Federalist Society

Egos firmly in check, there was no visible gloating here as hundreds of conservative lawyers and legal scholars converged yesterday on the stately old Mayflower Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. But there was a palpable sense at the start of the annual meeting of the Federalist Society that conservatives' long-held dream of remaking the federal bench might soon be at hand. The society is a powerhouse conservative group whose members hold key positions in the Bush administration and on the federal bench.

President Bush took aim at a familiar target Friday in Philadelphia: the U.S. Congress. Speaking in the Old House Chamber at Congress Hall, Bush called for term limits, shorter congressional sessions, fewer committees, and limits on campaign fund-raising. His audience was the Federalist Society, a lawyers' group.

Whoever gave a second thought to the American Bar Association? Conservatives nursing a grudge, it turns out. And that means the White House. After a half-century as the primary independent reviewer of candidates for federal judgeships, the ABA is on its way out, the Bush administration has made clear. The Federalist Society is in. It's Bork's best revenge. Conservative animus against the ABA has built since 1987, when Robert Bork was given a mixed rating - but not the "unqualified" badge of dishonor - because some reviewers thought his jurisprudence too extreme.

The Bush administration has achieved a new low when it comes to politicizing America's top law-enforcement agency. A report from the Justice Department's inspector general shows that Bush appointees broke the law with their partisan hiring practices. It's damning evidence that the administration sought to mold the Justice Department to its conservative ideology. The report said officials under former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales rejected applicants suspected of being liberal, and hired people who they believed were conservative.

Meet George Bush, reformer. President Bush used a historic Philadelphia backdrop yesterday to deliver a plan for reforming "a career Congress" into "a citizen Congress. " He strongly endorsed 12-year limits on the terms of senators and representatives, and advocated changes in campaign financing and congressional operations. Bush, in the city less than two hours, visited Old Congress Hall adjoining Independence Hall for a speech to the Federalist Society. The cozy room, with its mix of original and restored furnishings, was the meeting place for the U.S. House of Representatives from 1790 to 1800.

In response to international criticism, President Bush agreed yesterday to follow Geneva Convention guidelines for the treatment of captured Afghan fighters even though he considers them illegal combatants. Bush drew a distinction between Taliban soldiers who fought for the Afghan regime and fighters with the al-Qaeda terrorist network. He said the Geneva Conventions covered Taliban troops because they fought for a country that ratified the 1949 agreement. The legal distinction has little significance, because he did not budge from his earlier decision that all the detainees are terrorists, not prisoners of war. While he has agreed to treat Taliban soldiers humanely, he is doing so at his discretion, not because international law obliges him to, the White House said.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in Philadelphia yesterday that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had taken a pronounced pro-business approach, and suggested that it could carry over into the next term. Clement, the government's chief legal advocate before the Supreme Court, said decisions limiting punitive-damage awards against corporate defendants and imposing restrictions on antitrust lawsuits suggested a distinct tilt in favor of business.

Offensive cartoon Yesterday's Tony Auth cartoon mocks the very foundation of the Catholic Church. Why are Auth and The Inquirer Editorial Board printing cartoons that are so blasphemous and deeply offensive to the Catholic community? The cartoon distorts the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 18:16, a text of sacred Scripture that is at the heart of the identity of the Roman Catholic Church. This outrageous distortion implies that the church is founded on deception. The church in Philadelphia is openly and with great sorrow addressing the tragedies of the past.

Colleen Sheehan, a political outsider in the Republican Party, became the third GOP candidate to formally enter the race for the 149th Legislative District seat yesterday. "What representatives are supposed to do is be accountable to people but also to enlarge the public's views and create a consensus of the free citizenry," said Sheehan, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. "Representatives have a job to do, which includes communications with citizens.

President Bush is complaining again about the Senate's failure to approve his federal nominees, but he's ignoring an obvious solution: Nominate moderate candidates. More than 180 of Bush's nominations are being held up by the Senate, including 28 judicial nominees. Last year, only 56 percent of Bush's nominees were confirmed, one of the lowest rates of approval since 1989. No doubt many Democrats are now content to run out the clock on a lame-duck president, rather than approve yet another conservative ideologue for a lifetime job. But Senate Democrats are hardly the whole story.

President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, with confirmation hearings scheduled to begin today, has unleashed a tsunami of media accounts of her legal career and personal life. Strikingly absent from the sweeping coverage, though, is a subject that drew widespread attention when the president learned of Justice David Souter's decision to retire. Speaking of replacing Souter, the president told reporters at the time: "I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

AS AN OFFICER of the court, I get it. Just because you defend the criminal doesn't mean you share his beliefs. That's why I'd never call a lawyer who represented a Guantanamo detainee a terror sympathizer. As a caller to a recent radio talk show I hosted put it, Gitmo lawyers chose their clients out of the conviction that everyone deserves a defense. (Others might have been excited at the prospect of the academic challenge. And we'd be naive to deny that some took on these clients as a way to thumb their highly-trained noses at the Bush administration.

Before Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's choice to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, could get outside the White House gate after the announcement of her nomination, conservatives were already on the attack. "Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal agenda is more important than the law as written," said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network. This nomination isn't about whether Sotomayor is qualified to sit on the nation's highest court but whether conservatives will get a candidate on the bench who shares their political viewpoint.

Presidents can have their deepest and most lasting impact on American society through their appointments to the federal courts - and, more specifically, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Presidents select Supreme Court justices as well as federal judges to the appellate and trial courts. Jurists who get approved enjoy lifetime tenure and almost unfettered freedom to rule on a wide range of issues that shape public policy and impact the lives of American citizens long after the president who appointed them is gone.

The Bush administration has achieved a new low when it comes to politicizing America's top law-enforcement agency. A report from the Justice Department's inspector general shows that Bush appointees broke the law with their partisan hiring practices. It's damning evidence that the administration sought to mold the Justice Department to its conservative ideology. The report said officials under former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales rejected applicants suspected of being liberal, and hired people who they believed were conservative.

Offensive cartoon Yesterday's Tony Auth cartoon mocks the very foundation of the Catholic Church. Why are Auth and The Inquirer Editorial Board printing cartoons that are so blasphemous and deeply offensive to the Catholic community? The cartoon distorts the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 18:16, a text of sacred Scripture that is at the heart of the identity of the Roman Catholic Church. This outrageous distortion implies that the church is founded on deception. The church in Philadelphia is openly and with great sorrow addressing the tragedies of the past.

President Bush is complaining again about the Senate's failure to approve his federal nominees, but he's ignoring an obvious solution: Nominate moderate candidates. More than 180 of Bush's nominations are being held up by the Senate, including 28 judicial nominees. Last year, only 56 percent of Bush's nominees were confirmed, one of the lowest rates of approval since 1989. No doubt many Democrats are now content to run out the clock on a lame-duck president, rather than approve yet another conservative ideologue for a lifetime job. But Senate Democrats are hardly the whole story.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in Philadelphia yesterday that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had taken a pronounced pro-business approach, and suggested that it could carry over into the next term. Clement, the government's chief legal advocate before the Supreme Court, said decisions limiting punitive-damage awards against corporate defendants and imposing restrictions on antitrust lawsuits suggested a distinct tilt in favor of business.

At this moment in American history, it would be hard to find a worse Supreme Court nominee than Samuel A. Alito Jr. His ideology captures everything extremist about the Bush administration. If confirmed, Alito would serve as Bush's enabler. He would give Bush effective control of all three branches of government and the hard-right long-term dominance of the high court. His confirmation or rejection will depend on the gumption of Senate Democratic leaders and the independence of a few Republicans.