Kerry's Floor Statement on Opposition to Roberts

[kerrygoddess]

Remarks by Senator John Kerry on His Opposition to Judge Roberts’ Nomination for Chief Justice
September 21st, 2005

Earlier I posted that John Kerry will vote NO on John Roberts nomination for Supreme Court Chief Justice. Below are Senator John Kerry’s full, prepared remarks on the floor of the Senate today on the upcoming vote on Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the United States:

Mr. President, we all know that there are few things the Senate does which are as important as confirming a Supreme Court Justice, let alone the Chief Justice of the United States. We know that making the decision to support or oppose a nominee is serious and complicated. We don’t need to belabor those points. What we do need to talk about is what kind of process must occur before a Senator can vote for or against a judicial nominee. What kind of information must be provided. What kind of discourse we must engage in.

I met with Judge Roberts last week. I really enjoyed our conversation. He is earnest, friendly, and incredibly intelligent. On a personal level, I liked him. He has dedicated his life to the law, has given back to the legal community, and is certainly a superb lawyer. It may turn out that he will be an outstanding Chief Justice, but I cannot say with confidence that I know how he will approach constitutional questions of fundamental importance.

I have read memos he wrote during the Reagan Administration. I have reviewed the limited materials available from his time in the Solicitor General’s office, where he worked under Ken Starr, and in private practice at Hogan and Hartson. I have read the cases that he has participated in on the D.C. Circuit. I have listened to the judiciary committee hearings, and I reviewed the transcripts.

MORE - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=629

[Mass]

1. Soundtrack

http://www.democrats.gov/actualities/kerry/kerry050921.mp3

[whometense]

2. Oh, thanks so much!!!!

I was hoping it would be available somewhere!!

[jillan]

3. I couldn't get it to play :(

[ginnyinWI]

4. it uses QuickTime

so you might have to download that.

This was a much needed clip for me: I just had to turn off Cspan 3 in disgust at *'s mangling of the English language (repeat of press avail earlier today). Kerry's floor speech was a fitting antidote! Ahhh.

[whometense]

5. You can also download it

and play it in itunes, if you already have that.

[Mass]

6. Now they have the video.

http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/home.cfm

I hope he will do that morfe often. Given that his speeches are not aired, this is the only way he has to make them known.

[karynnj]

7. Wow! that is cool. I hope he had the Brown one taped and

can put it on the JohnKerry web site - that would be cool to see. (I looked there after watching this and they have the speech, but no video.) They seem to have added stuff.

What they do have is a press section that I got to by clicking on the link to the NJ trip on the front page. There was one article that I never saw that was interesting. The Edison stop (the fourth stop of the day) was largely Indian American (as in India) - Edison has a huge Indian community. (With the Bush tilt to Pakistan, this is a really smart move to try to energize this group for Corzine.)

From the article:
Although Kerry made campaign stops throughout New Jersey yesterday, the Edison rally could signify a new front in Democratic campaigning strategy given the increased participation and influence of Asian-Americans in the political process.



http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/news/news_2005_0911b.html

[whometense]

8. I liked this part:

EDISON — Driven into the grass on either side of Meridian Road, just off a commercial section of Oak Tree Road, red, white and blue banners pushed Sen. Jon Corzine's candidacy for governor.

But there was no mistaking a certain Massachusetts senator as the man of the afternoon in Edison yesterday.

This is why all that attention is being paid to Kerry's Brown speech, and why the smear campaign against him continues.

It seems sometimes like Rove is more aware of Kerry's popularity than most dems are.

[karynnj]

9. I think because it's kind of underground - even those of us

in it don't know the others around us. I was very surprised how many people would come out at 12:30 on the Saturday after most of our county's schools started. I think there is a residue of respect and admiration. Every single article about his trip has been positive. One of the County Democrats mentioned that she has heard from many people that they like Kerry's emails. Even if all of this doesn't translate to a Kerry 2008 run, it will pull some of the 2004 network and grassroots that the Kerry/Edwards people worked so hard on into 2008 which will help whoever the candidate is. (Something I wish the Clark, Gore, Dean etc people could see.)

Rove is right to fear Kerry, not only because he is helping strengthen the Democratic party and has built a system that can send information - unfiltered - to 5 million people, but he can speak out without fear of retaliation. He and Teresa are just living their lives doing the good they've always done. The lies of last year were proven to be lies - and only the extreme RW somehow think he hasn't released all his records. So, they are stuck with calling the sanest sounding man I ever heard "almost clinically angry" or predictable. (Beyond that they'll have to dig into the Globe's he's not Irish and he slept on friends' couches when he couldn't afford a Boston apartment - the latter though would be hard because it means he wasn't rich and he had friends.)

I also liked the comment that summing all the minorities, the majority become a minority.

[TayTay]

10. That's exactly what they want to do, marginalize Kerry

But he keeps getting big crowds. He's not running for anything for at least 16 months or so. He drew a huge crowd in the spring in Texas and he drew very nicely at events in between. I think you are right, Rove is going all out to marginalize anyone who is effectively speaking out against * and his policies.

