Ramblings' Journal

AJC's Tucker continues pile-on job against Rogers Brown

Atlanta Journal-Constitution and syndicated columnist Cynthia Tucker continued the whitewash job that the left has started against California Supreme Court Justice and Bush judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown in her column for Sunday's paper.

Tucker insists that the filibuster against Rogers Brown must occur because Rogers Brown, in effect, isn't really black.

Tucker proceeds to heap plenty of praise on Rogers Brown, then lowers the boom on her.

Brown's writings showcase a brilliant intellect and literary depth. Her rulings and speeches tend to quote writers from Thucydides to Edmund Burke to John Grisham, not to mention the lyrics of popular songs such as "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

While she occasionally rankles her colleagues with barbs hurled their way, there's no doubting her quick wit. In a dissent in a 1996 anti-trust case, she wrote: "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."

Brown has every right to be an ultraconservative. That's what the civil rights movement was all about — giving black Americans the opportunity to live as they desired, choosing the neighborhoods, schools, churches and political philosophies that best suit them.

Her intellect notwithstanding, she has no business on the federal bench. Her views are well outside the mainstream.

She has no respect for precedent and frequently uses her rulings to express far-reaching opinions on matters not directly before the court.

She does not belong on the federal bench.

Tucker is part of the cabal of columnists and politicians alike who are lining up to paint Janice Rogers Brown alternately as an evil minion of the Bush Administration, whose opposition to anything relating to minorities is beyond the pale; or a clueless and unwitting dupe who is so stupid that her presence on the bench would set back American jurisprudence several generations.

Let's face it. Janice Rogers Brown has demonstrated, both through her decisions from the bench and from her writings, that she has the intellectual capability to advance the legal opinions necessary. She also has become her own woman, one whose conservative opinions and logic step outside the liberal mindset championed by Tucker and others, both black and white.

Finally, would you honestly expect that the Bush Administration would nominate someone whose ideology falls outside that of the rest of the Administration? Is Janice Rogers Brown so "dangerous" that she shouldn't be accorded an honest up-or-down vote by the full body of the US Senate?

Apparently most liberals think so, and they'll do anything to make sure that she's presented that way to the American people.

Posted by mhking at April 30, 2005 02:31 PM