Laurence Silberman: jurist, partisan, pig

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

The prez's "honorable" and "independent" WMD panel co-chair:


http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/06/tapped-s-06-03.html

... SO SUE HIM. Meanwhile, we're back on the case of U.S. Court of Appeals judge Laurence Silberman. Of course, it's one man's word against another -- but we haven't heard anyone suggest that David Brock's charges against him are untrue. Again, these were Brock's charges, as recounted in Blinded by the Right:

A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades, Larry would often preface his advice to me with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics -- "That would be improper," he'd say -- and then forge ahead anyway. He was a behind-the-scenes advisor to the conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press ... Larry told me the malevolent media forces were at work in the smearing of Thomas... it had been none other than Judge Silberman who gave me the false information on his colleague Pat Wald, whom he hated with a passion ... Shortly after I dropped off the chapter called "Trial by Leak" ... my telephone rang in Woodley Park. Ricky and Larry were literally squealing with joy about the case I had constructed implicating Simon, a vocal critic of Silberman's during the judge's own confirmation hearing. They were passing the phone to each other, marveling at my "genius" at the top of their lungs. "You've got him. You nailed him. You fucked him. You killed him," they sang.

...Though he was a sitting federal judge who would rule on matters to which the Clinton administration was a party, Larry strongly urged me to go forward. By now, after his almost daily dealings with me as I wrote The Real Anita Hill, Larry must have known I always deferred to his judgment. He also had keen psychological insight ... Sitting in his favorite tan leather club chair, Scotch in hand, the judge told me he felt sure that if the same story had been written about Ronald Reagan, it would have toppled him from office. Clinton, he surmised, might be toppled as well.

...I was supporting the button one warm spring night at the Silbermans'; as we met for one of our frequent dinnertime brainstorming sessions. With its possibility of tying Clinton in legal knots, the Jones case had electrified Ricky and Larry, as it had much of conservative Washington...

The right-wing machine was gearing up, right there in the Silbermans' kitchen....

If any of this is untrue, Silberman sure hasn't challenged it.