Do Not Let Appeals Court Nominee Janice Rogers Brown Take the Federal Bench

For a while now I have joined in lockstep with the Democratic and liberal forces fighting the nuclear option supported by the Republican side which urges the Senate to vote straight up for all ten nominees supported by George W. Bush and his right wing cronies i.e. V. P. Dick Cheney and Tom De Lay. But it wasn’t until I read some of the rulings made by Janice Rogers Brown, nominee for the Federal Appeals Court that I saw just how important the fight is to keep her and people like her off the federal bench and hopefully, never in reach of a Supreme Court position.

Below are some of the main points and Brown decisions Sen. Ted Kenney raised taken from the website Ted.Kennedy.com.

Major Points
• 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.
(TedKennedy.com)

I am appalled by what I have read above and in more detail in other places. Judge Brown also believes that government is a disruptive force in our society and leads to all kinds of unfortunate outcomes. She blames most if not all of the ills of society on government. I think she is to the right of a libertarian politically speaking. Libertarians are more liberal when it comes to Gay rights and abortion than she is.

How this woman could be a judge at all is beyond my wildest imagination. If promoted to a higher court in the land, she will help or even lead Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas types to a complete undoing of all that protections and rights that most of us hold dear. The right to have redress if one is injured or is deprived of a constitutional right, separation of church and state, right for a woman to control her own body (to any degree), any progress on the environmental front, the right to be different. She would let the fundamentalist’s rule all our lives. I am more than appalled by her decisions and what she stands for. And on top of all this, it is Janice Brown who people like Orrin Hatch are pushing to support and defending from criticism as though because she is African American, an African American like Clarence Thomas is who has absolutely no respect for the work of civil rights pioneers and the laws that still protect people who are discriminated against based on skin color. She would take all protections away from all minorities.

One only can wonder what creates this kind of political thinking. Is it an attempt to be accepted by those in power, is it a misguided way of proving I don’t need anybody or anything to get ahead and no one else should either. In her case, it is obvious her race is being used by Bush to prop up his side to make the Democrats look as if it is they who are being racist. Everything gets turned on its head by these nimble minded right wing Republicans. I fear the compromise that will come out of the Senate on this one. It certainly took me a long time to see what was really at stake. I was on the right side but now I am awake.