The Attack of the Republican Zombies

You’ve just got to wonder if these people are all implants … aliens … troglodytes … pod people. They sure don’t speak MY language … or even have rational minds. They don’t hear anyone but each other … and they might as well inhabit a parallel universe.

The other night, in the wee smalls, I clicked around and found the rerun of Murphy Brown that was response to dumber-than-dirt Dan Quayle’s attack on the show as promoting unmarried mothers. Glib, bright and insightful, it cut Quayle’s argument and performance into tiny bits and was watched, I might add, by the majority of television viewers.

Where’s Murphy Brown when we need her!?

Look at this crap, each article reporting an assault on the public sensibility — especially the first one, which should make us all question the use of PUBLIC MONEY for wingnut activities and plans to catapult us back to the 12th century — all given to us by a berserk Republican majority. And these pea-brains wonder why their election prospects are more than grim … or why Uncle Dick had the shredder make an emergency stop at his place!

Jude

Abstinence message goes beyond teens
Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
10/31/2006

The federal government’s “no sex without marriage” message isn’t just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”

Abstinence education programs, which have focused on preteens and teens, teach that abstaining from sex is the only effective or acceptable method to prevent pregnancy or disease. They give no instruction on birth control or safe sex.

The National Center for Health Statistics says well over 90% of adults ages 20-29 have had sexual intercourse.

But Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.

“The message is ‘It’s better to wait until you’re married to bear or father children,’ ” Horn said. “The only 100% effective way of getting there is abstinence.”

The revised guidelines specify that states seeking grants are “to identify groups … most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock, targeting adolescents and/or adults within the 12- through 29-year-old age range.” Previous guidelines didn’t mention targeting of an age group.

“We wanted to remind states they could use these funds not only to target adolescents,” Horn said. “It’s a reminder.”

Last year, 46 states applied for the federal abstinence-education money, to fund programs in schools, neighborhood clubs and faith-based organizations.

Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, says abstinence programs are among many messages that have helped reduce teen pregnancy rates. But “the notion that the federal government is supporting millions of dollars worth of messages to people who are grown adults about how to conduct their sex life is a very divisive policy,” she says.

“We would oppose any program that stigmatizes unmarried people,” adds Nicky Grist, executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, N.Y., that advocates for the rights of unmarried people.

For last year’s state grants, Congress appropriated $50 million. A similar amount is expected for 2007, but the money has not yet been allocated, according to the Administration for Children and Families.

“I think the program should talk about the problem with out-of-wedlock childbearing �?’ not about your sex life,” Brown says. “If you use contraception effectively and consistently, you will not be in the pool of out-of-wedlock births.”

Culture of life; contempt for science
Melissa McEwan
October 31, 2006

Let’s file this under faith-based conservation: If God really loved these animals and plants, he wouldn’t let them get all endangered and shit.

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists’ recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show.

In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency’s inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species.

�?�In several instances, MacDonald wrote sarcastic comments in the margins of the documents, questioning why scientists were portraying a species’ condition as so bleak. When scientists raised the possibility that a proposed road might degrade the greater sage grouse’s habitat, which is scattered through 11 Western states, MacDonald wrote: “Has nothing to do with sage grouse. This belongs in a treatise on ‘Why roads are bad’?”

Awesome. To put this contempt for protecting Endangered Species into perspective, under the Bush administration, only 56 species have been listed as endangered–less than 10 a year.

Under Clinton, 512 species, just over 60 a year, were listed, and under Daddy Bush, 234, just under 60 a year, were listed.

So we can add wildlife to the very long list of things that Bush Conservatives aren’t really interested in conserving.

They Don’t Miss A Trick, Do They?
tristero, Hullabaloo
10/30/2006

Please understand that I think the Dems, in reality, have no incentive to backpedal or go soft on the egregiously awful, even criminal, behavior of our Republican overlords. They should hold them accountable via robust investigations, oversights, and when called for, indictments. That said, in reality there are many obstacles to doing so. The worst, of course, is that the US has a juvenile delinquent for a president who has been double-daring his opponents to make explicit the constitutional crisis he began during the Florida election debacle of 2000, and which he has renewed over Schiavo and the filibuster “nuclear option.” Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats will not act in such a way as to force a serious public showdown over Bush’s crackpot notion of the “unitary executive” (ie, the idea that the Constitution makes a Republican president an absolute monarch).

