The N.R.A. at the Bench (influencing judicial appointments)
There has been plenty written about the National Rifle Association in recent days. But nothing that Ive seen has focused on the gun lobbys increasingly pernicious role in judicial confirmations. So heres 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 presidents hope was Senator Mitch McConnells 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 States 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. The appeals court didnt even reach the interesting issue of whether the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to keep and bear nunchucks, ruling instead that the amendment didnt apply to the states which, before the Supreme Court later ruled otherwise by a vote of 5 to 4, it didnt.)
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.
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More: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/the-n-r-a-at-the-bench/
It's way past time that these mooks be taken down a lot.
They have no business being all up in judicial business.