On the Other Hand….
……Jackson Blair
A “HOME RUN” PICK!
I wrote last week in some columns, and on my blog, that I hoped President Obama would not try to name a woman, a Hispanic, a black, a gay, a conservative or a liberal, but rather would seek a person with an outstanding intellect, schooled at the best universities, known for fairness, and with a record that could be explored and found appropriate.
I believe he did just that.
I think he made his nomination based on intellect, education and a defensible record of rulings. That the person also happened to be female, and Hispanic, was just icing on the cake.
Here are the bullets everyone will be talking about:
o Modest circumstances of her childhood.
o Summa cum laude from Princeton and on to Yale Law School.
o First appointed a judge by President George H.W. Bush (Republican) on the recommendation of U.S. Senator Pat Moynihan (Democrat).
o Elevated to a high court bench by President William Clinton (Democrat).
o Young enough to build an incredible record on the high court
o Old enough to have applicable experience and an existing record as a jurist
Judge Sotomayor looks, at first glance, to be a very qualified pick!
The glances, however, will now turn into serious in-depth investigation. Outstanding jurists have failed before to be confirmed by the Judiciary Committee. That said, it has usually been when the minority party held more seats and could swing votes.
The Constitution provides for a process that will permit Senators to carefully review every decision she ever wrote and every comment she ever made about the issues of the day.
There will be the usual political posturing by the extreme Left and the extreme Right. This is all just part of the process.
With a Democrat in The White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, it would take something quite outrageous and extraordinary to deny this appointee confirmation.
In one of the first great tests of his presidency, President Obama seems to have made an excellent choice, one representative of his personal philosophy, the philosophy of his party, and one that is confirmable.
Justice-designate Sotomayor loves baseball. She is a dedicated baseball fan. The fact that she is a Yankees fan might turn out to be the biggest problem she will encounter with some of the Senators!
She would be pleased to read a headline that said:
OBAMA HIT A HOME RUN!
Friday, May 29, 2009
THE PRESIDENT & "THE GIPPER"
Notes of Concern….
Jack Blair
The President & The “Gipper”
The President of the United States received an invitation to attend the Commencement Ceremony at The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. In addition to making the speech to the graduates he would receive an honorary degree.
There is absolutely nothing unusual about this.
The White House gets hundreds of invitations for a president to speak at high school and college commencements every year.
What was surprising was the best-known Catholic university had not only invited, but also planned to honor, a person whose personal views were at odds with beliefs central to the Catholic church.
Those who schedule the president would have considered this fact.
Those who invited the president would also have considered this fact.
The University of Notre Dame demonstrated its long-standing commitment to fairness, and its respect for the Office of the President, in extending the invitation. It also recognized the importance of intellectual freedom owed to those young men and women who study there.
I feel certain the political science department at Notre Dame teaches the same information about the separation of church and state as do other fine schools. I feel more certain that the president of Notre Dame and the Board of Trustees of the school felt justified in honoring anyone who had been elected by the people to serve as president.
A president’s personal religious philosophy should not preclude his making speeches, appearances or accepting awards from people or organizations that hold differing views. He is, after all, president of ALL the people.
President Obama demonstrated personal boldness in agreeing to go into this particular situation, one that could have been easily avoided. He did so while maintaining his own beliefs and acknowledging the different beliefs of others.
President Obama outlined three goals to the assembled graduates and their families. They are not Catholic goals or Protestant goals but rather common ground goals.
1. work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions
2. reduce unintended pregnancies
3. make adoption more available and provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term
Is there anything in those three goals that a good, dedicated, person practicing any religion could find objectionable?
It wasn’t the goals, however, that most impressed me. It was the presentation of the goals along with an observation of great importance to fair minded people.
The President acknowledged that there would be continued conversations over these issues. He acknowledged that resolution of our differences would not come easily to us. And he underscored the importance of the ongoing conversation in helping all of us reach an appropriate accommodation of our own views with those who differ.
In other words, presidents who have some differences with Catholic thought should not be banned from an ongoing discussion of the issues. Colleges and universities should be central to these kinds of discussions, no matter who founded them or supports them.
It is essential that educational institutions be free from any influence that would subvert healthy intellectual discussion and research.
This is true whether the school is Bob Jones University or The University of Notre Dame.
For many, there is a long association of Notre Dame with the football player George Gipp, immortalized in an important film starring, oddly enough, former President Ronald Reagan.
It is not my purpose to discuss this film beyond mentioning that George Gipp was considered very brave in the face of a terminal illness. The phrase: “win one for the Gipper” became well known.