But there is another reason the government will remain seriously dysfunctional for a long time (and for you cynics who think government ipso facto is incompetent, far more dysfunctional than it was under previous presidents, and far more dysfunctional than it has to be). This outrage is a good example of why:

Congressional Democrats say a new government publication being sent to all Medicare beneficiaries inappropriately favors private insurance plans over the traditional government-run program.

The publication, the 2007 Medicare handbook, “presents a misleading and biased view of Medicare coverage and options,” the Democrats said last week in a letter to Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services.

Beneficiaries use the handbook as an authoritative guide. It has become more important in the last few years as Medicare has become more complex, with new insurance options and a prescription drug benefit offered by scores of competing private insurers.

“The 2007 handbook strongly favors health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations and other private Medicare Advantage plans over the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program,” the Democrats said in the letter.

[boilerplate and vaguely worded denial from the Bush administration.]

Managed care plans often have networks of doctors and hospitals, and beneficiaries may have to pay higher fees, exceeding what they would pay under traditional Medicare, if they go outside the network. In traditional Medicare, patients can choose from a broader range of doctors and hospitals, although a small number of doctors say they do not take Medicare patients because they consider the payments inadequate.

Get it? Not only is this disgraceful in itself, it only one of many such incidents that we know of. There’s the advocacy of utterly bogus abstinence-only sex education (pdf) as well as false information being provided by federally funded pregnancy centers (pdf). But it’s not only health, of course. Who can forget George Deutsch insisting that NASA scientists take into account “intelligent design” creationism arguments when discussing the Big Bang? And let’s also recall that until Bush came into power, FEMA was a well-respected agency.

In short, the rightwing assault on the US government since 2000 has been comprehensive and unrelenting. The Bush administration has not only mis-managed from the top, but has deliberately degraded the efficiency and integrity of government at the midlevel as well. It will take years, many years, to remove the godawful incompetents Bush has brought into bureaucracies.

And for the libertarians out there, let me be clear. I don’t mind in the slightest having my tax dollars going to support Medicare. But I very much mind having my tax dollars wasted on ideological propaganda designed to undermine Medicare by misrepresenting its benefits and limitations in order to benefit the rich.

Update: Digby here. Sorry to intrude, but I have to add this link to Gary Wills’ phenomenal article this week-end in the NY Review of Book on this very topic: A Country Ruled by Faith. (Let’s just say Amy Sullivan won’t be pleased.)

A Hog Farm Next Door To Your House
Dave Johnson, HuffPo
10.30.2006
[open for links and voting info]

There is a law on the ballot in four states that says if I want to open a hog farm or a chemical plant next door to your house and you don’t want me to do that, then YOU have to PAY ME not to — you have to pay me ALL THE MONEY I MIGHT HAVE MADE.

I am not kidding. This new law says that if you want to stop a corporation from dumping toxic waste into the river from which you get your drinking water, or stop them from venting dangerous chemicals into the air, then YOU have to PAY that company not to. I am NOT kidding!

The far right says that a government stopping a company from dumping waste into a river is “taking” money from that company. I am not kidding. And you had better take this seriously or YOU will be PAYING companies to not harm you and your families.

Along with EVERYTHING else going on in this election, the far right has managed to get stealth “takings” initiatives on the ballot in four states. In California it is Proposition 90. In Washington it is Initiative 933. In Idaho it is Proposition 2. In Arizona it is Proposition 207.

This is a “private property” and “takings” amendment disguised as a limit to “eminent domain.” This means that it is supposed to be about keeping the government from seizing property so it can be used by commercial interests. But what this really does is prevent the states from ANY regulation of property, including ANY environmental regulations, ANY zoning laws, etc.

