Alan Dershowitz (HuffPost):Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist

[Dudley_DUright]

My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anything bad about him. My mother was wrong. History requires truth, not puffery or silence, especially about powerful governmental figures. And obituaries are a first draft of history.

So here’s the truth about Chief Justice Rehnquist you won’t hear on Fox News or from politicians. Chief Justice William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power speaks volumes about the current state of American values.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Rehnquist bragged about being first in his class at Stanford Law School. Today Stanford is a great law school with a diverse student body, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it discriminated against Jews and other minorities, both in the admission of students and in the selection of faculty. Justice Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of Stanford’s history: “When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews.” Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this discrimination; he was also part of that bigotry. When he was nominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him as a student that he had outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory that housed the school’s few Jewish students. He also was infamous for telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/telling-the-truth-about-c_b_6844.html

[bemildred]

1. Bravo Mr. Dershowitz.

Credit when credit is due.
:applause:

[goclark]

2. Why does this not surprise me! We are lowering the flag in

honor of the victims of the Gulf Hurricane , right?

[Jim Sagle]

3. The Dersh nails it again!

:thumbsup:

[teryang]

4. Crocodile tears for Rehnquist in the main stream media..

"...a deceptive gloss on a man who made his career undermining the rights and liberties of American citizens."

Good riddance!

[kostya]

5. kick (be sure to recommend the article on Yahoo!, too)

:kick:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20050905/cm_huffpost/006844

[HamdenRice]

6. Rehnquist: A Hack even in death...

The most telling line in Dershowitz's blog is this:

"Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist, and authoritarian. He sometimes moderated his views for prudential or pragmatic reasons, but his vote could almost always be predicted based on who the parties were, not what the legal issues happened to be. He generally opposed the rights of gays, women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, religious fundamentalists, homophobes, and other bigots."

In other words, strictly speaking, Rehnquist was not a conservative. He was a republican partisan. Conservatives are supposed to be opposed to the expansion of governmental power. But if a republican administration was in power and its power was at issue, Rehnquist always favored it. Basically, there was no consistency at all in his opinions.

It is so fitting that he died just in time to take the spotlight away from shrub's failure to respond to Katrina.

Rehnquist was a republican hack in life, and a republican hack in death.

[eauclaireliberal]

7. "He also was infamous for telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes."

And just think-Dubya is saddened by his loss. Maybe Bush will invite Ariel Sharon to go to the funeral with him.

[MurrayDelph]

8. In the words of "Moms" Mabley

One should never say anything about the dead unless it's good.

He's dead.
Good!

[texpatriot2004]

9. Rehnquist was not a great Justice or a good person. n/t

[Raster]

10. Two words for rehnquist: good riddance.

Leave it to faux to diefy a rascist, homophobic pig. His appointment to the Supremem Court and elevation to Chief Justice were TRAGIC mistakes. May be burn in hell for 2000.

[Manix]

11. ...the sad thing is they have his clone waiting in the wings.

[battleknight24]

12. If you can't say something good, don't say anything at all...

[bemildred]

13. Yeah, I thought of that, but I decided to be big about it.

Even a broke clock is right twice a day, and all the
Rhenquist hagiography needs to be countered, and if there
is one thing Dershowitz does well it's attack people.

[Dudley_DUright]

16. My thoughts exactly BK24

[thebigidea]

14. and when Dershowitz dies, we can call him torture-supporting scum

But I think I'll get a head start and do it now.

[question everything]

15. A credit, therefore, is due Bush, for saying that he wanted a justice

like Scalia and Thomas, while omitting Rehnquist...