The famous football coach, Knute Rockne, George Gipp and a fine portrayal by a future president, Ronald Reagan ,the actor , all came together to provide a never ending association of the ideas of bravery, dedication and hope with the University of Notre Dame.
Over the years, the university, especially under its president Theodore Hesburgh, took a leadership role in the battle for civil rights in America.
The university has a number of wonderful traditions. It is a fine institution of learning. It has been a “player” in many of the nation’s struggles. That it should step forward, and step out, to honor an American president with whom it has some disagreements in philosophy, is a continuation of that tradition.
When Barack Obama mounted the Commencement platform at The University of Notre Dame, both Obama and the university won another one for “The Gipper! “
Jack Blair
The President & The “Gipper”
The President of the United States received an invitation to attend the Commencement Ceremony at The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. In addition to making the speech to the graduates he would receive an honorary degree.
There is absolutely nothing unusual about this.
The White House gets hundreds of invitations for a president to speak at high school and college commencements every year.
What was surprising was the best-known Catholic university had not only invited, but also planned to honor, a person whose personal views were at odds with beliefs central to the Catholic church.
Those who schedule the president would have considered this fact.
Those who invited the president would also have considered this fact.
The University of Notre Dame demonstrated its long-standing commitment to fairness, and its respect for the Office of the President, in extending the invitation. It also recognized the importance of intellectual freedom owed to those young men and women who study there.
I feel certain the political science department at Notre Dame teaches the same information about the separation of church and state as do other fine schools. I feel more certain that the president of Notre Dame and the Board of Trustees of the school felt justified in honoring anyone who had been elected by the people to serve as president.
A president’s personal religious philosophy should not preclude his making speeches, appearances or accepting awards from people or organizations that hold differing views. He is, after all, president of ALL the people.
President Obama demonstrated personal boldness in agreeing to go into this particular situation, one that could have been easily avoided. He did so while maintaining his own beliefs and acknowledging the different beliefs of others.
President Obama outlined three goals to the assembled graduates and their families. They are not Catholic goals or Protestant goals but rather common ground goals.
1. work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions
2. reduce unintended pregnancies
3. make adoption more available and provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term
Is there anything in those three goals that a good, dedicated, person practicing any religion could find objectionable?
It wasn’t the goals, however, that most impressed me. It was the presentation of the goals along with an observation of great importance to fair minded people.
The President acknowledged that there would be continued conversations over these issues. He acknowledged that resolution of our differences would not come easily to us. And he underscored the importance of the ongoing conversation in helping all of us reach an appropriate accommodation of our own views with those who differ.
In other words, presidents who have some differences with Catholic thought should not be banned from an ongoing discussion of the issues. Colleges and universities should be central to these kinds of discussions, no matter who founded them or supports them.
It is essential that educational institutions be free from any influence that would subvert healthy intellectual discussion and research.
This is true whether the school is Bob Jones University or The University of Notre Dame.
For many, there is a long association of Notre Dame with the football player George Gipp, immortalized in an important film starring, oddly enough, former President Ronald Reagan.
It is not my purpose to discuss this film beyond mentioning that George Gipp was considered very brave in the face of a terminal illness. The phrase: “win one for the Gipper” became well known.
The famous football coach, Knute Rockne, George Gipp and a fine portrayal by a future president, Ronald Reagan ,the actor , all came together to provide a never ending association of the ideas of bravery, dedication and hope with the University of Notre Dame.
Over the years, the university, especially under its president Theodore Hesburgh, took a leadership role in the battle for civil rights in America.
The university has a number of wonderful traditions. It is a fine institution of learning. It has been a “player” in many of the nation’s struggles. That it should step forward, and step out, to honor an American president with whom it has some disagreements in philosophy, is a continuation of that tradition.
When Barack Obama mounted the Commencement platform at The University of Notre Dame, both Obama and the university won another one for “The Gipper! “
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Specter of Arlen
Notes of Concern…
Jack Blair
THE SPECTER OF ARLEN
In the early 1960’s Arlen Specter served as the district attorney in Philadelphia, PA. Arlen was a Democrat. He was then, as now, a very ambitious fellow.
Specter wanted to be a United States Senator. The Democratic Party of Pennsylvania wanted to run someone else.
The “not long on loyalty, or philosophical conviction”, Arlen Specter ,then began an effort to land the nomination for the U.S. Senate from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. That took more than a little chutzpah!
Perhaps the fact that he did receive the Republican nomination and won in the general election, to launch a very long career in the United States Senate, says as much about the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s commitment to philosophy as it does about Specter.
