Who da judge? The N.R.A. will let you know
The N.R.A. at the Bench
By LINDA GREENHOUSE, NYT
There has been plenty written about the National Rifle Association in recent days. But nothing that I've seen has focused on the gun lobby's increasingly pernicious role in judicial confirmations. So here's a little story.
Back in 2009, when President Obama chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, the White House expected that her compelling personal story, sterling credentials, and experience both as a prosecutor and, for 17 years, as a federal judge would win broad bipartisan support for her nomination. There was, in fact, no plausible reason for any senator to vote against her.
The president's hope was Senator Mitch McConnell's fear. In order to shore up his caucus, the Senate Republican leader asked a favor of his friends at the National Rifle Association: oppose the Sotomayor nomination and, furthermore, "score" the confirmation vote. An interest group "scores" a vote when it adds the vote on a particular issue to the legislative scorecard it gives each member of Congress at the end of the session. In many states, an N.R.A. score of less than 100 for an incumbent facing re-election is big trouble.
Note that the N.R.A. had never before scored a judicial confirmation vote. Note also that Sonia Sotomayor had no record on the N.R.A.'s issues. (True, she voted with an appeals court panel to uphold New York State's ban on nunchucks, a martial-arts weapon consisting of two sticks held together with a chain or rope, commonly used by gang members and muggers. The appeals court didn't even reach the interesting issue of whether the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and bear nunchucks, ruling instead that the amendment didn't apply to the states - which, before the Supreme Court later ruled otherwise by a vote of 5 to 4, it didn't.)
(More here.)
By LINDA GREENHOUSE, NYT
There has been plenty written about the National Rifle Association in recent days. But nothing that I've seen has focused on the gun lobby's increasingly pernicious role in judicial confirmations. So here's a little story.
Back in 2009, when President Obama chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, the White House expected that her compelling personal story, sterling credentials, and experience both as a prosecutor and, for 17 years, as a federal judge would win broad bipartisan support for her nomination. There was, in fact, no plausible reason for any senator to vote against her.
The president's hope was Senator Mitch McConnell's fear. In order to shore up his caucus, the Senate Republican leader asked a favor of his friends at the National Rifle Association: oppose the Sotomayor nomination and, furthermore, "score" the confirmation vote. An interest group "scores" a vote when it adds the vote on a particular issue to the legislative scorecard it gives each member of Congress at the end of the session. In many states, an N.R.A. score of less than 100 for an incumbent facing re-election is big trouble.
Note that the N.R.A. had never before scored a judicial confirmation vote. Note also that Sonia Sotomayor had no record on the N.R.A.'s issues. (True, she voted with an appeals court panel to uphold New York State's ban on nunchucks, a martial-arts weapon consisting of two sticks held together with a chain or rope, commonly used by gang members and muggers. The appeals court didn't even reach the interesting issue of whether the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and bear nunchucks, ruling instead that the amendment didn't apply to the states - which, before the Supreme Court later ruled otherwise by a vote of 5 to 4, it didn't.)
(More here.)
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