Bork-I need a quick history lesson.

[Skidmore]

I was living overseas during the Bork nomination process and wasn't able to track on this nomination. What exactly were the objections to Bork and what made the nominatio so contentious. I remember something in the news I was able to get at the time about marijuana, but I know there was much more to it than that.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. The Ginsburg Nomination

was torpedoed because he smoked dope with his students at Harvard....



Bork's nomination was torpedoed because he's a fascist imho...

[TahitiNut]

2. Robert Bork is a blind authoritarian ideologue

He deploys his considerable intellect in building rhetorical parapets on ethical quicksand. He's the poster child for misinterpretation of the Constitution as a document that confers civil liberties rather than a document, legitimized by those civil liberties, which establishes a government with strict boundaries to prevent it from infringing upon any and all civil liberties, enumerated or not.

He's all too willing to permit democracy to commit suicide and sees 'strict construction' only when government infringes anew upon civil liberties and always as an apologetic warranting such infringements.

He's probably best caricatured as the dweeb that "never got any" during the 'summer of love." When I read his book "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," I saw nothing more clearly than someone obsessed with the spectre that someone, somewhere, might actually be enjoying themselves in a manner he himself is emotionally incapable of -- or is so tightly wrapped that he's been in constant danger of becoming a rabid pervert.

In short, he's a sociopath who sees government as his weapon.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. He Really Is Awful...

He has such a narrow view of the Constitution and the Ninth Amendment...

I wonder if he thinks Griswold was correctly decided...


He also ignores Hamilton's warnings about the tyranny of the majority...


My rights aren't up for plebiscite and nor did the writers of the Constitution intend it to be...

[TahitiNut]

7. One must ask, in all seriousness, why does he hate America?

"This is a book about American decline," he declares on page 2 of Slouching Towards Gomorrah. In fact, ours is "a degenerate society," "enfeebled, hedonistic," "subpagan," and headed for "ultimate degradation" in "the coming of a new Dark Ages." America's real problem, he proposes, is that Americans enjoy too much freedom, not too little. Throughout the book "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness" turn up as pejoratives.
http://reason.com/9704/fe.olson.shtml

This guy is a total sociopath -- apparently regarding a parental government as the only hope of a society of children engaging in some orgy of 'freedom.'

I'm virtually certain he doesn't regard Griswold v. Connecticut as correctly decided. In every respect, he seems to regard people as the chattel of the State in the same sense that children are the chattel of the patriarch - at least in his 18th century pseudo-universe. Bork has stated over and over again that he sees no "right of privacy" conferred by the Constitution. What's particularly telling is his use of the word "conferred" - as though the Constitution is the source of human rights rather than vice versa, It's appalling -- and abysmally common on the neoconservitive right wing.

[question everything]

10. And don't forget his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre"

during Watergate. When Nixon ordered his AG - Richardson - to fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, same for his depute - don't remember his name. Bork came to the rescue.

(Perhaps someone can fill this more accurately)

[TahitiNut]

11. The Deputy AG was Ruckelshaus. Bork was Solicitor General - and willing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

[htuttle]

3. It's what the Swedish Chef says

Bork, bork, bork!

[Inland]

4. The suspicion was that Bork was some sort of nutbag

with respect to reversing the precedents of the liberal Warren AND moderate Burger courts, which, after his defeat, was proven to be true.

You can google for the article where Bork states that he wishes that some local officials would openly defy Supreme Court Rulings and start the revolution where the majority rule would overcome supreme court rulings.

[mattclearing]

8. Roberts probably isn't much different on the issues, sadly.

But he looks much better on camera.

[TahitiNut]

9. Roberts differs no more than Rehnquist differs from Scalia.

Probably quite a bit less. What little there is plainly portrays the same authoritarian bent and propensity for governmental parentalism.

[Skidmore]

6. Thanks, everyone, for the info. That helps.

It fills in one of the gaps in my knowledge abit. I spent a decade overseas, 5 years of which I was pretty well cut off from much of the information about US events.