Terwijl de wereld naar VS vs Irak kijkt, nomineert Bush:

[Gatara]

Michael Moore:
STOP EXTREMIST JUDICIAL NOMINEES

The Bush Administration is continuing its aggressive efforts to remake the Federal appeals courts by nominating ideologically driven candidates. While much of the public's attention is distracted by the drumbeat of war, Mr. Bush and his conservative allies continue to push through candidates who will tilt critical appeals courts for decades to come. If approved, these nominees receive lifetime appointments and are often considered for the Supreme Court. Last year, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected two of the most damaging candidates, Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering, yet Bush has resubmitted both of them again this year in hopes of being able to push them through via the new Republican majority in the Senate. Along with Miguel Estrada, Deborah Cook and Jeffrey Sutton, these conservative Bush nominees must be rejected. You can find more information on each of these people
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

Information on Judicial Nominees
Background Material Provided by People for the American Way

* Charles Pickering Sr., a federal district court judge from Mississippi, was re-nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals despite his rejection by the Senate Judiciary Committee for the same seat in March 2002. Pickering has consistently displayed insensitivity and hostility towards fundamental civil rights laws and precedents. As a judge, he has gone out of his way to criticize crucial civil rights principles, such as "one-person, one-vote", to disparage plaintiffs in civil rights cases, and to commit unethical conduct in seeking a lighter sentence for a convicted cross-burner. He has been reversed 15 times for violating "well-settled principles of law" in constitutional rights and other cases. As a state senator, Pickering opposed Roe v. Wade and voted against the Equal Rights Amendment. He also sought to repeal or gut the Voting Rights Act and voted to fund and had contact with the infamous, anti-civil rights Sovereignty Commission, despite his denial to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a law student, Pickering advised the Mississippi legislature on how it could better enforce its ban on interracial marriage. Legislators later enacted his recommendations.


* Priscilla Owen, a Federalist Society member and currently a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, was nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Owen has been criticized as one of two judges on the "far right wing" of the conservative Texas court, further to the right than President Bush's own appointees to that court when he was governor. In one decision in which she dissented, Owen called for a very narrow view of a state law concerning the ability of minors to obtain an abortion without parental notification. Then-Texas Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales - who is now chief White House counsel - warned that adopting the dissenters' view would be an "unconscionable act of judicial activism." (This was only one of 11 cases in which Gonzales criticized or joined other justices' criticism of positions taken by Owen.) In another dissent, Owen effectively sought to rewrite an important state civil rights law to make it much harder for employees to prove that their rights were violated. Owen's confirmation was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 5, 2002.


* Jeffrey Sutton, an officer in the Federalist Society's Separation of Powers and Federalism practice group, was nominated to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sutton has been criticized for his extensive efforts as a lawyer to severely limit federal protections against discrimination and injury based on disability, race, age, sex, and religion. More than 70 national organizations and over 375 regional, state, and local groups have opposed his confirmation. Sutton has vigorously advocated going further even than the current 5-4 Supreme Court majority in restricting Congress' authority to protect civil rights. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Sutton was described even by one of his supporters as the "perfect kind of poster child for what Democrats see as prototypical George W. Bush judges."


* Miguel Estrada, a Federalist Society member and D.C. lawyer, was nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. His confirmation has been opposed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and serious concerns about his nomination have been raised by many other Latino and civil rights groups. He has been criticized for extensive efforts to defend so-called anti-loitering laws, which have been shown to have a disproportionately negative effect on African-Americans and Latinos; in one case, he argued that the NAACP did not even have standing to challenge such an ordinance. A former supervisor in the Solicitor General's office concluded that Estrada "lacks the judgment" and is "too much of an ideologue to be an appeals court judge." Estrada's refusal to fully answer a number of important questions asked by senators during his fall confirmation hearing requires that his nomination should be returned to the Judiciary Committee for another hearing.


