# Senator Leahy, have you no sense of decency? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 5, 2002, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167 "2002-09-05T18:35:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/41 "2002-09-06T18:37:49Z")
\<\\> I actually agree with this, as regards Owen. (Quibble: " sticking their heads in the sand" isn’t quite right. More like “instread of giving phony excuses.”) In a way the Democrats had no choice but to 'fess up, because Owen was a flawless candidate. They couldn’t demonize her as a racist (Pickering), an incompetent (Thomas), a drug-user (Ginsberg), a mean-spirited weirdo (Bork), or any of the other excuses used in the past to defeat candidates whose real objection was ideology. I, for one, am sorry to see ideology become formally in play. You know a lot more than I do, **minty** , but my impression is that judges are not always that uniformly skilled. New ideological constraints may lead to a further reduction in general ability. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/42 "2002-09-06T18:51:06Z")
Well, **El Jeffe** , the distinguished Senior Senator from my adoptive state (NC) held up **every** nominee whom Pres. Clinton placed before the Senate for the Circuit Court of Appeals covering this area, with the net result that the circuit was down two judges and nobody from NC was serving on the court. This was over a multi-year span, so the question of timing is invalid. And Pres. Bush either nominated or was urged by leading Republicans to nominate (I cannot recall which) one of the Clinton selections, so it would appear that if that person was “grossly inappropriate” then leading Republicans, perhaps including the President, are advancing “grossly inappropriate” candidates for the judiciary. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/43 "2002-09-06T19:09:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Collounsbury \*BTW december, do look up the word substantive before making a non-substantive reply. I followed your advice, **Collounsbury** , and looked it up. Apparently you were using _Definintion 2_ > [@](#): > > Main Entry: sub·stan·tive > Pronunciation: 's&b-st&n-tiv; 2c and 3 also s&b-'stan-tiv > Function: adjective > Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin substantivus having substance, from Latin substantia > Date: 14th century > > 1. real rather than apparent : FIRM; also : PERMANENT, ENDURING > 2. indicating pomposity, bloated arrogance and puffy self-importance by the writer, as in an effort to demean the reader. In fact, there are two debates going on at the same time. One debate (call it #2) concerns whether Dem or Rep Senators have been worse in fulfilling their duty to vote on judicial appointments. On this score, both sides deserve a lot of criticism. The OP (call it #1) said that Democrats demonized Republican appointees much more typically than vice versa. On this score, I have provided some cites and quotes. The opposition has responded, but I believe the current state of the evidence tends to support the OP. Note **minty’s** point that the Reps didn’t bring some nominees up for a vote, which he says had an identical result to voting them down. He’s right as regards debate #2. However, as regards debate #1, the deserving judges who weren’t brought up for a vote at least were not slandered, as Pickering and Owen were. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/44 "2002-09-06T19:16:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by december \* > \*\*However, I support Lott’s statement. If the Democrats are choosing to delay Republican Hispanic nominees so as to keep Hispanics in the Democratic fold, that could be looked at as mere hardball politics. But, it would mean that Democrats put their political success ahead of Hispanic progress. That’s not really racism, but it comes close. It’s surely nothing to boast about. > \*\* Well, what’s that saying? “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle”? For one thing, the Democrats don’t seem to be choosing to delay Republican Hispanic nominees…they chose to delay Estrada’s nomination. The only people who brought up that Estrada was a Hispanic were the Republicans. It’s possible the Democrats didn’t confirm him because they didn’t like him or his judicial philosophy. Besides, Lott’s statement doesn’t suggest that Democrats have some Machiavellian strategy to keep Hispanics from voting Republican by condemning and voting against notable Hispanics (how would that work, anyway?) Lott’s statement suggests that Democrats don’t want to confirm Hispanics because they don’t like them. Let’s say I were to say, “Mr. Smith didn’t hire Bill because Bill is black.” While it’s possible Mr. Smith has some reason other than racism for not hiring blacks, all things considered, racism or prejudice is a good bet. