[Vision2020] The N.R.A. at the Bench

[Gary Crabtree]

Ms. Greenhouse, in her zealous effort to tar the NRA and the GOP seems to
be glossing over a very important fact. Sotomayor is one of only three
federal appellate judges in America to issue a court opinion saying that
the Second Amendment does not apply to states.

http://orderinthecourt.org/Cases/Maloney-v-Cuomo

The NRA had every reason to view this appointment as a major salvo in the
war on private firearms possession and oppose her vigorously.

Sadly, not vigorously enough.

g

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com>wrote:

> [image: Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
> December 26, 2012, 9:00 pmThe N.R.A. at the BenchBy LINDA GREENHOUSE<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/linda-greenhouse/>
>
> There has been plenty written about the National Rifle Association in
> recent days. But nothing that I've seen has focused on the gun lobby's
> increasingly pernicious role in judicial confirmations. So here's a little
> story.
>
> Back in 2009, when President Obama chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his
> first Supreme Court nominee, the White House expected that her compelling
> personal story, sterling credentials, and experience both as a prosecutor
> and, for 17 years, as a federal judge would win broad bipartisan support
> for her nomination. There was, in fact, no plausible reason for any senator
> to vote against her.
>
> The president's hope was Senator Mitch McConnell's fear. In order to shore
> up his caucus, the Senate Republican leader asked a favor of his friends at
> the National Rifle Association: oppose the Sotomayor nomination and,
> furthermore, "score" the confirmation vote. An interest group "scores" a
> vote when it adds the vote on a particular issue to the legislative
> scorecard it gives each member of Congress at the end of the session. In
> many states, an N.R.A. score of less than 100 for an incumbent facing
> re-election is big trouble.
>
> Note that the N.R.A. had never before scored a judicial confirmation vote.
> Note also that Sonia Sotomayor had no record on the N.R.A.'s issues. (True,
> she voted with an appeals court panel to uphold New York State's ban on
> nunchucks, a martial-arts weapon consisting of two sticks held together
> with a chain or rope, commonly used by gang members and muggers.
> http://orderinthecourt.org/Cases/Maloney-v-Cuomo - which, before the
> Supreme Court later ruled otherwise<http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf>by a vote of 5 to 4, it didn't.)
>
> Never mind. The N.R.A. had all the reason it needed to oppose Sonia
> Sotomayor: maintenance of its symbiotic relationship with the Republican
> Party. Once it announced its opposition and its intention to score the
> vote, Republican support for the nominee melted away. Only seven
> Republicans voted for confirmation.
>
> One senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said by way of explaining her "no"
> vote that her constituents had expressed "overwhelming concern" about Judge
> Sotomayor's views on the Second Amendment. However, Senator Murkowski told
> the National Journal at the time, "I am a bit concerned that the N.R.A.
> weighed in and said they were going to score this." She added, "I don't
> think that was appropriate."
>
> The following year, after the N.R.A. opposed Elena Kagan for the Supreme
> Court and announced <http://www.nraila.org/kagan> that "this vote matters
> and will be part of future candidate evaluations," Republican support for
> another nominee without a record on gun issues shrank to five senators.
>
> At least Supreme Court confirmation debates take place in the light of
> day. Members of the public can tune in and decide whether they are
> persuaded that Elena Kagan represents "a clear a present danger to the
> right to keep and bear arms," to quote the N.R.A.'s statement of opposition
> to her nomination. (Justice Kagan had never owned or shot a gun, but since
> joining the court has taken lessons and gone hunting with Justice Antonin
> Scalia, pronouncing the experience "kind of fun."<http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/kagan_fulfills_a_promise_and_goes_hunting_with_justice_scalia/>
> )
>
> But the N.R.A. has begun to involve itself in lower court nominations as
> well, where it can work its will in the shadows. It has effectively blocked
> President Obama's nomination of Caitlin J. Halligan to a seat on the United
> States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that has been
> vacant since September 2005, when John G. Roberts Jr. moved to a courthouse
> up the street. The president has submitted the name of the superbly
> qualified Ms. Halligan to the Senate three times.
>
> When the Democrats' effort to break a Republican filibuster failed last
> year, Senator Murkowski was the only Republican to vote for cloture,
> perhaps liberated by the fact that she won her last election as a write-in
> candidate, thus freeing herself of party discipline - which in the
> Republicans' case effectively means discipline by the N.R.A. In this year's
> Republican Senate primary in Indiana, the N.R.A. spent $200,000 toward the
> successful effort to defeat the incumbent, Richard Lugar, attacking the
> six-term senator <http://www.nrapvf.org/DefeatLugar> for, among other
> sins, having voted to confirm "both of Barack Obama's anti-gun nominees to
> the U.S. Supreme Court."
>
> When I wrote a year ago<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/rock-bottom/>about the fate of Caitlin Halligan's appeals court nomination, I tried to
> puzzle out the basis for the opposition. Silly me, I thought it had
> something to do with Republicans not wanting a young (she had just turned
> 45), highly qualified judge sitting in the D.C. Circuit's famous launch
> position (hello, John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia,
> Clarence Thomas, Warren Burger . . .)
>
> Now I realize it's not about anything so sophisticated. It's about the
> N.R.A., which announced its opposition<http://www.nraila.org/legislation/federal-legislation/2011/12/nra-opposes-the-nomination-of-caitlin-h.aspx>days before the cloture vote last December. It was only the second time in
> the organization's history that it had opposed a nomination at the
> non-Supreme Court level. (The first was Abner Mikva in 1979, a former
> member of Congress from Chicago who won confirmation and who later served
> as President Bill Clinton's White House counsel.) In a previous job as New
> York State's solicitor general, Ms. Halligan, a former Supreme Court law
> clerk who is now general counsel to the Manhattan district attorney, had
> represented the state in a lawsuit against gun manufacturers. So much for
> her.
>
> So that's my N.R.A. story. The question is what anyone can do about it.
> The N.R.A. has embedded itself so deeply into the culture of Republican
> politics that it would take a cataclysm to break the bonds of money and
> fear that keep Republican office holders captive to the gun lobby's agenda.
>
> Well, a cataclysm just occurred, a few dozen miles from my office at Yale
> Law School. (My late father-in-law was born on a farm in the Sandy Hook
> neighborhood of Newtown.) There will be legislative proposals, and members
> of the Senate and House will debate them, maybe even enact a few, and
> people back home can decide what they think. How to get a handle on the gun
> problem is not my point. Rather, I want to offer the judicial nomination
> story as a canary in the mine, a warning about the depths to which the
> power of the gun lobby has brought the political system.
>
> My point is this: It is totally unacceptable for the N.R.A., desperate to
> hang on to its mission and its members after achieving its Second
> Amendment triumph <http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html>at the Supreme Court four years ago, to be calling the tune on judicial
> nominations for an entire political party. Free the Republican caucus.
> Follow Lisa Murkowski's lead. Recognize a naked power play for what it is.
> Voters who think they care about the crisis of gun violence in America are
> part of the problem, not the solution - they are enablers if they aren't
> willing to help their elected representatives cast off the N.R.A.'s chains.
> Call for an end to the cowardly filibuster against Caitlin Halligan, whose
> nomination the president resubmitted in September. The next time a senator
> announces opposition to a judicial nominee, demand something other than
> incoherent mumbo-jumbo. Tell the senator to fill in the blank: "I oppose
> this nominee because ____." If there's an answer of substance, fine. That's
> advise-and-consent democracy. But if, upon inspection, the real answer is
> "because the N.R.A. told me to," we have a problem. Based on these last few
> years, I think we do.
>
>
> --
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>
>
>
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