The Chief Justice's War on Democrats: it's not just about his vote

[JHB]

(This is getting lost in Katrina threads in GD. Maybe here is more appropriate)

Beyond the obvious court roles of the Chief Justice, the office has some very important powers that reach far beyond simple "balance of the court" calculations. Even though these powers seem to be merely background administrative duties, their use by Rhenquist has had a major influence on the course of politics over the last 20 years.

Independent Federal investigations are overseen by panels of three judges. But who picks those judges? Who can replace them?

The Chief Justice.

The latest article at ConsortiumNews.com ("Rehnquist's Legacy: A Partisan Court", http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2005/090705.html ) recounts Chief Justice Rhenquist's role in naming or changing the makeup of three-judge panels overseeing investigations into scandals of the Reagan and Bush Administrations to limit and outright thwart those investigations, and likewise named judges to panels -- even in direct violation of the authorizing statutes -- in the Clinton era that minimized investigations into Republicans while allowing investigations nto Democrats to run wild. The piece du resistance of that latter group was, of course, the neverending Whitewater investigation, where the 3-judge panel not only allowed wide-ranging fishing expeditions, but also ignored rampant leaks of confidential information by the prosecutor's office and prosecutorial abuse of uncooperative "witnesses", but actually replaced a prosecutor (Fisk) who was handling his job too efficiently and professionally and replaced him with a known partisan with no investigative experience (Starr).

This less obvious but vitally important function of the Chief Justice is one we have to underscore and make our Senators include when questioning nominees put forward by Bush and in their evaluation of those nominees. "Will this guy use his office to aid and abet Republicans, no matter what the law? Would Bush have nominated him if HE didn't already know the answer to that?"

This fight is much, much bigger than one seat on the court, and Democratic senators, other elected officials, and the entire party must treat it as such.



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Rehnquist's Legacy: A Partisan Court
By Robert Parry
September 7, 2005
...
By the early 1990s, a tipping point was reached as a new generation of right-wing judges exercised their new dominance to protect Reagan’s legacy – and George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign – from the fallout of the Iran-Contra scandal.

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh – himself a lifelong Republican – was stunned by the partisanship of these jurists. In his memoir, Firewall, Walsh described the Reagan-Bush loyalists on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington as “a powerful band of Republican appointees waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army.”

Rehnquist himself played a key role in both sabotaging the Iran-Contra investigation and setting the stage for the relentless legal assault on Bill Clinton and his administration. In a little-noticed maneuver in 1992, Rehnquist used his power as chief justice to overhaul the three-judge panel that picked and supervised special prosecutors.

The job of leading that panel had been held by senior Appeals Court Judge George MacKinnon, an old-time Republican who had selected and supported Walsh. But after Walsh broke through the Iran-Contra cover-up in 1991 and brought obstruction-of-justice cases against former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and several senior CIA officials, Rehnquist acted. Walsh told me that he learned about Rehnquist’s maneuver in a phone call from MacKinnon, who said Rehnquist was replacing him with David Sentelle, a junior appeals court judge known as a committed Republican partisan. By ousting MacKinnon, Rehnquist eliminated one of Walsh’s strongest defenders. By putting Sentelle in charge, the chief justice picked a judge who had already voted to overturn Walsh’s hard-fought convictions of Reagan’s White House aide Oliver North and National Security Adviser John Poindexter.
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2005/090705.html