These ballot initiatives are all funded by one person - a New York real estate tycoon named Howie Rich. And he did this through front groups - organizations disguised as something else. See if you can guess what he plans to do the day after these laws pass? (Hint — think “hog farm next door to your house.”)

I am not kidding. I understand that saying the things I am saying here makes ME sound like the extremist, but you’d better go read up on these laws right now and see for yourself.

So here is ONE MORE THING to worry about this election. ONE MORE THING to tell friends and family to watch out for. ONE MORE THING to spread the word about. But it’s one more IMPORTANT thing so get the word out.

Brownout at the EPA
The agency shuts down five public libraries full of environmental data, and employees and activists question the Bush administration’s motives.
Petra Bartosiewicz, Salon
Oct. 30, 2006

‘When Verena Owen wanted to block the construction of a sludge incinerator in her hometown north of Chicago, she went to the library. At the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional library in Chicago, Owen pored through archived microfiche records and paper reports on sludge and incineration and public comments on similar projects. Owen learned that just a fraction of a teaspoon of mercury could poison a 10-acre lake — and the proposed plant would have spewed 92 pounds of mercury into the air of Waukegan, Ill., annually. Her research proved pivotal in forcing the plant to relocate and vastly reduce its mercury emissions.

At the beginning of such a project, says Owen, a veteran clean-air activist for the Illinois Sierra Club, “you don’t always know exactly what you’re looking for. These were things I just needed to see.”

But now the library where Owen did her research is closed, as are similar facilities around the country. Announcing the closings with all the fanfare of a pin drop, the Environmental Protection Agency quietly began downsizing its 35-year-old library network earlier this month, shuttering its headquarters branch in Washington and three regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, Mo. Hours and services are to be reduced gradually in the remaining 22 regional branches in the network. The agency’s budget has been slashed by $100 million for the fiscal year beginning this month, and the libraries have lost one-third of their $6.5 million annual funding. The EPA cites its money woes and a shift to an online model as the reason for the closures, but critics charge the move will erase vital chunks of institutional memory, and is more proof that the Bush administration has no interest in letting the EPA fulfill its role as an environmental watchdog.

“This is a way to keep EPA from being an effective organization,” says a former librarian with the agency. “Take away their research ability. Cripple them.” Adds Dwight Welch, a union official who represents EPA employees, “The closures seem like part of a general trend of hostility towards science by this administration. They don’t want to hear the facts on everything from global warming to raising drinking water standards.”

The library closings have caused distress among agency employees, who see the network’s trove of technical reports and scientific data as vital to their mission of proposing and enforcing the nation’s environmental laws. “It’s as if your local fire department was getting rid of their fire trucks,” said Suzanne Wuerthele, an EPA toxicologist with 22 years at the agency, who works at the regional office in Denver. “We won’t be able to fight our court cases; we won’t be able to inform the public; we will be much less effective, certainly less efficient.” But the closures are also a problem for civilian activists like Owen, who will have greatly diminished access to records that have proved instrumental in fighting grass-roots environmental battles.

In a process the agency terms “deaccessioning,” materials at the four closed libraries are being boxed up, labeled and shipped to three repository locations, where they are to be cataloged anew and eventually digitized. The headquarters library alone includes 16,000 books, 380,000 microfiche documents, and a vast array of technical reports and research monographs. The headquarters library — once staffed with librarians and open to the public — will now be one of the three repositories used to store materials until they can be dispersed to other libraries, federal agencies or universities. EPA staffers at all the closed libraries are being transferred, and an unknown number of contract employees have been fired.

And the Bush administration hasn’t finished. In addition to shuttering these libraries, the EPA plans to close its Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances library in Washington, which contains unique holdings on pollution prevention, toxic substances and chemicals, and was used to research and craft important new regulations, such as tighter arsenic standards for drinking water in the 1990s. The closing has not yet been announced, but employees report that materials have already been boxed up and stored in the basement.

