Far-right extremist Republicans claim to know what 'judicial mainstream' is

[BurtWorm]

Even though almost all of them have their heads so far up their ass, they don't know up from down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/11/AR2010041103342.html?nav=rss_politics

Republicans say Obama's Supreme Court pick must be mainstream

By Matthew DeLong
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 12, 2010; A03

Senate Republican leaders declined to rule out a filibuster of President Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, if they think the pick falls outside the judicial mainstream.

While calling each of the most commonly mentioned candidates to succeed Stevens "nominally qualified," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) would not take the filibuster off the table. But he said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that it is "unlikely" Republicans will use the procedural move to block the nominee except under "extraordinary circumstances."

Among those widely believed to be under consideration for the nomination are Solicitor General Elena Kagan, federal judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Stevens announced Friday that he plans to retire at the end of the court's current term. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), predicted Sunday that Obama's nominee will be confirmed before the new court session begins in the fall.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) didn't rule out a filibuster if the president chooses someone from "the fringe instead of the middle" or someone who would "apply their feelings" instead of the law. Asked if he would support a filibuster of any of the potential nominees said to be on Obama's shortlist, Alexander said on "Fox News Sunday" that he is "not about to start picking nominees I would reject before the president even makes one." He said he believes that qualified nominees should receive an up-or-down vote, pointing to his vote to confirm Obama's first choice for the high court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Appearing opposite Kyl, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the chances of a GOP filibuster are "tiny" because it is "just about a certainty that the president will nominate someone in the mainstream." Schumer criticized Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was nominated by President George W. Bush, for trying to move the court "very far to the right." Schumer said that he would like the new justice "to be one of five, not one of four" on split decisions, and that the nominee should be someone, like Stevens, "who would be quite persuasive to the other justices."

[izzybeans]

1. Judicial Lamestream

get it.

har har har. You see what I did? I took main and replaced it with lame. I'm purdy smurt.

They attempt to normalize their positions by suggesting they are "real America".

[alp227]

2. The Republicans really know what mainstream is:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

--Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), in 1987 during the Robert Bork confirmation hearings