More Political Gamesmanship on the Supreme Court
June 29th, 2009Will the Republicans really fight Obama’s Supreme Court pick?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Or in the end, will they just play games to raise money and throw red meat to the base?
Most of the real experts say Sotomayor will most likely be confirmed. But there will always be wrinkles, or rumors of wrinkles…
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge, according to AP.
The talking heads are all a Twitter about this, but is it a lot of hot air about nothing?
Meanwhile, the rumor mill is alive and spewing down Montgomery way with this tidbit.
Highly placed state democratic sources are saying Sessions is “blackmailing” President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — with Davis’s help — to keep U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in her position, in exchange for backing off on an earnest fight against the Sotomayer nomination.
It has already been reported here that Davis is close to Canary, socially and from previous fund-raising efforts for his Congressional campaigns. And why not? He clearly doesn’t care about the environment and is in the pocket of big business in this state, including Alabama Power and ATnT.
It has been reported recently that Davis met with the Business Council of Alabama before casting his vote against Obama’s climate change bill, which passed the U.S. House in spite of nay votes from Alabama’s entire Congressional delegation in Washington. Supposedly, The New York Times is working up a doozy of a story on that one. I’ll believe it when I see it. Not sure they have the personnel…
Reportedly, the deal is still for Davis to get Canary’s money and endorsement in the Democratic Primary, but Laure apparently still likes her job as a U.S. Attorney and wants to keep it — in spite of the heat she’s taken nationally for the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
Initially, the report of a deal between Davis and Canary was denied by a New York source close to the House Judiciary Committee, who told me Davis was not slowing things down on replacing U.S. attorneys. The source said the case was “just the opposite.”
“In fact Leura is preparing to leave. She’s being offered a seat on the Court of Criminal appeals by Gov. Bob Riley, and her husband will step down from running BCA.”
Not sure what happened to that deal, but I would like to have been a fly on the wall when Davis convinced Jere Beasley to be his campaign chairman. Of course that won’t help Davis with the rest of the trial lawyers, who hate Beasley.
I would also have liked to be a fly on the wall to hear the exchange between Davis and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers when Davis (and/or Conyers) decided Davis should relinquish his spot on the committee — to run for governor.
I talked to a key source in Washington on Friday who is doing some checking on this. Hope to have a report soon…
Tags: Artur Davis, Jeff Sessions, Leura Canary, Ron Sparks, Supreme Court
June 30th, 2009 at 4:12 am
it’s incomprehensible to me how the obama administration could justify keeping leura canary on as us atty. i know obama is not worried about our electoral votes in 2012 — bama ed level wont rise enough to go democratic. but it would make him a national joke — something even worse for a pol than going all the way to argentina to get laid.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Politics are and always have been full of deals. One of the few non-dealing politicians to make it to the White House,
Jimmy Carter, discovered the hard way that being 100% upright and ethical gets you hated by congressional leaders of your own party, few if any major initiatives passed, and increased lethargy on the part of leading civil service bureaucrats.
The starry-eyed idealists who were swooning about the coming of the Age of Aquarius just after Obama’s election ignored two centuries of tawdry deal making that is the hallmark of DC politics.
While Obama is a huge improvement on his predecessor, it will serve us all to remember that hardly any other players in the Babylon-by-the-Potomac soap opera went away. They may have new roles — e.g., Hillary as Secretary of State. etc. — but they are 99.9% the same merry band of players who’ve been around for years. And as for the civil service bureaucrats who actually run most executive agencies, many if them have been around since Carter or Reagan.
Keeping Canary on as U.S. Attorney, given factors cited, is an outcome that should only be mildly surprising. Every president is faced with trading horses to get what’s desired. If Obama’s senior aides think this horse trade is worth it, they’ll do it. It’s part and parcel of DC culture and politics.
Are things better, and will they get even better, with Obama in the White House? Certainly. But things will not be perfect and change will be incremental.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Let’s break a little news anonymous Doc style:
Sources say Davis has given Sessions veto power over judicial nominees in Alabama, and we all know how important that Middle District federal courthouse is to the intel/military industrial complex in Alabama — and the U.S.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Leura Garrett Canary should be disbarred.