* Deborah Cook, a justice on the Ohio Supreme Court, was nominated to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. One of the most frequent dissenters on her court, Cook's judicial record has prompted strong opposition to her confirmation from Ohio organizations concerned with protecting individual, civil, and consumer rights. According to Ohio Citizen Action, Cook's dissents "reveal a callousness toward the rights of ordinary citizens which offends any reasonable sense of justice." For example, in one case in which Cook dissented from a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court favorable to a disabled worker, the court majority criticized her opinion as "confused," "lack[ing] [in] statutory support for its position," "pure fantasy," and "entirely without merit." In another case, Cook dissented from a ruling by the court striking down a state law that would have made it virtually impossible for an employee to recover damages from an employer caused by an intentional tort committed by the employer.
http://www.workingassets.com/judicialinfo.cfm

en terwijl iedereen gericht is op de houding van de VS naar IRAK en de VN, wordt de geschiedenis van de Amerikaanse VN ambassadeur Negroponte voor het gemak vergeten, terwijl je daar toch echt vraagtekens bij kunt zetten in de trant van: "is de VS binnen de VN en naar de VN toe wel geloofwaardig met een dergelijke ambassadeur?"

John Negroponte, UN Ambassador
(...)
But his resumé conceals the darker side of Negroponte. (...) Indeed, Negroponte has a reputation, even among some U.S. diplomats who served with him, both for "doggedly defending U.S. interests overseas" and for "making sure human rights don't get in the way." Wildman finds this particularly problematic, since "one of the primary responsibilities of George W. Bush's new ambassador to the United Nations will be to berate countries like China, Burma, and Afghanistan for their violations of human rights."

The Negroponte nomination is coupled with Bush's decision to downgrade the United Nations ambassadorship position by depriving it of Cabinet rank. This decision raises concerns that the Republican White House will become as hostile to the UN as congressional conservatives have been since the 1994 Republican takeover. U.S.-UN tensions eased in the final months of the Clinton administration after Washington managed to strike a deal to pay the bulk of its UN dues, but now there are fears that the Bush team will seek to denigrate and defund the international organization.

(...)
But it was during his tour as ambassador to Honduras that Negroponte earned his reputation for being soft on human rights abuses. From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, where he helped prosecute the contra war against Nicaragua and helped strengthen the military dictatorship in Honduras. Under the helm of General Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was disappearing dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion. Negroponte's predecessor, Ambassador Jack Binns, had repeatedly warned Washington to take a stand to stop the killings. In one cable, Binns reported that General Alvarez was modeling his campaign against suspected subversives on Argentina's "dirty war" in the 1970s. Indeed, Argentine military advisers were in Honduras, both advising Alvarez's armed forces and assembling and training a contra army to fight in Nicaragua. President Reagan responded by removing Binns and putting in Negroponte, who, writes Eric Alterman in an MSNBC.com piece, "turned a deliberate blind eye to a murderous pattern of political killings."

On Negroponte's watch, diplomats quipped that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina. Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte, says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation in Honduras. In a 1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The Country Report on Human Rights Practices that the embassy submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there were "no political prisoners in Honduras" and that the "Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Yet, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still missing.


During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras, a country of five million, skyrocketed from $3.9 million to $77.4 million. Much of this largesse went to assure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against political leftists throughout Central America. Embassy reports to Washington singled out for particular praise army chief Alvarez, a School of the Americas graduate who was direct commander of Battalion 316.

In 1996, when Negroponte was sent to Panama as the U.S. negotiator regarding military bases, the Human Rights Research Center of Panama objected. Negroponte, they said, covered up human rights abuses and, according to the BBC, "knew about the CIA-trained Honduran army unit that tortured and killed alleged subversives." In a 1997 roundtable gathering at the Center for International Policy, Sun reporter Cohn noted that Negroponte was central to the human rights violations. Said Cohn, "He was ambassador when the worst of the abuses were taking place. He knew everything that was going on." "Not exactly the moral sensibility you want in a UN ambassador," notes New Republic's Wildman.


http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org...tml#negroponte

[Gatara]

<sorry dat het in het engels was>

[Sokrates]

Hmmmmmm... niet zo'n fijne situatie. Ik hoop dat de democraten daar iets tegen gaan doen. Such a same dat 75% van Amerika alleen maar uit boerenpummels bestaat die de hele dag op minderheden zitten af te geven.

[Gatara]

Sokrates schreef:
Hmmmmmm... niet zo'n fijne situatie. Ik hoop dat de democraten daar iets tegen gaan doen. Such a same dat 75% van Amerika alleen maar uit boerenpummels bestaat die de hele dag op minderheden zitten af te geven.

