Republicans , Democrats and Equal Protection
Nat Hentoff has a new column in the Village Voice on lack of commitment to the constitutional principle of equal protection. He says that Democrats need to do more than object to Bush's extremist nominees.
Moreover, since George W. Bush is very likely to name the next chief justice of the Supreme Court as well as one or two other replacements before the end of his second term, it is crucial for leaders of the Democratic Party, including future presidential aspirants, to do more than obstruct Bush's nominees. The Democrats have to tell the country what their criteria are for the Supreme Court and other life-tenured federal judges—instead of mechanically objecting to nominees for being "out of the mainstream."
Hentoff picks this quote from a 1986 lecture of Justice William Brennan:
"We do not yet have justice, equal and practical, for the poor, for members of minority groups, for the criminally accused, for the displaced persons of the technological revolution, for alienated youth, for the urban masses, for the unrepresented consumer—for all, in short, who do not partake of the abundance of American life. . . . The goal of universal equality, freedom, and prosperity is far from won and . . . ugly inequities continue to mar the face of the nation. We are surely nearer the beginning than the end of the struggle."
Hentoff says the Democrats haven't run with the ball on these issues.
Who among the leaders of the Democratic Party is saying that now—when we are still far from the fulfillment of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "due process of law" and the right of "any person" to "the equal protection of the laws"?
To answer Hentoff, there are some Democrats who consistently advocate for due process, equal protection and the rights of the criminally accused and otherwise oppressed: Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy come to mind. We could use more of them, for sure, but I think Hentoff should have acknowledged them.
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