So far the EPA has been mostly close-lipped on the changes, making a stealth announcement of the headquarters closure in the Federal Register just 10 days before the doors were permanently shut.

The agency says the closures are part of its shifting its holdings to an electronic model in a climate of increased online access and tighter security measures at federal buildings. An EPA press release titled “EPA Expanding Library Info Access” says that retrieval of materials “will not only be more efficient but also [materials will be] �?� easier to locate by using the agency’s online collection and reference services.” Agency spokeswoman Suzanne Ackerman says the process will be complete by January 2007. “We have the scanning equipment, and the labor costs are pretty minimal. Even if we don’t have a huge budget, we have interns.”

Yet the agency’s own fiscal year 2007 library plan, released in August, is vague about time and money. “In FY 2006,” it notes, “some Regional libraries may begin dispersal of some of their physical collections. Other Regions may put their collections into stasis, i.e. neither fully operational nor fully closed, until funding for dispersion is available.”

Off the record, several EPA employees told Salon they are skeptical both about the timetable and about whether the agency’s material really will become available again in digitized form. For their own protection, some have referred their complaints, and leaked documents, to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nongovernmental organization that supports institutional whistle-blowers. Many internal EPA documents related to the closures are now on PEER’s Web site.

Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, summarizes what EPA staffers have told him. “It’s almost like the EPA is having a fire sale. They’re not doing this with any kind of foresight and planning. They don’t have any money for digitizing, and even if they did have the money they don’t have the staff to catalog these materials. Literally hundreds of thousands of things are being boxed up without being cataloged. There’s no deadline, no budget and no staff.”

Moreover, even as the agency touts an increased online presence, it has canceled subscriptions to online data sources such as Greenwire, an environmental news service that received 125,000 hits from EPA staff last year. When asked to confirm the Greenwire cancellation, spokeswoman Ackerman initially said, “It would be almost hilarious for us not to have Greenwire … There may be days when we’d rather not read what they say, but I can’t imagine we’d cut that.” She later confirmed the cancellation of the service.

The agency’s employees lodged a formal protest this summer. At the end of June, union officials representing just over half of the EPA’s 18,000 staffers wrote Congress to demand the library funds be restored. The closures, the letter argued, would hinder emergency preparedness, antipollution enforcement and long-term research. The letter also lamented the loss of staff who provided critical support to enforcement officers, conducted detailed database searches and often served as the public’s main link to the agency. Library staff “allow EPA scientists to spend more time conducting inspections, writing public health and environmental policies and implementing the Agency’s regulations,” the letter said, adding that the “draconian manner” of the closures represents just “one more example of the Bush Administration’s efforts to suppress information on environmental and public health-related topics while cloaking these actions under the guise of ‘fiscal responsibility.’”

The letter to Congress and the unhappiness within the ranks have captured the attention of lawmakers. Last month three House committees — Science, Energy and Commerce, and Government Reform — asked the Government Accountability Office to initiate an investigation, citing “grave concerns” over the impact of the closures. “A shuttered library does not further open and transparent government,” Reps. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., John Dingell, D-Mich., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote.

“It did seem to us that if you want to modernize and make things electronically available that’s fine, but you need a plan for that, and we don’t see one,” said a staffer in the office of Rep. Gordon, ranking minority member on the Committee on Science.

The GAO now says it plans to launch an investigation in the next two months.

Some EPA employees have also questioned whether the changes are really cost-effective, in both the short and the long term. An internal EPA study in 2004, for example, showed full library access saved the agency an estimated 214,000 hours in professional staff time, valued at some $7.5 million annually. The savings come not just from proximity to information that otherwise would have to be hunted down elsewhere but in the human capital of a library staff trained to assist the public with complex research.

Maureen Kiely, manager of EPA Region 8’s technical library in Denver, which is not slated for closure, said her librarians receive hundreds of questions each month. Some queries take as little as three minutes to answer, others as long as three days. In recent months librarians have researched requests on techniques for lead paint removal from a historic bridge, wastewater management in coal-bed methane production, and the concentration of the fungicide/insecticide hexachlorobenzene in bird eggs.

