Federalist Society

It looks like the Judicial Confirmation Network is taking its battle against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the state level by teaming up with local activists and state-affiliates of national right-wing groups:

Grassroots Coalition Formed to Mobilize for SCOTUS Hearings

Little Rock -- On Thursday (June 4, 2008), key organizations from around Arkansas announced the formation of a “center-right” coalition, the Arkansas Judicial Network, in preparation for the nomination hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The initial coalition will consist of the following individuals and/or organizations:

· Anne Britton – NRA National Volunteer of the Year (2000)
· Jerry Cox – President, Arkansas Family Council
· Betsy Hagan – Chairman, Arkansas Chapter of Eagle Forum
· Doyle Webb -- Chairman, Republican Party of Arkansas
· Brian Vandiver – Attorney and Chairman of the Arkansas Federalist Society
· Cory Cox -- Attorney and former Chairman of the Arkansas Federalist Society
· David Fort – Small Business Owner and Chairman, Arkansas Federation of Young Republicans

This Arkansas Judicial Coalition will partner with the Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN), (www.judicialnetwork.com) to ensure that Arkansans understand the judicial philosophy of Barack Obama’s appointee to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor.

Let's see, this new groups consists of members of the Federalist Society and the Eagle Forum, NRA volunteers, and the head of a state's Focus on the Family affiliate who took the lead last year in preventing gays and lesbians from being able to adopt children.

Where exactly are those representing the "center" in this "center-right coalition"?

The Hartford Courant raises some interesting questions about just what the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund - a right-wing Virginia non-profit organization overseen by the likes of Ed Meese, William Bradford Reynolds, and Al Regnery - is doing with the funds it has been raising because it seems like most of it is going to toward fund-raising, salary for its leadership, and to prop up right-wing organizations to which they have ties, like The American Spectator, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Federalist Society :

Tens of thousands of Americans have contributed to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund after reading letters like Stephanie Lawlor's. But while those donations total millions every year, the fund spends only pennies on the dollar directly assisting officers facing criminal charges, state and federal filings show.

Over the past five years, the charity collected more than $13 million, primarily through direct-mail pitches. But most of that money — more than $9 million — went right back to the professional fundraisers hired by the nonprofit legal defense fund.

Last year, for example, the group spent 81 cents on fundraising for every dollar collected, according to federal tax forms. After other expenses, the defense fund last year devoted only about 8 cents on the dollar to charitable grants, the tax forms show.

That grant money — about $275,000 — was less than the group's co-founders paid themselves in salary and benefits for the year. David H. Martin, a Washington lawyer who serves as chairman, collected $156,000, while Alfred Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator Magazine, received $81,000 for the part-time job of secretary-treasurer. In addition, the charity paid $54,000 into retirement accounts for Martin and Regnery.

In a telephone interview earlier this month, Martin said the charity is at the mercy of expensive mail solicitations. "It's hard to raise money through direct mail. Why? Because postage is so expensive," he said. "It's just a killer."

Martin said he believed the group's fundraising efficiency had consistently improved in recent years. But federal filings suggest just the opposite, showing the cost of raising money increasing each of the last five years, from about 60 cents in fundraising costs for every dollar raised in 2003, to 81 cents last year.

At the same time, administrative costs have soared, particularly for salaries and rent. For years, the legal defense fund was run out of Martin's law office. But the nonprofit now subleases space at Regnery's financially strapped American Spectator. The initial rent in 2003 was $9,000 a year, but the nonprofit agreed last year to increase its payments to $42,000 a year — about a third of the total rent for the American Spectator's space. Martin said the rent covers a large amount of storage space and offices for himself and a clerk, and he said he thought the rent was fair.

And even as the charity devoted only a small fraction of its budget to grants, not all of the money doled out went to help accused officers. Instead, the charity's executives have sent a sizable and growing amount of cash to a small number of universities and conservative policy groups not mentioned in their fundraising pitches.

The charity's biggest beneficiary last year, for example, was not a police officer, but the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a national campus-based think tank that promotes "limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms."

