Filibuster?

And why were there no objections [meaning negative votes] to Robert Bork being confirmed for the Court of Appeals, then suddenly he was too 'extreme' to be qualified for the Supreme Court? Exactly how had he changed?

 

How would I know? It's not as though I've made a claim either way. I don't even know that there were none.

 

Ok, once more - did they know or believe that she was extremely liberal then? What evidence do you have?

Qualifications do matter and they include a willingness to recognize decided law instead of deciding based on one's one policitical beliefs.

 

This is an interesting argument, Daisy. Roe was not decided on "recognized law" but rather found a right that had not been seen for more than hundred years since hte 14th amendment was ratified. Yet that is what the Democrats want to know: "Will you recognize a law that was never actually passed? Will you recognize stare decisus when the decision itself was not based on stare decisus?" It is the height of inconsistency.

 

"Decided law" is the liberal code word for Roe v Wade, as we all know.

Recent history does not bear out your claims. Alito's confirmation would have had to be near unanimous based on qualifications alone.

 

http://hnn.us/articles/13357.html

When her nomination went to the Senate for confirmation Sen. William Cohen (R-Maine) stated bluntly that the nominee's ideology was rightly a matter of concern. But Cohen suggested during the hearings that judicial ideology should be used only to determine if the nominee's philosophy is "so extreme that it might call into question the usual confirmation prerequisites of competency and judicial temperament."

SNIP

When asked about her position on abortion Ginsburg was forthright, becoming the first nominee to expressly confirm that she believed in a woman's right to abortion. Despite her frank admission, few Republicans took the position that her embrace of abortion rulings disqualified her from a seat on the Court.

 

Really? Is that why John Roberts keeps using it?

 

Few Republicans are genuinely anti-abortion. Those closely associated with the religious right may be, though in some cases, looking at their actions once in office, there are even some of those I'd call into question.

I almost dropped my coffee cup on that morning back in January, 2000 when the nine Republican justices of the Texas Supreme Court overturned that state's parental consent law. I'd have thought that, at least in Texas, there would be some opposition or at least "token" opposition to abortion.

It's a political football that helps keep the religious right trading their votes for nothing. Republican candidates can vocally go on the record as being against abortion, call it "baby-killing" and not have to be in a position to do a blessed thing about it because they know it is in the hands of a Supreme Court that the last three Republican presidents have gone to great lengths to keep 5-4 for the pro-choice forces. In the highly unlikely event that the court ever chooses to hear a case that would affect the Roe decision, it may not even be that close.

The problem is that the pro-life position on abortion flies in the face of true Republican policy, which is to keep the government out of the private affairs and business of the citizens. Deep down, I think most Republicans see the pro-life position as an imposition on free enterprise capitalism.

 

And why were there no objections [meaning negative votes] to Robert Bork being confirmed for the Court of Appeals, then suddenly he was too 'extreme' to be qualified for the Supreme Court? Exactly how had he changed?

http://upordownvote.com/cgi/documents/display.cfm?doc=76
" In 1987 four members of the ABA's 15-member committee audaciously declared that D.C. appellate-court Judge Robert Bork was "not qualified" for the Supreme Court. That, despite the fact that the Senate had unanimously confirmed Judge Bork in 1982 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, for which the ABA had unanimously deemed him "well-qualified" and where he had participated in more than 400 decisions, not one of which had been overturned by the Supreme Court."