For the public, the libraries offer physically present data, something that is difficult to replicate through online searches. “It’s all reading between the lines when you’re doing research,” said Jim Schermbeck, a grass-roots activist and board member of Downwinders, a Texas clean-air group that opposes cement plant emissions. When Downwinders first started its work, the EPA’s library in Dallas, now closed, was indispensable in providing raw data on the cement companies the group was fighting. “You’re putting together pieces of a puzzle and getting a narrative you didn’t know existed,” said Schermbeck. “That’s the first step for anyone tackling an environmental problem, and without direct access to the documents, it’s a lot harder to piece together.”

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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Add comment October 31st, 2006

Bobbing for rotten apples

Taking a moment to wish you all a Happy Halloween, and if you need to really scare yourself today, go here. Or put it off until you are in a fearless mood … but do get to it. Need To Know financial warnings, and not good.

But … in the happy realm of make-believe and dress-up and scaring ourselves with spooky stories [Hitchcock’ian, preferably] and dark passages and faux-spiders falling in our hair, may your evening be fun and frivolous … and the Ancestors come to kiss your cheek.

Now — the rotten, the truly rotten … among us — all the presidents wo/men. An exposé on securing a life-time appointment as a judge by less than ethical means is probably not a surprise. But these are the people making the decisions that impact our individual experience … and if they can’t even come by their jobs ethically, follow the rules of good sense and in some cases, legality, what objectivity do they bring to the bench?

Corruption of “core values” — below.

Jude

Money trails lead to Bush judges
A four-month investigation reveals that dozens of federal judges gave contributions to President Bush and top Republicans who helped place them on the bench.
Will Evans, A Salon/CIR exclusive
Oct. 31, 2006

At least two dozen federal judges appointed by President Bush since 2001 made political contributions to key Republicans or to the president himself while under consideration for their judgeships, government records show. A four-month investigation of Bush-appointed judges by the Center for Investigative Reporting reveals that six appellate court judges and 18 district court judges contributed a total of more than $44,000 to politicians who were influential in their appointments. Some gave money directly to Bush after he officially nominated them. Other judges contributed to Republican campaign committees while they were under consideration for a judgeship.

Republicans who received money from judges en route to the bench include Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and Gov. George Pataki of New York.

There are no laws or regulations prohibiting political contributions by a candidate for a federal judgeship. But political giving by judicial candidates has been a rarely scrutinized activity amid the process that determines who will receive lifelong jobs on the federal bench. Some ethics experts and Bush-appointed judges say that political giving is inappropriate for those seeking judicial office — it can appear unethical, they say, and could jeopardize the public’s confidence in the impartiality of the nation’s courts. Those concerns come as ethics and corruption scandals have roiled Washington, and on the eve of midterm elections whose outcome could influence the makeup of the federal judiciary — including the Supreme Court — for decades to come.

The CIR investigation analyzed the campaign contribution records of 249 judges appointed by Bush nationwide since 2001. The money trail leading from Bush judges to influential politicians runs particularly deep through the political battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Since 1990, Judge Deborah Cook, who was confirmed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2003, gave more than $10,000 to three Ohio Republicans who were instrumental in getting her on the bench. One was Sen. George Voinovich, who is chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics. Another was Sen. Mike DeWine, a member of the Judiciary Committee, which is critical to the confirmation of federal judges. The other was Gov. Bob Taft, who gained national notoriety after he was convicted of ethics violations in 2005 for not reporting gifts he received.

Cook’s contributions included $1,000 to Voinovich and $1,500 to Taft after President Bush had nominated Cook, with their backing, in May 2001. Once on the bench, Cook continued giving, contributing $800 to DeWine in December 2005. Political giving while serving on the federal bench is a violation of the official Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. The code says that “A judge should not … solicit funds for or pay an assessment or make a contribution to a political organization or candidate.” DeWine’s campaign committee returned the money three weeks after Cook made the contribution.

