the results will be exactly the same. The American public will not stand for the defeat of a superb jurist at the hands of the small-minded ideolouges that dominate the Senate Democrats.

UPDATE:

Professor B. thinks the roll-over by the Dems has to do with future political ambitions, and he may be right. But judging from the various commentators at various lefty blogs, the "activists" are fuming at the preening of the Democratic senators. As I just discussed with Senator John Kyl, running a four corner offense when you are 30 points behind.

Radioblogger will have the transcript of the interview with Senator Kyl up later today.

Please visit and bookmark ReliefConnections.org, and if you are blogger, please tell your audiences about it and perhaps even put a button somewhere on your site. ReliefConnections.org is NZ Bear's new portal designed to match the needy with the willing and to do so with the efficiency made possible by the web and new software.

Any group or institution needing help in the recovery region can register their group and describe their need, along with contact information. Any group willing to help can do the same. As a way of outfitting the software, NZ used the list of Presbyterian Churches put together by Edward Brenager, but the list of impacted organizations can be as long as as widely diverse as the people and cities of the three states blasted by Katrina.

Please spend a few minutes at the site this morning. As I hear the tales of stacked up relief convoys in city X but absolute need in city Y that is not being met, the necessity of this portal becomes more and more obvious, and the daunting tasks of long term relief will make that necessity even more obvious.

Hats off to NZ Bear: He has done a very good thing.

Thomas Oliphant comes close to denouncing John Roberts as a closet segregationist in a column that has to be among the most laughable of the Roberts' debate. With zero evidence to back his assertion, Oliphant tries to walk his reader to the conclusion that Roberts is unsympathetic to civil rights. The irony is that Oliphant uses the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson as his jumping off point, apparently unaware that the great Harlan dissent that Oliphant mentions is to conservatives critical of racial quotas the greatest statement of their case. In that dissent, Harlan exclaims that "[o]ur constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens." If Roberts and the next justice are the true heirs of Harlan, the brief reprieve given race-based admissions in the University of Michigan Law School case will be over, and the dissent that Oliphant proclaims his love for will certainly be featured in the majority opinion finally elevating that dissent and its core principle to the center of American jurisprudence where it has long belonged.

As though he was not going to be outdone in the daily competition for silliest effort by an east coast lefty white male, E.J. Dionne unveils the claim on the proposition that the Bush era is over. Really. Even as the president watches his nominee for Chief Justice sail through the Senate and prepares for a second nominee and the Iraqi and Afghan elections, Dionne believes that "[l]eadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the last two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans," and concludes that

[Bush's]his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can stubbornly cling to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

(HT: RealClearPolitics for the pointers to both columns.)

The great news about the left is that its capacity for self-delusion is undiminished by the electoral losses of the past few years. It remains eager to believe what it wants to believe, in this case that President Bush is in deep political trouble. Bookmark and save E.J.'s piece. It will be fun to link to whenever the president achieves another political victory.

Two pieces for your Monday reading.

First, Jack Kelly takes an objective the enormity of the federal government's successes over the past two weeks. Key graph:

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

The Kelly conclusion will eventually dominate coverage of this storm. Kelly represents American journalism's left brain finally kicking in after the trauma of the past two weeks.

And the best of American journalism's right brain is also beginning to appear. Nicholas Lemann's essay on his home town of New Orleans is must reading. (HT: Michael Barone) As is Matt Labash's amazing piece in the Weekly Standard.

After an epic disaster, everything takes a couple of weeks to get close to normal, including American journalism. The hysteria is subsiding with the flood waters. Thank God.

Since posting on it earlier this morning, I have been thinking about Elisabeth Bumiller's piece in the New York Times this morning. Is there any reason for describing Bishop T.D. Jakes as a "multimillionaire" other than to convey Ms. Bumiller's message that he is not really representative of African-Americans and may not even be legit as a preacher?

Does the Times routinely --or ever-- inject the economic status of Anglo religious leaders into its coverage? If as I suspect it does not, why did Bumiller do so in this piece, and why did her editors not catch it?

Born in Denmark, raised in Cinncy and educated at Northwestern, Bumiller, like John Roberts, probably didn't have much interaction with African Americans, and her interest in Bishop Jakes' wealth may simply reflect a papmpered elitist's marvel at how a black man could accumulate such coin.

But didn't anyone at the Times suggest that Bumiller's rather obvious insinuation wasn't relevant to her "story," and might leave a reader wondering exactly what she was trying to say about Bishop Jakes?