WE CAN STOP ROBERTS AND THIS IS HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO IT

The Bolton Precedent

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.nocrony.com

The first thing we need to understand is that we the people have
the unilateral POWER, right now by ourselves, to stop John
Roberts. All that is required is the WILL for us to do it. He CAN
be stopped.

The second thing we need to understand is that Roberts represents
game, set and match for the dismantling of EVERY progressive court
we hold so dear. He MUST be stopped.

Roberts' proponents say that the president warned us he would put
forward a judge in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. We all know
their extreme biases. And yet in his hearing Roberts has
repeatedly denied that he has any policy values of his own, just
he has denied that he was a member of the Federalist society
(where he had a leadership role). Therefore, he is not only a
reactionary ideologue, he is a LYING reactionary ideologue, a
walking Trojan Horse of right wing policy initiatives. And that
makes him all the worse.

HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO IT (a practical plan)

Let's get right to the HOW. There are 44 Democratic senators and
one independent. Let us assume we will get no Republican votes
against. It is pointless to appeal to their constituency, who are
in fact in the minority if the truth be known. All we have to do
mobilize our OWN constituency. If we just do that we can have a
filibuster and we WIN.

Mobilize means for us, ALL of us, to get serious about getting
people to talk to their members of Congress. That is how the other
side has always done it. This is what we must do:

1. WEB SITE ACTIONS

All progressive blogs must FEATURE a prominent Stop Roberts action
center. If you have a web page of any kind, the absolute bare
minimum is to have in the top fold of your main index page (if not
on every page of your site) the toll-free Capitol telephone number
(877-762-8762), plus an exhortation to call your senators
specifically to oppose Roberts, and not in teeny-tiny type, but in
large bold type that nobody could miss.

If you want to do more, we have a dedicated action page at
http://www.nocrony.com that you can link to. It will send a
personal message directly to both of your senators, and at the
same time you can automatically send a Letter to the Editor of
your nearest daily newspaper all with just one click. You can copy
the "Tell our senators NO" button at the top of this page to put
on your site and you'll have the toll-free phone number right here
too. If you have another action page somewhere you like post a
PROMINENT featured link to that instead, but for heaven's sake DO
something.

If you have a mailing list of any kind of your own opt-ins, do a
mailing emphasizing the importance of this action and provide the
toll-free number AND link to http://www.nocrony.com. Direct email
is one of the most effective tools for generating messages to
Congress.

2. RADIO ACTIONS

All progressive radio personalities must dedicate part of EVERY
show to giving out the toll-free Senate phone number
(877-762-8762) and to rally your listeners to take action on this.
Don't just assume people know it already or can find it on their
own. PROMOTE it. Talk is not enough, not even close. We must
convert advocacy into ACTION. In the same way that a single run of
an ad on your radio station will not have sufficient impact
standing alone, you must make this a recurrent theme of your show
and keep REPEATING it, at least for the next week or so.

At the same time you can give out the URL of the main action page,
http://www.nocrony.com, or any other easy to say and remember web
address you like, to get people to email or phone or fax their
members of Congress. In addition all the other things above that
apply to other web sites apply to you as well. Feature the Senate
toll-free phone number and action links and do it prominently on
your main page, your blogs, and ideally on ALL your pages at least
in one of your side columns.

And as a listener of your favorite progressive radio show, call
in. Encourage them to get on the case to give out the toll-free
number, and to give out web links and post them on their sites.
Talk about this on the air when they put you on.

We must communicate to our members of Congress in every way that
this is a deal breaker for us. This particular nominee is a threat
to absolutely anything else Congress might try to do in the
future, as he UN-legislates from the bench. Any democrat who votes
for this nominee or even for cloture must never hold public office
in any capacity again and they must be made to understand this by
our emails, our faxes, our phone calls, and our letters to the
editor. We stopped Bolton (at least in the Senate) and we can and
will stop this nominee as well. To any remaining doubting Thomas's
we say this to you, "Defeatism is the treason of our own minds."

THE ARGUMENTS:

1. CONCEALMENT OF CRITICALLY RELEVANT DOCUMENTS

Some people thought that the compromise on the filibuster would
doom any opposition to offensive nominees, and indeed, some very
offensive ones were allowed to pass to obtain that compromise. And
yet, just three days later the Senate sustained a filibuster of
John Bolton (which continued to hold), on the grounds that the
administration was refusing to disclose documents relevant to the
consideration of the nominee. That is exactly the situation here.
They have totally frustrated any meaningful opportunity to
cross-examine this nominee by stonewalling access to any of his
memos from the last 20 years, materials that previous
administrations have always disclosed as to other Supreme Court
nominees.

The senators on the other side and the nominee in particular have
repeatedly complained about being asked about 20 year old
documents. Well, guess what, because of the bad faith refusal of
the administration to cooperate that's all we have to work from.
Mr. Roberts the lawyer would never even consider trying a case
without access to ALL the documents and evidence he had a RIGHT
to review. And just like Bolton, this nominee must be rejected
until and unless all relevant documents are produced.

2. AN UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT HAS NO PREROGATIVE

The primary argument we have heard from the other side is that
he's the president's choice and that should be enough. They are
saying in essence, "Ha, ha, we won the last election, too bad."
And yet now, just 10 months later, Mr. Bush is the most UNPOPULAR
second term president in history. His bad judgment in crisis after
crisis has brought shame and destruction to our country and cost
thousands if not tens of thousands of innocent American lives.
There are now too many dead bodies for even them to hide, though
they've tried that in New Orleans too. Bush's nominee Bolton, who
he stubbornly rammed through over the objections of the good
judgment of the Senate, has done nothing but create chaos and
disruption at the UN already, to the dismay of even our closest
ally, Great Britain. His selection of partisan cronies for FEMA
management positions crippled that agency's ability to protect us.
We no LONGER trust the choices of Mr. Bush.

