I
wrote earlier on Priscilla Owen because she is apparently the extreme nominee for whom Senator Frist is likely to pull the trigger on the nuclear option.
Janice Rogers Brown is another extremist nominee, and just as worrisome. The GOP thinks she's a great nominee: an African-American woman who has served on the California Supreme Court. However, if you give her record some "strict scrutiny", she's just as much a conservative activist as the other nominees - more about her record after the jump.
Make your voice heard in opposing Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. This fight is not just about Senate rules - it's about the shape our laws will take for years to come - conservative activist judges will set dangerous standards for women, minorities, and working Americans. Please contact your Senator and let them know you Oppose The Nuclear Option and Extreme Judicial Nominees. You can find your Senator's contact info here.
Please recommend this diary so that others can see the extremists President Bush is pushing and ask themselves - is this really the best we can do?
www.tedkennedy.com
- A 1999 dissent drafted by Brown suggested that the First Amendment allows employees to use racial epithets in the workplace;
- A Brown decision would have barred administrative agencies from awarding compensatory damages in race discrimination cases;
- A Brown opinion would have struck down a law requiring paint companies to help fund treatment of children exposed to lead paint;
- Rated "unqualified" by three-fourths of the state bar's examiners when nominated to the California Supreme Court;
- Brown told a meeting of the Federalist Society that "where government moves in, community retreats [and] civil society disintegrates";
- Brown has said that government leads to "families under siege, war in the streets..."
- Brown said that "when government advances, freedom is imperiled [and] civilization itself jeopardized."
- Brown told an audience that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots.
In the words of Janice Rodgers Brown
From the speech A Whiter Shade of Pale:
"in the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery. And we no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens." ["A Whiter Shade of Pale," Speech to Federalist Society (April 20, 2000)]
"My grandparents' generation thought being on the government dole was disgraceful, a blight on the family's honor. Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much "free" stuff as the political system will permit them to extract...Big government is ... [t]he drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms, for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers, and militant senior citizens." ["A Whiter Shade of Pale," Speech to Federalist Society (April 20, 2000)]
Complete text of "A Whiter Shade of Pale
From Rodgers' speech Fifty Ways to Lose Your Freedom:
"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." ["Fifty Ways To Lose Your Freedom," Speech to The Institute for Justice (August 12, 2000)]
"In the New Deal/Great Society era, a rule that was the polar opposite of the classical era of American law reigned ... Protection of property was a major casualty of the Revolution of 1937 ... Rights were reordered and property acquired a second class status ... It thus became government's job not to protect property but, rather, to regulate and redistribute it. And, the epic proportions of the disaster which has befallen millions of people during the ensuing decades has not altered our fervent commitment to statism." ["Fifty Ways To Lose Your Freedom," Speech to The Institute for Justice (August 12, 2000)]
Complete text of "Fifty Ways To Lose Your Freedom (Links to pdf)
News Clips about Janice Rodgers Brown
"State Supreme Court nominee Janice Rogers Brown, whose confirmation is expected next week, was rated unqualified by at least three-fourths of state bar evaluators, who concluded she was too inexperienced and prone to inserting conservative personal views into her appellate opinions ... Bar evaluators received complaints that Brown was insensitive to established legal precedent, had difficulty grasping complex civil litigation, lacked compassion and intellectual tolerance for opposing views, misunderstood legal standards and was slow to produce opinions. Brown once described herself as more conservative than [Governor Pete] Wilson. She has refused to say whether she shares Wilson's opposition to affirmative action, but she is believed to be more conservative than Wilson's two other recent appointees, Chin and Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.
In a 1993 article she wrote as Wilson's legal affairs secretary, she complained that government `has been too responsive to constituents. Government has not done too little,' she wrote. `It has done too much . . . government is not here to save us.' [Bar Faults High Court Nominee in Key Areas, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1996]
"[S]he formulates opinions `in prayer and quiet study of the Bible.' And in [a] commencement address, she criticized philosophers and scientists for trying to mold society `as if God did not exist.'" ["Janice Brown: The Next Supreme Court Justice?", AP, June 13, 2003]
Aguilar v. Avis Rent A Car Systems
Brown's opinion in this case protected racially discriminatory speech in the workplace, even when it qualified as illegal racial harassment under the First Amendment. In her opinion, even if such speech is racially discriminatory, the law cannot stop someone from using such language. In issuing this decision, Judge Brown ignored several Supreme Court decisions that stated that some speech can and should be categorized as discriminatory and/or illegal.
San Remo Hotel L.P. v, City and County of San Francisco, 41 P.3d 87 (Cal. 2002)
This case involved a hotel that wanted move from providing residential hotel rooms to tourist hotel rooms. The hotel's owner's sought to change the law requiring them to contribute to city funding for low income, elderly, and disabled residents displaced as a result of the zoning change. Brown strongly oopsed the rest of the court, which upheld the hotel's responsibility to pay. Brown saw this as an unfair attack on private property, asserting that the government was committing a "theft" and that this was an example of "turning a democracy into a kleptocracy."