I speak with a little authority on this subject because I was a member of the Executive Committee of The Republican Party of Pennsylvania in the early 1960’s. I had a front row seat to a lot of the maneuvering that took place, not to mention the smoke filled rooms that were typical of both major political parties in those days.
To this day I still wonder why the Pennsylvania GOP felt they needed to run a Democrat for the U.S. Senate. That is a tactic that a party accustomed to losing elections often will utilize. However, the seriously powerful and influential Hugh Scott sat in the United States Senate and ultimately became Majority Leader. The popular William Warren Scranton held the Governor’s office and then turned down an offer to be Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State while later accepting Gerald Ford’s offer of Ambassador to the United Nations, and he would be succeeded by his own Lt. Governor, Raymond P. Shafer, also a Republican, who went on to serve as Special Assistant to the Rockefeller family and to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. These folks had no career problems requiring a deal with Specter. Their stars were rising. They needed nothing from Arlen Specter.
Hugh and Marion Scott, Bill and Mary Scranton and Ray and Jane Shafer were friends of mine. I went to the presidential nominating convention with Bill Scranton when he sought the presidency. I was with the Shafer family the night he was elected governor. I saw Hugh Scott often in Washington as well as in Pennsylvania.
And I still don’t know what motivated their decision.
Certainly, it was their decision. They controlled Pennsylvania politics at that time. No one could get the nod for U.S. Senator in the Republican Party without their support. Why did they feel they needed the liberal Arlen ?
So today we read that Republican Senator Arlen Specter is now Democrat Senator Arlen Specter. This comes as no surprise to me.
Watching his votes for decades I wondered how long Pennsylvania Republicans would put up with him. They almost knocked him off in a primary six years ago. After his vote for the Obama bailout, money was coming into Pennsylvania from conservatives all across the land to defeat Specter in the Republican primary.
Specter has a long memory. He knew the old “switcheroo” was the only way to go. The Democrats owed him for a lot of important votes he cast over the years against Republican positions. They owed him for the stimulus vote. They owed him for making it impossible for Robert Bjork to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court after being nominated by a Republican president. And they owed him for a lot of other votes, big and small, that served as precursors to his jump back to the Democratic Party.
So the Democrats of Pennsylvania shelved whatever ambitious young Turk might have wanted their nomination and welcomed the 80 year old with serious Hodgkin’s lymphoma
(cancer )problems to be their candidate.
No loss to the GOP!
Specter wasn’t with them on labor issues, taxes, abortion, spending bills, or the stimulus.
Big gain for the DEMS.
This virtually assures them of a filibuster proof margin in the U.S. Senate.
Political scientists always talk about philosophy, convictions, and party platforms, the structuring of majorities and the importance of loyalty. They were not using Arlen Specter as their model.
Someone much older, and long dead, predicted the successful strategy of a fellow named Arlen Specter. Nicolo Machiavelli had a version of Arlen in mind when he wrote “The Prince. “
Arlen is nothing if not Machiavellian.
Specter is currently the 12th-most senior member of the U.S. Senate and the fifth oldest Senator. After all these years in a career presented to him by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, 30 years of Senate work, Arlen Specter has forgotten the old, and very appropriate adage: you should always dance with the one who brought you!
This senator is an opportunist. He was an opportunist 30 years ago and that character flaw has been often hidden and dormant for the long span of his Senate career. It is not an admirable quality. That said, in Washington, DC, he is in good company.
Democrat-Republican-Democrat Arlen Specter has a good chance of winning another six-year term in the United States Senate. And he will lose little as a result of his defection because, by defecting, he gave the national Democrats something they really wanted, another vote in the Senate and a huge public relations coup.
They will reward him with no challenger in the Democrat primary in Pennsylvania (this deal was undoubtedly signed, sealed and delivered before he made public his plans), they will let him retain senior positions on Senate Committees, and they will pour money into his race in Pennsylvania.
Hugh Scott has died. Ray Shafer has died. Bill Scranton continues to live out his old age at “Marworth” in Dalton, Pa. Unless Arlen chooses to tell me what happened back there in the 1960’s I will never know.
So Arlen, accustomed to winning at all costs, will probably win again.
The only open question is what party banner he will hold aloft in 2016 when he seeks yet another term at the age of 86!
One thing for sure, the Democrats in Pennsylvania had better keep an eye on him.
What a specter!
Jack Blair
THE SPECTER OF ARLEN
In the early 1960’s Arlen Specter served as the district attorney in Philadelphia, PA. Arlen was a Democrat. He was then, as now, a very ambitious fellow.
Specter wanted to be a United States Senator. The Democratic Party of Pennsylvania wanted to run someone else.