Niet al te pessimistisch zijn; het zal wel minder dan 75% zijn....
of heb je een bron dat dit getal noemt?

[Sokrates]

Gatara schreef:
Niet al te pessimistisch zijn; het zal wel minder dan 75% zijn....
of heb je een bron dat dit getal noemt?

Even zoeken.

Ik weet iig. dat ze witte beddenlakens aanhebben

[Diovai]

Gaat dit over rechtbanken? Waar gaat het uberhaupt over?

[Sokrates]

Diovai schreef:
Gaat dit over rechtbanken? Waar gaat het uberhaupt over?

Dat er (extreem-)rechtse juryleden bij de Hoge Raad worden gevoegd.Kwalijke zaak, zeker als je leest wat ze 'menen' (hoewel ik mijn twijfels zet bij de schrijver, gezien hij de enige bron die daarover schrijft)

[Gatara]

en het tweede gedeelte gaat over de geloofwaardigheid van de VS ten opzichte van de VN (aangaande Negroponte)

[Isa]

Heb alleen ehet eerste stuk gelezen, en als iemand tegen interraciale huwelijken is vind ik dat dat mag.
Vrijheid van meningsuiting.
Dat is ook wat ervoor zorgt dat wij mochten demonstreren.

[Sokrates]

Kenny McCormick schreef:
Heb alleen ehet eerste stuk gelezen, en als iemand tegen interraciale huwelijken is vind ik dat dat mag.
Vrijheid van meningsuiting.

Fijn, maar waar ligt de grens? Waar ligt de grens waar je kunt zeggen van "Ok, dit kan nog net" en "Dit is al te ver". Waar Dhr. Pickering het over heeft is dat de gekleurde medemens minderwaardig zijn, puur omdat ze gekleurd zijn. Jezus, het is wel erg lang geleden dat ik iets van eugenetici heb gehoord, maar hier schrik ik toch wel van, omdat het van een publiek en prominent persoon komt. Hij is de grens overschreden en dát is gevaarlijk

[Gatara]

Kenny McCormick schreef:
Heb alleen ehet eerste stuk gelezen, en als iemand tegen interraciale huwelijken is vind ik dat dat mag.
Vrijheid van meningsuiting.
Dat is ook wat ervoor zorgt dat wij mochten demonstreren.

En wat als dat in de wet wordt vastgelegd omdat 1 of andere malloot in het leiderschap dat vindt?

En wat als hij zijn negatief gedachtengoed wb interraciale huwelijken gebruikt in rechtzaken (bv. twee gezinnen hebben ruzie met elkaar. De 1 is een interraciaal gezin, de ander niet. Bij een dergelijke malloot krijgt het laatste gezin het voordeel van de twijfel terwijl dat helemaal niet het geval kan zijn).

En btw, lees ook even het tweede gedeelte over negroponte

[aldi - PUNK]

ai, kwalijke zaak

Ach ja. Als Bush nog een ambtstermijn aan blijft, zullen de rechters in Amerika wel witte lakens moeten dragen, en wordt er bij het binnenbrengen van een zwarte verdachte een kruis in brand gestoken.

[Gatara]

nare man schreef:
Ach ja. Als Bush nog een ambtstermijn aan blijft, zullen de rechters in Amerika wel witte lakens moeten dragen, en wordt er bij het binnenbrengen van een zwarte verdachte een kruis in brand gestoken.

Die Rice en Powell zijn anders niet echt wit. Dus betwijfel of Bush het zo ver laat komen

Nou niet TE extreem over die cowboy gaan denken, he?

Gatara schreef:
Die Rice en Powell zijn anders niet echt wit. Dus betwijfel of Bush het zo ver laat komen

Rice en Powell zijn niets meer dan excuusnegers (excusez le mot). Af en toe kom je ze tegen: negers die ongelooflijk fanatiek tegen hun eigen ras tekeer gaan. Denk aan de zwarte agenten in New York die hartstikke racistisch zijn, denk aan de zwarte rechters in de rechtbanken van de VS die zelf net zo vooringenomen zijn als de ergste blanken.

[CraigDavid]

o o
stont aan de knikker