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Usually, when someone dies, I assidously follow the rule of not speaking ill of the dead. So, at most, I will refrain from posting on a thread. The one and only time before today that I violated that rule was the one time I posted "no comment" on a thread announcing the death of a person I will not now name, even though he died years ago.
But Bork deserves an exception, if only because his name has gone into the American lexicon for very unjust reasons.
Bork fired a special prosecutor who was investigating Watergate after two Republicans resigned rather than carry out Nixon's orders to fire the special prosecutor. He defended his decision by saying only that he was only doing what the President told him to do, aka, "I was only following orders." Yet, Bork knew at the time that two Republicans had quit rather than follow that directive. He never explained why it violated their ethics to fire Cox in order to keep their jobs, but not his.
Ralph Nader sued over this. I don't know how Nader got standing to sue, but, somehow, he did. And the court held that Bork's firing of Cox was an illegal act.
Bork decided a workplace case, where the workplace would harm fetuses, by saying that female exployees had to resign or be sterilized. He defended that saying that some women had accepted the option of sterilization, so he guessed they didn't want to have children. He further excussed his decision by saying that, but for the option of sterilization, women of child bearing age would have had to accept a lower paying position in the plant. (I don't suppose denying the employer the option of lower wages entered Bork's mind.)
A 26 year old who was desperate enough to undergo sterilization wrote a letter to the Senate saying it had been the worst experience of her life.
When told during his confirmation hearing that women were frightened that he would be confirmed, Bork insisted that nothing in his record could cause fear in women, so he could conclude only that the women who were frightened were not familiar with his record.
How a court of equity tells women to choose between sterilization and their weekly paycheck is well beyond me--and I have read a lot of Superme Court opinions.
Speaks volumes that, after that bizarre decision, Reagan, who professed to be both a Christian and a pro-life Christian, nominated this this law-breaking, sterilization requiring turd to the influential and prestigous bench of the United States Court of Appeals for D.C, Circuit (where Bork "served" with Scalia) and then to the Supreme Court of the United States.
It is a travesty that being Borked means failure to confirm an otherwise accceptable nominee for purely political reasons. Only Republicans could have dared that and pulled it off--and only Democrats could have let it stand.
Now, if you want to change "Borked" to "Estradaed," I might be inclined to go along.
Inasmuch as I have broken one of my formerly hard and fast rules in this post, I may as well break another--commenting on a person's appearance: Do not be fooled by photographs of Bork. For some reason, he photographed extremely well. If you compare one of his photos with a video of him during his confirmation hearings, I think you will agree with me.
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