No Unanimous Verdict on Judicial Nominee

Re “A Mushroom Cloud Hovers Over a Bush Judicial Nominee,” Commentary, May 18: After reading Patt Morrison’s column, “tone of dismissive arrogance” would have been an apt lead, it seems to me. As an American history teacher in an earlier life, I marvel at the discussion today of what characteristics are important in a nominee for a higher court appointment.

Morrison informs us that judicial nominee California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown “lectures her colleagues,” has a “tone of dismissive arrogance” in her writings and dealings with colleagues, has a “compelling life story” and zings sardonic critiques, etc. Obviously, she’s not made of the right stuff. It used to be that a whiskey-drinking friend of the president or his law professor at Harvard were acceptable nominees -- and became great justices. Today, we are concerned about whether nominees measure up in the “works well with others” category. How far we’ve come!

Joe Zeronian

Pasadena

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Why is it so often these days that so-called conservatives in government twist the truth to achieve and maintain their positions of power? Bush federal judgeship nominee Brown says, “Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies.” We get “a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”

Morrison is correct to call Brown on this claptrap. Social Security causes civil society to disintegrate? Medicare leads to a debased, debauched culture? Environmental protection means we lose community? Public education robs us of our ability to control our own destiny? I think it far more likely that Republican lies and policies of societal neglect lead to the horrors Brown cites: a disastrous war based on untruths, exacerbation of global warming, allowing corporations and the military to pollute our environment with impunity, political favors to war profiteers like Halliburton, enriching the uber-wealthy at the expense of the country’s fiscal health, and much more.

In nominating dysfunctional candidates like Brown to the federal bench, President Bush demonstrates once again that he and his gang of Republican thugs are not only morally bankrupt but that they will do anything to achieve and maintain power.

Paula Berinstein

Thousand Oaks