Specter of a Lost Conscience
There’s nobody slicker than a Philadelphia lawyer – or at least that was the prevailing folk wisdom roughly from the time of Mark Twain until my childhood in the farmlands around Kittanning, Pa.
Now Arlen Specter, that Philadelphia lawyer turned perpetual senator, is proving the old adage once again – as he did in grilling Anita Hill to pave the way for approval of Clarence Thomas, arguably the worst Supreme Court justice in our history.
Arlen’s latest? He gave a 25-minute speech in the Senate on Tuesday attacking Eric Holder, Obama’s nominee for attorney general.
After conceding that Holder’s academic and professional record is exemplary, Specter picked at the fact that Holder was a deputy attorney general when Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich.
“Sometimes it is more important for the attorney general to have the stature and the courage to say no instead of to say yes,†Specter intoned. He left out the deputy part – the fact that nobody looks to the deputy of anything for a guiding light on policy. As a deputy sophist, Specter uses facts selectively.
Physician, Heal Thyself
By his own criterion, Arlen Specter should be expelled from the Senate. He has spent the last eight years goose-stepping to the Bush/Cheney marching song and supporting abuses he had the power to thwart.
He is, in the language of Philadelphia lawyers, everything he inveighs against. He is the principal reason why I and a number of my friends concluded that the species once referred to as “moderate Republicans” is now extinct.
True, Specter is more enlightened than most of his Republican counterparts on environmental issues (but he opposed signing the Kyoto accord, and he favored drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge) and on reproductive rights (yet he insisted that contraceptives not be covered by health insurance plans).
The Specter Shuffle
His typical pattern throughout the Bush/Cheney Dark Ages – through much of which he reigned as chairman of the Judiciary Committee – has been to solemnly announce lofty public principles on each issue and then, when the time comes to take action, to knuckle under and rubber-stamp the right-wing agenda, regardless of what principle is being shredded or compromised.
In 2005, he not only supported reauthorization of all the subversions of civil liberties gathered together under the “Patriot†Act, he personally authored a provision in the act allowing Bush to make interim appointments of U.S. attorneys (bypassing congress), without any term limits on the appointees. That’s a Philadelphia lawyer’s cynical twist on the meaning of “interim.â€
And why these emergency powers under the Patriot Act? As if the proper response to a terrorist attack is to run out and appoint dozens of U.S. attorneys? That’ll show ‘em.
The Evils of … Oh, Never Mind
Specter also talked a good game about warrantless wiretapping on U.S. citizens, calling it “inappropriate†and acting as if he were about to rear up and stamp it out. But then he spearheaded the 2008 amendments to the Surveillance Act that retroactively gave Bush and Gonzales all the powers they had illegally usurped. And pushed to grant immunity to telecom companies for helping to break those laws. I don’t know how much money he gets from Verizon, but I’ve seen reports that he’s received $135,000 from Comcast. Come on, Arlen. Just say No.
Eric Holder, on the other hand, has an outstanding record, has prosecuted public corruption and supported appointment of independent counsels to go after suspect officials in both parties.
We wish him success as attorney general, and we wish Chris Matthews would reconsider his decision not to run against Arlen Specter in 2010.
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
He’s a doormat, plain and simple.
And frankly he gives me the creeps the way only people like Dick Cheney or Orrin Hatch can. I don’t expect truth from politicians, but I would appreciate better acting from people who attempt to present themselves as things they are not.
His low point for me was his campaign for a Senate investigation of the New England Patriots, ostensibly for the use of unsanctioned videotapes for game preparation but mostly, I think, because of the whooping they gave to the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl.
To quote Dr. Thompson (who was speaking of someone else), “… he should be stuffed into a bottle and tossed out into the Japanese Current.”
Comment by Mark — January 8, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
Excellent example. And then — right in character — after he had milked his demand to investigate the NFL/Patriots case for all it was worth politically — he then flip-flopped and took the position that congress should not investigate.
Comment by Al — January 8, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
Specter has been a grandstander of the first degree. All talk, no action. But, so many entrenched members of Congress, that’s all it takes to make headlines and fool the voters.
Comment by Mrs D. — January 9, 2009 @ 5:46 pm
Right — that’s what they’re counting on. But that isn’t working quite so well now, hopefully. You’ve certainly put a big crimp in that con game in Ohio. (now all we need to do is get rid of Boehner)
Comment by Al — January 9, 2009 @ 10:12 pm