Sat, 17.01.09
the judges
One of the issues one may easily forget is the dismissal of several judges in the Bush administration, which ultimately led to the resignation of the Attorney-General, Gonzalez. As the LATimes reports, the political apointee in charge of supervising the career lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil and voting rights divisions, referred to his staff as “commies,” “crazy libs,” and reportedly confided in a friend that “he hoped to get rid of the “Democrats” and “liberals” because they were “disloyal” and replace them with “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans.”
Relieving to read an unrelated story in Slate about the history of Supreme Court Presidents – who preside over the inauguration – and Presidents of the United States. The piece highlights the fact that the Chief Justice who swore in Lincoln, Roger Brooke Taney, stated in Dred Scott v. Sanford that blacks were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” Lincoln obviously opposed the decision. Obama and Roberts start out on opposite ground: Obama voted against Chief Justice Roberts.