I loved that line about minorities becoming the majority by sticking together.

BTW, did you see that the GAO issued a report that the US should go after the home mortgage deductible and the ability of residents in states with income taxes to deduct them from federal taxes? Wow! Rove had better go after Dems, cuz that proposal is a dagger aimed at the heart of the American middle class. IF tthe GOP pushes that as a means of paying for Katrina/Rita damages, the Democrats will have a landslide last year.

[karynnj]

11. What a pitifully stupid idea

They might do it though because the states with the high state income taxes, property taxes and mortgages are blue states. It would create havoc with budgets in places like MA or NJ, because most people consider the "true" cost of interest on their mortgage when buying houses. But it would hurt the middle class everywhere.

It's really not a good idea when economists are already concerned about a housing market bubble (similar to the tech stock bubble).
This could actually be worse than the tech stock crash. People who recently purchased a house for say $500,000, might find that the market value of their house would fall to say $ 400,000 as fewer people could afford $500,000 homes. This could lead to mortgage companies requiring then to buy mortgage insurance that they previously didn't need. More drastically, they literally couldn't sell their houses because the money they would get would not pay off the mortgage.

My Grandfather told me in the Depression that a few people who had managed to save money in banks that were solvent actually allowed their homes to be forfeit because they got to the point where their equity in the houses was less than zero. After defaulting on the loans, they used their cash to purchase the now cheap homes.

I think it would be better to totally reinstate the estate tax and possibly roll all the Bush tax cuts back because we can't afford them. I would hope the Republicans would buck Bush on this.

I really liked the minority comment too and it was just from a person at the event. I am impressed that Kerry (or the Corzine people) targeted that community. It is an expanding community.

[TayTay]

12. I saw someone at one of the DNC quarterly meetings

talk about the Asian-Pacific voting in the last election. Kerry took 64% (or so) of it, which was a nice increase. I wold like to see that increase.

I am not too bent out of shape on the criticism of Kerry in the NYTimes and the Globe. The Globe is just schizophrenic about KErry. In April they were up in arms because he 'turned right.' Now some of them are up in arms because he hasn't 'turned right.' Whatever.

I think Scott Lehigh is misreading the electorate. He thinks that basic economic issues are going to always be trumped by fear and the scare tactics of war. I should think he would have turned on a tv in the last couple of weeks and watched the hurricane coverage. Bread-and-butter issues are coming to the fore with a vengeance and the electorate will turn to pols who are turning to them.The embrace of the center is great, as long as the middle-class is thriving and there is growth in the economy. But quite a few people are going to face hard choices this winter over paying to heat their homes, pay their medical and drug bills or pay for gas or pay the escalating cost of food. Lehigh is missing this completely.

The times, they are a changing. Kerry has often been called a politician ahead of his time. (He seems to think months if not years ahead of others in terms of what needs to be done. Witness his BCCI investigation of a bank that was laundering drug money and illegal weapons money.) I keep coming back to Kerry's call on 'felt needs' at so many speeches this year. He is so right. The number of 'felt needs' is about to escalate tremendously and the GOP is only offering 'solutions' that will increase the pain. Lehigh should try looking at this. War and terrorism are not the deciding factors they were even a year ago. (Katrina also proved that the Rethugs can't protect us and what have we been spending all that money on anyway?)

[sandnsea]

13. "He can't even keep us safe"

I think that was the real shocker of Katrina. After all these billions have been spent, we don't even have a system to pluck people off of rooftops!?! I also think most people know that any city would have to be secured after some sort of attack, and it didn't get done. So even though people are going to be thinking about heat and health care and the rising cost of everything, they are also going to be thinking there's no defense or budget trade-off either, because the Republicans blew the two things they're supposed to be good at. If we do this right, we should be able to sweep everything next year and again in 2008. As long as our left doesn't destroy us.

[TayTay]

14. I agree with you

The lefty freepers as so clueless as to how they are perceived. I reread the passage in Tour of Duty where Kerry had to fend of the lefty freepers of his day back in '71 in order to keep his protest focused and non-violent.

It was ever thus, apparently. A lot depends on whether or not the media does their job and reports on this stuff or goes back to thinking that saying 'shove it' is the most important political statement to come out in an election year. (Big sigh!)

[karynnj]

15. I especially discounted the criticism in the NYT

David Brooks described a man who was not Kerry and a speech that was not Kerry's. It says far more about Brooks than about Kerry. I can't imagine the Globe could hurt Kerry any more than it has, because from your posted examples they have always been mean, but he wins anyway.

I think that the false specter of fear has less weight when people have real things to worry about. It seemed the people who had the hardest time getting over 911 (which hit NJ - because many people who work in lower Manhattan live in NJ), were those who had never had anything ever shake there sense of wellbeing before. The likely economic impact of all this will change people's fears to the far more likely loss of job, health problems etc.

I do think that Kerry's felt needs and his call for community at Brown will fit these times. They also make Edwards look better, but I think he still has the problem of not really having the experience. It would be strange if they run togther again, but the times may make them exactly right.