Another judge, Christopher Boyko, gave $2,000 to Voinovich in August 2004 — his first federal contribution on record since 1996 — less than a month after Bush nominated him for the bench upon the recommendation of Ohio’s senators.

Another, Judge John Adams, cut a $1,000 check received by Voinovich’s campaign committee just two days before Voinovich and DeWine publicly recommended him to Bush in November 2001. “I’ve been supportive of the Republican Party and President Bush,” Adams said, after DeWine and Voinovich recommended him for the judgeship, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. “I’m sure that had some bearing on the selection.” About two months later, in January 2002, Adams gave DeWine $1,500, which was returned to him in February. Then, less than a month after his subsequent nomination by Bush in October 2002, Adams gave $250 more to Voinovich.

Brian Seitchik, a spokesperson for Sen. DeWine’s current reelection campaign, confirmed that the money from Cook and Adams was returned because, at the time it was given, Adams was a judicial candidate and Cook was a sitting judge. “The campaign has operated out of an abundance of caution,” Seitchik said, “and we thought it was the prudent thing to do.”

Adams declined to comment. Cook’s chambers faxed an unattributed one-sentence note that appeared to suggest that some of the donations in her name, as identified by public records, were made by her husband. Two written requests to Cook seeking further clarification were not answered.

The president selects most federal judges with significant input from U.S. senators of the same party. In Ohio, that process is “totally controlled by party politics,” says Tom Hagel, a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law and a part-time trial judge. “If you don’t have the blessing of the county and state party chairs you can stop right there,” said Hagel, whose brother is Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. “Believe me, they’ve got to get approval all the way up the line.” Hagel says campaign contributions could play into that process, as a demonstration of “how loyal and appreciative” a judicial candidate is. “That certainly has an appearance of impropriety,” he said. “It gives the impression that the senators’ decision-making process could be influenced by money.”

In some cases from around the country, judicial candidates gave money directly to the president’s campaign. Judge Thomas Ludington of Michigan gave Bush $1,000, after being nominated in September 2002. Judge P. Kevin Castel of New York gave Bush $2,000 after Bush nominated him in March 2003. Judge Paul Crotty of New York gave $1,000 to Bush in June 2003, the same month he met with Bush officials about the judgeship. Judge Mark Filip of Illinois, who had volunteered as a Republican election monitor in Florida during the disputed 2000 election, gave the president $2,000 after Bush nominated him in April 2003.

In a statement to Salon and CIR, White House spokesman Blair C. Jones said that “potential nominees” recommended to Bush are not based on “any consideration” of an individual’s political contributions. He added, “We are not aware of any law or regulation that prohibits a federal judicial candidate or nominee from making political contributions.”

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter has recommended dozens of judicial candidates to the president during his career. As a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, and its chairman since 2005, he has helped oversee Bush’s hundreds of appointments.

Speaking by phone last week, Specter said political contributions are “not a factor” in who gets recommended in his home state or elsewhere. Citing the thousands of contributors and tens of millions of dollars raised in his 2004 campaign, Specter said that “it’s just not possible to know everybody” who gives money.

However, in order to avoid any impression that the contributions carry influence, he said, “I think once an individual becomes a [judicial] prospect that that would be a cutoff point.” In Pennsylvania, Specter said, that point would come when candidates apply for the job with a bipartisan selection committee set up by him and Rick Santorum, the state’s other Republican senator. “I don’t know of anybody who has made a contribution beyond that,” Specter said.

In fact, the investigation revealed at least three judges in Pennsylvania who gave money to Specter, Santorum or President Bush after they were formally under consideration for the jobs.

The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to make political contributions. But there must be a balance, some ethics scholars and judges say, between that right and the responsibility of those seeking a judicial post to appear impartial. With the judiciary drawing increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent times, the American Bar Association is overhauling its judicial code of conduct to set new recommended ethical guidelines. The draft of the new code, to be voted on this February, would forbid political contributions by judicial candidates.