The “not long on loyalty, or philosophical conviction”, Arlen Specter ,then began an effort to land the nomination for the U.S. Senate from the Republican Party of Pennsylvania. That took more than a little chutzpah!
Perhaps the fact that he did receive the Republican nomination and won in the general election, to launch a very long career in the United States Senate, says as much about the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s commitment to philosophy as it does about Specter.
I speak with a little authority on this subject because I was a member of the Executive Committee of The Republican Party of Pennsylvania in the early 1960’s. I had a front row seat to a lot of the maneuvering that took place, not to mention the smoke filled rooms that were typical of both major political parties in those days.
To this day I still wonder why the Pennsylvania GOP felt they needed to run a Democrat for the U.S. Senate. That is a tactic that a party accustomed to losing elections often will utilize. However, the seriously powerful and influential Hugh Scott sat in the United States Senate and ultimately became Majority Leader. The popular William Warren Scranton held the Governor’s office and then turned down an offer to be Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State while later accepting Gerald Ford’s offer of Ambassador to the United Nations, and he would be succeeded by his own Lt. Governor, Raymond P. Shafer, also a Republican, who went on to serve as Special Assistant to the Rockefeller family and to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. These folks had no career problems requiring a deal with Specter. Their stars were rising. They needed nothing from Arlen Specter.
Hugh and Marion Scott, Bill and Mary Scranton and Ray and Jane Shafer were friends of mine. I went to the presidential nominating convention with Bill Scranton when he sought the presidency. I was with the Shafer family the night he was elected governor. I saw Hugh Scott often in Washington as well as in Pennsylvania.
And I still don’t know what motivated their decision.
Certainly, it was their decision. They controlled Pennsylvania politics at that time. No one could get the nod for U.S. Senator in the Republican Party without their support. Why did they feel they needed the liberal Arlen ?
So today we read that Republican Senator Arlen Specter is now Democrat Senator Arlen Specter. This comes as no surprise to me.
Watching his votes for decades I wondered how long Pennsylvania Republicans would put up with him. They almost knocked him off in a primary six years ago. After his vote for the Obama bailout, money was coming into Pennsylvania from conservatives all across the land to defeat Specter in the Republican primary.
Specter has a long memory. He knew the old “switcheroo” was the only way to go. The Democrats owed him for a lot of important votes he cast over the years against Republican positions. They owed him for the stimulus vote. They owed him for making it impossible for Robert Bjork to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court after being nominated by a Republican president. And they owed him for a lot of other votes, big and small, that served as precursors to his jump back to the Democratic Party.
So the Democrats of Pennsylvania shelved whatever ambitious young Turk might have wanted their nomination and welcomed the 80 year old with serious Hodgkin’s lymphoma
(cancer )problems to be their candidate.
No loss to the GOP!
Specter wasn’t with them on labor issues, taxes, abortion, spending bills, or the stimulus.
Big gain for the DEMS.
This virtually assures them of a filibuster proof margin in the U.S. Senate.
Political scientists always talk about philosophy, convictions, and party platforms, the structuring of majorities and the importance of loyalty. They were not using Arlen Specter as their model.
Someone much older, and long dead, predicted the successful strategy of a fellow named Arlen Specter. Nicolo Machiavelli had a version of Arlen in mind when he wrote “The Prince. “
Arlen is nothing if not Machiavellian.
Specter is currently the 12th-most senior member of the U.S. Senate and the fifth oldest Senator. After all these years in a career presented to him by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, 30 years of Senate work, Arlen Specter has forgotten the old, and very appropriate adage: you should always dance with the one who brought you!
This senator is an opportunist. He was an opportunist 30 years ago and that character flaw has been often hidden and dormant for the long span of his Senate career. It is not an admirable quality. That said, in Washington, DC, he is in good company.
Democrat-Republican-Democrat Arlen Specter has a good chance of winning another six-year term in the United States Senate. And he will lose little as a result of his defection because, by defecting, he gave the national Democrats something they really wanted, another vote in the Senate and a huge public relations coup.
They will reward him with no challenger in the Democrat primary in Pennsylvania (this deal was undoubtedly signed, sealed and delivered before he made public his plans), they will let him retain senior positions on Senate Committees, and they will pour money into his race in Pennsylvania.
Hugh Scott has died. Ray Shafer has died. Bill Scranton continues to live out his old age at “Marworth” in Dalton, Pa. Unless Arlen chooses to tell me what happened back there in the 1960’s I will never know.
So Arlen, accustomed to winning at all costs, will probably win again.
The only open question is what party banner he will hold aloft in 2016 when he seeks yet another term at the age of 86!
One thing for sure, the Democrats in Pennsylvania had better keep an eye on him.
What a specter!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)