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/45 "2002-09-06T19:59:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by december \* > I followed your advice, **Collounsbury** , and looked it up. Vaguely amusing, pity you didn’t actually follow my advice. > [@](#): > > The OP (call it #1) said that Democrats demonized Republican appointees much more typically than vice versa. On this score, I have provided some cites and quotes. The opposition has responded, but I believe the current state of the evidence tends to support the OP. Of course you _believe_ that. Should you have actually integrated anything of substance into your debate and subsequent responses, I might have expected to see pigs outside my window, gracefully winging their way across town. > [@](#): > > Note **minty’s** point that the Reps didn’t bring some nominees up for a vote, which he says had an identical result to voting them down. He’s right as regards debate #2. However, as regards debate #1, the deserving judges who weren’t brought up for a vote at least were not slandered, as Pickering and Owen were. Perhaps december, just for the sheer novelty value. you might care to read over citations provided, including certain characterizations (ex-hearings) offered by your sinless, blameless co-ideologues in the service of their upstanding something or other in regards to Clintonian nominees. Pox on both houses. The rank hypocrisy of squeeling about the process is really … astounding. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/46 "2002-09-06T20:11:44Z")
And you still don’t appear to recognize the definition of “slander” either, december. Calling an _uber_-conservative an _uber_-conservative is not slander because it is true. Owen is, politically and judicially, an extremely conservative judge. Hence, where’s the damn slander you keep asserting without even a semblance of evidence? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/47 "2002-09-06T20:47:13Z")
**december** surely you are aware that, according the the Treaty of Westphalia, as amended by the Diet of Worms, excerpting from a dictionary toward sarcastic and/or obfuscatory ends is strictly _verboten_. You are given to assume that no one on this board, least of all the esteemed **Colloun** , is in need of vocabulary building. As to the unvarnished non partisan veracity of Trent Lott…you gotta be kidding! If Ol’ “WorldCom” Trent were to swear to me that pigs dont fly, I would immediatly sink my entire investment portfolio into umbrella manufacturers. _Pig poop keeps fallin on my head…_ ---
**Author:** ![ElJeffe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/958977/32.png) [@ElJeffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElJeffe)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/48 "2002-09-06T20:48:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, El Jeffe, the distinguished Senior Senator from my adoptive state (NC) held up every nominee whom Pres. Clinton placed before the Senate for the Circuit Court of Appeals covering this area, with the net result that the circuit was down two judges and nobody from NC was serving on the court. This was over a multi-year span, so the question of timing is invalid. What a lovely statistical blip you have there. Not that it really does much to refute the suggestion that, overall, Clinton deliberately picked nominees destined to lose. FWIW, I don’t necessarily believe that it’s true, I just found the aforementioned commentaries interesting. It certainly sounds like something Clinton would do, but that doesn’t mean he did it. > [@](#): > > And Pres. Bush either nominated or was urged by leading Republicans to nominate (I cannot recall which) one of the Clinton selections, so it would appear that if that person was “grossly inappropriate” then leading Republicans, perhaps including the President, are advancing “grossly inappropriate” candidates for the judiciary. Actually, he nominated two of Clinton’s selections. And just because some of Clinton’s nominees were bad picks, that doesn’t mean all of them, or the two that were re-nominated by Bush. I don’t know why the two re-nominees were never confirmed, whether it was for ideological reasons, time constraints, chronic halitosis, or what. Jeff ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/49 "2002-09-06T21:00:30Z")
Hey, **Minty** , you would probably know. Wasn’t Ms. Owen one of the Texas “justices” who asserted that the guy on trial for murder who’s lawyer fell asleep had gotten a fair trial? And has she made any public statement as regards that utterly disgusting fiasco in Tulia? ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/50 "2002-09-06T21:10:07Z")
**minty** , if Leahy had merely called Owen “very conservative,” or “_uber_-conservative,” I absolutely agree that would not be slander. When Leahy used the word, “extremism,” that was slander. He intended to demean her; that’s why he didn’t simply say “very conservative.” Teddy Kennedy is very liberal. If I accused him of extremism, that would be slanderous, but it wouldn’t hurt him. Nobody would believe it, because he’s already so well known. However, when the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee publicly accused Owen of “extemism,” that word created a nationwide reputation for her. What does the word suggest? I entered the word "extremist into _google_. Here are some hits I got:[ul][li]Hate On Display: A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos[_]Gangs and Extremist Groups[_]Education may be key to extremist actions… Terrorism has little or nothing to do with economics[/ul]Using the word _extremism_ lumps Owen in with hate groups, gangs, and terroists in the public mind.