Political patronage certainly didn’t start with the Bush administration. (There is an adage in legal circles that a federal judge is “a lawyer who knows a senator.”) The investigation of Bush-appointed judges also turned up a Clinton-appointed district judge in California, Dean D. Pregerson, who, like Judge Cook of Ohio, made a political contribution in apparent violation of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges. While serving on the bench in 2002, Pregerson gave $1,000 to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, according to federal records. (A spokesperson from Pregerson’s chambers claimed that the contribution was made by his wife.)

After being alerted to the forthcoming Salon/CIR story, the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group in Washington with ties to Karl Rove and Santorum, looked into a sampling of President Clinton’s judicial picks, according to Sean Rushton, the group’s executive director. CFJ found 10 judges confirmed to the bench under Clinton who had given political contributions of some kind after they were nominated, according to information provided by Rushton.

Indeed, money and personal connections have long played into the selection process in both parties, says political science professor Sheldon Goldman, author of “Picking Federal Judges.” “Why pick someone who hasn’t supported you over someone who has?” Goldman asks. “It’s been tradition,” he said. “You reward your friends.”

The status quo, however, is disturbing to some observers. Ethics concerns have been thrown into sharp relief in Washington, with a string of corruption scandals staining the Republican Party in particular. And the future shape of the nation’s courts may hinge on the midterm elections, depending on which party controls Congress afterward. There are currently 49 vacancies on the federal bench — and with a justice potentially retiring from the highest court, there is the possibility President Bush will nominate another Supreme Court Justice before leaving office.

Campaign finance is an area of particular concern, says Jeffrey M. Shaman, a judicial ethics expert at DePaul University College of Law. “We just have so many problems with contributions to judicial campaigns, and so many problems with campaign contributions to members of the legislature,” he said. “If someone wants to be a judge, then they should, in their sound discretion and wisdom, voluntarily decide not to make these contributions anymore.”

More than 50 Bush-appointed judges who made campaign contributions around the time of their nominations were contacted with written requests for comment, as were some other judges who gave money prior to their appointments. While many did not respond, some responded by phone or in written statements.

Boyko, the Ohio district judge who gave money to Voinovich after Bush had nominated Boyko, said in a statement that he had given the money at a Republican fundraising event attended by Bush. “I have always expressed thanks for Senator Voinovich’s trust in me and have always publicly supported him. If I could ethically donate today, I would. And, because of a long standing mutual respect with Senator Voinovich, I saw no ethical improprieties donating after the recommendation.” Boyko added: “If you believe for a minute that $240, $2,000 or $25,000 ‘buys’ a federal judgeship, as you clearly intimate … your naivete astounds me. Any such insinuations are a blatant insult to both Senators, denigrating their integrity and character. No one ‘buys’ either Senator DeWine or Senator Voinovich — period.”

Sen. Voinovich’s press secretary, Garrette Silverman, said that participation in the political process is not a consideration. “To think that contributions would even enter the equation is absurd when we’re taking about evaluating candidates for federal judgeships,” she said.

Judge Lavenski R. Smith — who contributed money to Republican Sen. Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas after Hutchinson had recommended him to Bush for a judgeship, and after Smith had publicly acknowledged that he was undergoing an FBI background check for a potential nomination — said in a written statement, “The proximity of the timing between my donations and my nomination was largely coincidental.” The $1,000 donation to Hutchinson in 2001, apparently Smith’s first federal contribution since at least 1990, came three weeks before Bush announced his nomination.

Smith, who was confirmed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July 2002, also said, “Until nominated, potential nominees should retain their full first amendment rights to participate politically as ordinary citizens.”

A number of Bush-appointed judges from around the country, however, said they consider political contributions by judicial candidates to be inappropriate.

“My thoughts are that it would probably be inappropriate for a lawyer who is a candidate for a federal judgeship to make a significant campaign contribution to a person having influence over the selection process, especially if the candidate had no prior history of making such contributions,” wrote Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr., of Georgia, who was confirmed to the bench in March 2006. Even those who have a history of giving campaign money, Batten continued, “should realize that public disclosure of the contributions might … raise unpleasant questions as to the purpose of the contributions.”