The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund sent $75,000 to the institute last year, part of at least $360,000 the defense fund has pledged. Regnery, secretary-treasurer of the defense fund, is chairman of the institute's board of trustees. The charity has also given tens of thousands of dollars to the Federalist Society, described by The American Conservative magazine as a "training ground for young conservative lawyers"; to the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University in Virginia, a leading center of conservative and libertarian legal studies; and to a project at McDaniel College — Martin's alma mater.

Several years ago, we wrote a report debunking the Federalist Society’s protestations that it is little more than a “debating society” and didn’t try to shape legislation, support or oppose nominees, or take political positions. As we noted at the time, and which has become increasingly clear in the interceding years, Federalist Society members have all but overrun various government agencies during George Bush’s tenure in office and the administration has worked hand-in-glove with its members both inside and outside of government to press their common agenda.  

But still the Federalist Society insists that it is just a quaint little group of like-minded people who are only interested in debating ideas:

Q. Does the Federalist Society take positions on legal or policy issues or engage in other forms of political advocacy?

A. No. The Society is about ideas. We do not lobby for legislation, take policy positions, or sponsor or endorse nominees and candidates for public service. While overall the Society believes in limited government, its members are diverse and often hold conflicting views on a broad range of issues such as tort reform, privacy rights, and criminal justice.

That claim makes this article from the AP all the more interesting because, as the AP reports, back in 2007 right-wing judicial activists were not happy with Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt’s pick for the state Supreme Court and were trying to derail it.  That that end, Blunt’s own chief of staff sought to enlist the help of the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, who was more than happy to oblige:   

In a July 2007 e-mail, Martin asked Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the conservative legal group Federalist Society, to send an "unsolicited" e-mail saying: "go get ’em governor - and we’ve got your back."

A day later, Leo sent Martin an e-mail addressed to Blunt. It pledged help and urged the rejection of the Missouri Supreme Court nominees if they are "anything less than outstanding." Leo, in later e-mails, said Breckenridge should be framed as "out of the mainstream."

…

Tipped off early that Breckenridge was picked, Leo told Martin that Blunt’s decision "leaves a big problem for many future generations of Missourians."

"Your boss is a coward, and conservatives have neither time nor patience for the likes of him," Leo wrote.

Apparently, just because the Federalist Society is “nonpartisan” and doesn’t weigh in on “nominees and candidates for public service” doesn’t mean that Leo can’t use his position as executive vice president of the organization to do just that – something, it should be noted, he also did as part of the “Four Horsemen” on behalf of the Bush administration’s judicial nominees.

At the Federalist Society's "The Presidency and the Courts" forum yesterday in Cincinnati, President Bush took time to rally the troops and bask in their loving glow as he recounted his battles over the issue of judicial nominees and reminded his audience that, just as he had promised, he put two new justices on the Supreme Court who shared their right-wing ideology:

When asked if I had any idea in mind of the kind of judges I would appoint, I clearly remember saying, I do. That would be Judges Scalia and Thomas ... And I made a promise to the American people during the campaign that if I was fortunate enough to be elected my administration would seek out judicial nominees who follow that philosophy ... I have appointed more than one-third of all the judges now sitting on the federal bench, and these men and women are jurists of the highest caliber, with an abiding belief in the sanctity of our Constitution ... America is well served by the 110th justice of the United States Supreme Court -- Samuel A. Alito ... I was very proud to nominate for the Supreme Court a really decent man, and a man of good judgment, and that would be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.

Bush then went on to lament the politicization of the confirmation process, pointing to the treatment of Miguel Estrada as a prime example, and blasting those who engaged in "harmful tactics and maneuvers to thwart nominees": 

Unfortunately, Miguel Estrada's experience is not an isolated one. Many other well-qualified nominees have endured uncertainty and withering attacks on their character simply because they've accepted the call to public service. Those waiting in limbo include: Peter Keisler for the D.C. Circuit, Rod Rosenstein for the Fourth Circuit, and dozens of other nominees to district and circuit courts across this country.

...

The broken confirmation process has other consequences that Americans never see. Lawyers approached about being nominated will often politely decline because of the uncertainty and delay and ruthlessness that now characterizes the confirmation process. Some worry about the impact a nomination might have on their children, who would hear their dad or mom's name dragged through the political mud. This situation is unacceptable, and it's bad for our country. A judicial nomination should be a moment of pride for nominees and their families -- not the beginning of an ugly battle.

