Armando's post deals with the legal issues in this story
Appellate Court Backs Companies in Tobacco Case
But my how these same old names keep showing up. Here's a little more about David B. Sentelle, the federal appeals court judge who wrote the majority opinion that gave this $280 billion victory to the tobacco companies.
Appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan, U.S. Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle is a former protege of right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms and friend of Sen. Lauch Faircloth. He is one of the most right-wing judges in the federal judiciary, and is a member of the right-wing Federalist Society.
Some highlights:
1990 In tandem with his friend and Federalist Society comrade Judge Laurence H. Silberman, Sentelle voids the convictions of both Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter, sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. (Note Both Kevin Phillips and Walsh have alleged that Silberman was involved in the Reagan campaign's efforts to delay the release of American hostages in Iran until after the 1980 presidential elections.)
1992 Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist replaces U.S. Appeals Court Judge George MacKinnon with Sentelle, as chief of the three-judge panel that picks special prosecutors. (MacKinnon was an old-line conservative Republican, appointed by Nixon, who earned the enmity of Sentelle's friend and mentor Silberman by appointing prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. In 1992, Walsh indicted Weinberger on perjury and obstruction charges, and his investigation was too risky for the re-election chances of George H. W. Bush in 1992, so Rehnquist removed him.)
1992 When the Bush administration is caught searching Clinton's passport files looking for derogatory information, Sentelle's three-judge panel appoints Joseph diGenova to investigate. DiGenova, a conservative GOP loyalist, finds no Republican wrongdoing.
1993 Sentelle appoints David Barrett, head of Lawyers for Reagan in 1980, to invstigate Clinton's Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros on allegations that Cisneros understated how much money he had paid a mistress.
1994 Shortly after a lunch with Helms, Silberman and Faircloth, Sentelle removes Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske Jr., a moderate Republican, and replaces him with the more conservative and highly partisan Kenneth Starr. Fiske had already annoyed conservatives by concluding that White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster was not murdered, but had committed suicide. Starr had served as solicitor general for President Bush and was an active Republican, and had also assisted the Paula Jones legal team. (Interesting to note that Judge Sentelle's wife was employed by Faircloth, and it is the wife of Sentelle's friend Silberman, Ricky, one of the co-founders of the right-wing Independent Women's Forum, who initially approaches Starr to write an amicus brief for her organization in the Paula Jones suit against Clinton.)
1999 Voted to keep Starr's investigation alive in 1999, despite President Bill Clinton already being impeached and acquitted, and no prosecutions pending against the President, First Lady, or any others.
1991: In Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Sentelle rails against "leftist heretics" he claims want to turn the United States into "a collectivist, egalitarian, materialistic, race-conscious, hyper-secular, and socially permissive state."
2002 Decides to "delay indefinitely" the Sierra Club/Judicial Watch Freedom of Information lawsuits against Cheney
2003 Rules that the Bush administration can hold secret prisoners, without providing the names of the detainees, names of their lawyers, dates they were picked up and the reasons they were detained.