Judge Roger W. Titus of Maryland, confirmed in November 2003, wrote: “From a personal standpoint, I do not believe that political contributions should be made to an appointing authority while under active consideration.”

Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of Minnesota, confirmed in April 2006, wrote: “I knew that federal judges were forbidden from making political contributions, and I thought that, as someone recommended or nominated for a federal judgeship, I should follow the same practice.”

It’s not always senators who make recommendations to the president for judgeships, and who receive political money that could look bad in the eyes of the public. In New York, because both senators are Democrats, Republican Gov. George Pataki has had an influential role under Bush in selecting nominees for the federal courts. Judge Richard J. Holwell, who was a law school classmate and former lawyer of Pataki’s, met with the governor’s judicial screening panel in March 2001 and was told he would be recommended for a judgeship. The next month, Holwell gave Pataki $10,000.

In Pennsylvania, as in Ohio, there are numerous examples of Bush appointees giving money to influential politicians as they were headed for the bench.

In March 2001, Judge Thomas M. Hardiman interviewed with a selection committee set up by Specter and Santorum for recommending judicial candidates to Bush. Between then and April 2003, when Bush nominated Hardiman for a district court seat, Hardiman contributed a total of $2,400 to Specter, $2,000 to Santorum and his political action committee, and gave thousands of dollars to other Republicans.

Hardiman kept sending some of those donations even as he was interviewing with the White House, filling out forms for the Justice Department and undergoing his FBI background check. Hardiman was confirmed by the Senate in October 2003. This fall, he was nominated by Bush to be elevated to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — so he’ll go before the Judiciary Committee, with Specter now in charge, again.

Specter dismissed the importance of the money he received from Hardiman. “He was a protégé of Santorum, not mine,” Specter said. He added that if he had known Hardiman was donating while under consideration for the judgeship, “I would have told him not to do it.”

As a Judiciary Committee member, Specter also helped oversee the confirmation of Judge Gene Pratter. Pratter gave Specter $1,500 between February and March 2003, and interviewed with the Pennsylvania selection committee in “spring” 2003, according to her Senate questionnaire. Pratter then interviewed with White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez in July and September 2003 — and in September she contributed $2,000 to Bush.

The records of other federal judges appointed by Bush in Pennsylvania reveal a similar pattern. Judge John E. Jones of Pennsylvania gave $1,000 to Santorum after he was recommended by the senators’ committee. Judge Michael Baylson, nominated and confirmed in 2002 after serving for decades as legal counsel and then treasurer for Specter’s campaigns and committees, gave $2,000 to Specter after it was reported in the press that Baylson was a likely candidate for the judgeship.

“If I had known about it,” said Specter, “I would have returned their contributions. I don’t want anybody to think that it’s relevant.” He added, “You ought to look at all the others who were nominees who didn’t make contributions. I don’t think anybody would believe that those contributions would influence a decision on making anyone a judge.”

But ensuring that the public won’t see the money as tainting the selection of judges may not be so simple. “All campaign contributions are in some sense to buy influence,” said William Hodes, a professor emeritus of law at Indiana University who helped draft the proposed ABA code. “Once you cross into the world of judging or being a candidate for judge you take on a new responsibility to begin living by the rules of your new job,” said Hodes, who runs a legal ethics consulting practice. “Since sitting federal judges can’t donate even a dime anyway, my guess is that it would be very comfortable for the federal system to say once you have had direct talks with the senator with an eye toward [a judgeship], or if the White House has contacted you, then you’re a candidate and you have to back off.”

Even some Bush judges who gave money as they were bound for the bench acknowledge the ethical concerns that it can raise.

“I was recommended [to the president] around August 2001,” said Judge Jones of Pennsylvania. “Is that the point that I should have stopped making contributions? Maybe I should have.” He added, “If you know you’re being recommended by the screening panel, probably in retrospect it’s better to say, ‘That’s it,’ and not make any contributions after that. But that’s the benefit of hindsight.”

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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