...

The American people expect the nomination process to be as free of partisanship as possible, and for senators to rise above tricks and gimmicks designed to thwart nominees ... In Washington, it can be easy to get caught up in the politics of the moment. Yet if we do not act to improve the confirmation process, those who are today deploying harmful tactics and maneuvers to thwart nominees will sooner or later find the tables turned.

Oddly, he didn't mention the most high profile vicitim of this problem - Harriet Miers:

According to “WithdrawMiers.org,” a coalition formed by the Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, Fidelis, and others for the sole purpose of opposing the nomination: “Miers’ … few published writings offer no real insight or assurance of a judicial philosophy that reflects a commitment to the Constitution.” And on issues where Miers had something of a record, WithdrawMiers.org was not impressed: “Ms. Miers fought to remove the pro-abortion plank in the American Bar Association platform, yet fought this Bush Administration in ending the ABA’s role in vetting judges which is known to be biased against judges whose judicial philosophies reflect a clear commitment to the Constitution. She donated money to a Texas pro-life group, yet helped establish an endowed lecture series at Southern Methodist University that brought pro-abortion icons Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi to campus.”

Like WithdrawMiers.org, Americans for Better Justice sprang up simply to oppose the Miers nomination. Founded by ultra-conservatives like David Frum, Linda Chavez, and Roger Clegg, ABJ was unconvinced that Miers shared its founders’ right-wing views and began gathering signatures on a petition demanding Miers’ withdrawal: “The next justice of the Supreme Court should be a person of clear, consistent, and unashamed conservative judicial philosophy … The next justice should be someone who has demonstrated a deep engagement in the constitutional issues that regularly come before the Supreme Court — and an appreciation of the originalist perspective on those issues … For all Harriet Miers’ many fine qualities and genuine achievements, we the undersigned believe that she is not that person.”

The right-wing magazine National Review had, in many ways, led the charge against the Miers nomination from the very beginning. Its writers called Miers “a very, very bad pick,” declared her nomination “the most catastrophic political miscalculation of the Bush presidency” and complained that the Right had been forced to endure “an embarrassingly lame campaign from the White House, the Republican National Committee, and their surrogates.”

What caused this gnashing of teeth was the fact that, according to the National Review’s editorial board, “There is very little evidence that Harriet Miers is a judicial conservative, and there are some warnings that she is not … neither being pro-life or an evangelical is a reliable guide to what kind of jurisprudence she would produce, even on Roe, let alone on other issues.”

Others on the Right were just as dismayed by the nomination. American Values’ Gary Bauer explained: “[Harriet Miers] has not written one word, said one word, given a speech, written a letter to the editor on any of the key constitutional issues that conservatives care about and are worried about and want to make sure the court does not go down the road on."

The Wall Street Journal called the nomination a “political blunder of the first order,” lamenting that “After three weeks of spin and reporting, we still don't know much more about what Ms. Miers thinks of the Constitution.”

Stephen Crampton of the American Family Association said Miers is a “stealth candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court [and] is an unknown with no paper trail,” while the Christian Defense Coalition blasted the president, saying his supporters “did not stand out in the rain for 20 hours passing out literature or putting up signs for the President to have him turn around and nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. A nominee in which there is no record of their judicial philosophy or view of the Constitution.”

Back when John Roberts was preparing for his confirmation hearing, Concerned Women for America was praising him as a “highly qualified nominee with extraordinary personal integrity who has proven himself worthy to sit on our nation's highest court.” CWA said “Senators should ignore the ridiculously inappropriate litmus tests and document demands of the radical left” and that Roberts “should receive overwhelming bi-partisan support and confirmation.”

This is in stark contrast to the stand CWA took on Miers: “We believe that far better qualified candidates were overlooked and that Miss Miers’ record fails to answer our questions about her qualifications and constitutional philosophy … We do not believe that our concerns will be satisfied during her hearing." In calling for her withdrawal, CWA revealed their real objection: “Miers is not even close to being in the mold of Scalia or Thomas, as the President promised the American people.” They demanded that the president give them a “nomination that we can whole-heartedly endorse.”