If there were to be an election today, with his popularity in free
fall, there is no doubt Bush would be soundly defeated. And by
calling on people to contact their members of Congress, what we
are doing is calling for a NATIONAL REFERENDUM, by email, by fax,
by phone call and by letter to the editor, not only on this
nominee, but on the Bush presidency. If the other side wants to
rest their argument on whether this president has any mandate,
then let us demonstrate just how little support Bush actually
retains. Roberts will wreck the Supreme Court just as Bush has
wrecked every other aspect of our lives, and we must speak out now
to stop the looming catastrophe.

Indeed, even the last election would certainly have gone the other
way had it not been for widespread vote fraud and suppression,
COMBINED with the corrupt collaboration of the corporate
mainstream media in suppressing or ignoring any stories negative
to Bush's election prospects, and exaggerating the importance of
any stories smearing his opponents. Just yesterday there was a
story on the AP wire service with the headline "Roberts DODGES
questions about abortion," and yet within hours the word "dodge"
had disappeared from the Yahoo site and was REPLACED with a spin
job using the word "rebuff" and the word "abortion" was gone
too. This is scary, SCARY stuff. There's a Greek chorus out there
of big media voices trying to sell the public on this nominee like
it's a foregone conclusion, but still they have NOT heard from we
the people yet. Be ye not conned, this is not over no matter what
the talking heads say.

3. ROBERTS HAS NOT BEEN CANDID ABOUT HIS TRUE AGENDA

Who are they trying to kid? We ALL know exactly how Roberts is
going to rule. He's going to vote AGAINST us, we the people, and
in favor of every corporate special interest, in favor of absolute
power for the chief executive, every single time and without
exception. They know it, we know it, and Roberts himself knows it.
That's why all the most extreme reactionaries in the country are
so hot for this guy. And the shame of it is that this nominee will
not even admit he has an opinion on PAST cases upon which we have
come to trust on and rely. Even worse, for all his theoretical
legal platitudes about stare decisis he has been breathtaking in
leaving the door open that under him it would be open season on
revisiting just about every progressive court decision of the last
100 years, if only a case were to come before him.

The Republican senators on the judiciary committee have repeatedly
encouraged the nominee to NOT answer questions on the merits, to
be evasive and call it integrity. Roberts has testified at length
and said absolutely nothing of substance, like the enormously
slick lawyer he is. But one interesting thing he did say is that
as a lawyer he could take EITHER side of a case and make a
reasonable argument. And you better believe that in ruling against
us time after time, he will always find a CLEVER way to make
extremism sound reasonable, and that is precisely why he is so
dangerous. He said it is not the job of a lawyer to have a
position on the issues, but ultimately it IS the job of a judge.
The law is not just a mechanical exercise in applying precedents
to the facts. All judges have values that they bring to every
case, which they at last must fall back on. And in not disclosing
the agenda that his entire career strongly suggests that he has,
he does NOT deserve and cannot be trusted with the job of a
Supreme Court judge, let alone chief justice.

The American people now understand that they were sold a
dishonest bill of goods in the last election and are having big
time buyer's remorse. As recently as a year ago Mr. Bush seemed
to many like a wise and capable leader, but now many more realize
the depth of his perverse bad judgment. The only reason why he has
not ALREADY been called out for impeachment for his many crimes
and catastrophes is because the Republican party cares more about
their own power than the good of the American people. He has
wrecked our economy, our budget, our military, and in the exercise
of his criminal negligence now an entire major U.S. city. But
still he will be removed eventually. It is not so easy to remove
an equally destructive Supreme Court chief justice.

And superficially Mr. Roberts may seem like a nice, reasonable
guy. That is the biggest lie of all. His hearing responses bear an
uncanny resemblance to a press conference with Scott McClellan,
only infinitely more smooth. He might as well have said over and
over, "Again, we're not going to get into playing the agenda
game." In fact, for all we know he is WORSE than the flaming
reactionary that peeks through some of his early memos, he's just
gotten a lot better at concealing it. A person who claims to stand
for nothing is the very DEFINITION of someone with an agenda. If
he would just be honest with the American people, we might
consider him on that basis. His failure to evidence any such
candor makes his rejection mandatory.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Nobody expected Roberts to beat himself. We all expected a
masterful exercise in dodging any questions about what he really
stood for. The reactionary elements who are pushing this guy were
not going to repeat the Bork mistake, who spoke freely and was
quite forthcoming about his positions on the issues, and who left
a wide paper trail of statements, writings and speeches. Instead
they have spent decades grooming a stealth candidate, with little
visible record, and are trying to hustle him into the top slot of
the Supreme Court before anybody else can get a handle on what
they are really voting for.

Never before has a judge been pushed upward with such rash haste.
The idea that a president with plummeting popularity should have
carte blanche to appoint any closet reactionary he likes is
absurd. We don't want a pig in a poke for chief justice. Give us
a nominee for the Supreme Court with a track record. Give us a
nominee with enough opinions out there so that we know who it is
that is actually going to control every aspect of all of our
lives for the rest of all of our lives. Tell your senators that
if Roberts gets the job IT WILL SURELY COST THEM THEIR OWN. They
will get the message and we will win.

We stopped Bolton and everyone thought it was a miracle. It was
not. We generated 30,000 emails opposing Bolton, each to two
senators. And we're going to stop Roberts, all we have to do is
believe. It is said that evil can only prevail when good people
do nothing.

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.nocrony.com

Forward this email to everyone you know, and encourage its
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originally posted by The Pen to pain-in-the-law