[/li] I wondered whether you were going to make another argument. Leahy’s statement isn’t actionable as slander because it was spoken on the floor of the Senate. Anything said there is legally protected. However, the word “slander” simply means “a false and defamatory oral statement,” so it’s appropriate to use the word, even though Judge Owen has no legal recourse. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/51 "2002-09-06T21:13:32Z")
\<\. Some people will do anything to lose weight. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/52 "2002-09-06T21:33:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elucidator \* > \*\*Hey, **Minty** , you would probably know. Wasn’t Ms. Owen one of the Texas “justices” who asserted that the guy on trial for murder who’s lawyer fell asleep had gotten a fair trial? No, absolutely not. The Texas Supreme Court handles only civil cases. Criminal cases go to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the court I described earlier as a total disgrace. **december:** “Extremism” is not slander, for it is not false, and your google search on the term is just stupid. Try searching on “liberal” and see how many negative references you turn up. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/53 "2002-09-06T22:08:25Z")
\<\<“Extremism” is not slander, for it is not false, and your google search on the term is just stupid. Try searching on “liberal” and see how many negative references you turn up.\>\> I did as you suggested, and I found no negative references on the first google page. The negative references I cited above to “extremist” were all from the first page. On the second page, I did find _“Hollywood liberals are a mass of contradictions.”_ That’s certainly negative, but it pales in comparison to the terrorists, gangs, and hate groups that correspond to the word “extremist.” Here’s an interesting quote > [@](#): > > Centrist/extremist theorists portrayed the political mainstream as an "open democratic market place"21 where a rich array of interest groups competed freely and fairly, and where “the sources of power” were "difficult to locate."22 The center was a realm of political civility, pragmatism, rationality, and tolerance. The extremes were the opposite of all this: absolutist, moralistic, unrestrained, irrational, and paranoid. “[T]he extreme right,” wrote Hofstadter, "stands psychologically outside the frame of normal democratic politics, which is largely an affair of compromise."23 The difference could be expressed as one between "interest politics, the clash of material aims and needs among various groups and blocs; and status politics, the clash of various projective rationalizations arising from status aspirations and other personal motives."24 > > From this perspective, differences between the “radical right” and the “radical left” blurred or disappeared altogether. To Bell, far right conspiracy thinking was "cut from the same cloth as vulgar Bolshevik explanation…"25 To Alan Westin, the politics of the John Birch Society were “remarkably similar” to those of the Popular Front in 1945-48.26 [http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Repression-and-ideology-02.htm](http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Repression-and-ideology-02.htm) This seems to suggest that _extremist_ is the what the the left calls the radical right, just as the right might call the radical left bolshevist. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/54 "2002-09-06T23:24:44Z")
So, you wanna defend scumbag Senator Ashcroft for calling Ronnie White “pro-criminal” and saying he was opposed to capital punishment? ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/55 "2002-09-06T23:38:20Z")
gee **Minty** - are you suggesting that saying the judge was ‘pro-criminal’ is slanderous, like \*\*december \*\* keeps claiming those nasty Dems were? ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2002, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/56 "2002-09-06T23:47:24Z")
It’s closer to slander than anything he’s come up with. But I’m also trying to remember that I didn’t come here to argue his nonsensical thesis that the Senate Democrats are somehow worse than the Senate Republicans were during the Clinton administration. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/57 "2002-09-07T00:19:40Z")
I, too, will not deign to put forth the thesis that **the Senate Republicans are much, much worse that the Senate Democrats** Certainly not. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/58 "2002-09-07T00:28:21Z")
Yes, I certainly consider it slanderous for Ashcrot to have called Ronnie White “pro-criminal.” I already had criticized the Republican slandering of White. Republicans are not perfect (duh!), but at this moment, on this issue, Dems are worse. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/59 "2002-09-07T00:38:53Z")
Yet they’re also virtually identical to the Republicans who preceded them. So what’s your point? ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2002, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167/60 "2002-09-07T00:50:59Z")
My point is that we have seen one case of Republican slander and 5 instances of Democratic slander. The Republican slander was an exception; the Democratic slander is a pattern. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/senator-leahy-have-you-no-sense-of-decency/127167.md?page=4)