Bush rejects ratings by American Bar Association

The American Bar Association is in a snit because President Bush has ended its semi-official role in rating prospective Supreme Court justices and Federal judges. Boohoo on liberal lawyers.

President Dwight Eisenhower, a nominal Republican having no political experience, asked the ABA to rate prospective Supreme Court justices. The analyses then and thereafter were generally objective and accepted -- until President Ronald Reagan in 1987 nominated Federal Judge Robert Bork.

Many lawyers by that time had become polarized by social causes during the Kennedy-Vietnam upheaval. Subsequent years of liberal Supreme courts created social laws even Democrat Congresses would not enact.

Corollary to liberalization of the court was a cohort of young lawyers who had become accustomed to bypassing the legislative process.  

ABA liberals went ballistic when Judge Bork – a highly regarded constitutionalist -- was nominated to be a justice. No matter that during his nomination for a Court of Appeals judgeship he had been rated qualified by the ABA, and praised generously by the Senate.  

The vicious attack of slander and false accusations against Bork when nominated to the Supreme Court was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. The campaign gave rise to a new verb – “bork” – to signify character assassination by preposterous lies. Judge Bork was dismissed ignobly.

The same tactics were used against Clarence Thomas – another constitutionalist -- by a cadre of flat-out lying liberals led by Lawyer Anita Hill. She later boasted they concocted the outrageous charges to “bork him.”

However, Senate liberals were afraid to outright reject Thomas who was a prominent black heading the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. After destroying his credibility, Democrat assassins on the Senate Judiciary Committee passed him by a narrow vote. Still today, however, liberals sneer at one of the most decent, able justices on the court.  

The ABA does its dirty work through a 15-member Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary. Every member is a card-carrying liberal.

The members express their bias through a cockamamie label system: WQ for well qualified, WQ/Q for second rate, Q for barely qualified, Q/NQ for not quite qualified, and NQ for bottom of the barrel.  

Of 14 recent Democrat judges nominated, eight were ranked WQ. Three received the WQ/Q. The three remaining judges were ranked Q. Not one Democrat judge was deemed unqualified.

Of 14 judges nominated by Republicans, only three received a middling Q. One of these was Thomas. The other 11 judges were designated Q/NQ – barely above being drawn and quartered in the public square.

Orin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee three years ago threw out the ABA rankings when considering judicial appointments.

He declared, “The ABA has taken the liberal position on controversial issues other than judicial -- abortion, affirmative action, flag desecration, religious liberty, use of evidence in sexual-assault cases, reform of the exclusionary rule, habeas corpus, prison conditions, mandatory minimum sentences, welfare, deportation of criminal aliens, medical and product liability and capital punishment.”  

Hillary Clinton, a former ABA commission chairman and keynote speaker at its 1992 convention, praised liar Anita Hill. Mrs. Clinton, now New York Senator, said all women who care about “integrity and morality in the workplace are in Professor Anita Hill’s debt.”

One wonders what Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Jenifer Flowers think of such ludicrous adulation.

ABA president in 1995, George Bushnell, called the new Republican congressional majority “reptilian bastards.” Hardly a neutral observation, even though consistently applied to Republican nominees for judgeships.

In 1998, then-ABA President Jerome Shestack, an avid Friend of Bill, saw nothing wrong with Bill Clinton’s lying under oath or being fined $90,000 for” misleading” a court. Yet, Shestack accused Special Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed by a three-judge panel to investigate Whitewater, of   “prosecutorial zeal.”

Decades of such bias prompted Bush’s decision announced Thursday by White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales. “The question is whether the ABA should play a unique, quasi-official role and then have its voice heard before and above all others. We do not think that kind of preferential arrangement is either appropriate or fair.”

ABA members still have the right to rate candidates for public office – just as all other special-interest groups. However, they no longer will have the privilege of prior investigation and personal interviews before public notice.

We have more than enough lawyers in Washington, D.C. Congress doesn’t need coaching from the sidelines by other lawyers.

PARTING SHOTS

Sen. Hillary Clinton has leased a home-district office in New York City -- down the street from hubby’s post-presidential office. Their official home is in the suburbs. A home-away-from-home is on standby in Washington, D.C. A pent-house apartment is to be built for them atop the Clinton Library in Little Rock. Shouldn’t they be required to get a Realtor’s license?

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Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned us of “irrational exuberance” in the stock market. Now, what can he do about rational panic?   

Williams – ABA Sunday – march 25, 2001

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Lindsey Williams is a Sun Columnist