When Sen. Charles Schumer (D, NY) said to Janice Brown at her Wednesday confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I think you’ve got a tough row to hoe up here,” do you think he was making an effort to speak to her in a language that, as the daughter of an Alabama sharecropper, she would understand? [Link via Howard Bashman] I wonder how many rows Sen. Schumer has hoed.
At the same hearing Sen. Richard Durbin (D, Ill) was deeply troubled, even shocked, by a comment that he quoted from one of Justice Brown’s speeches to law students: “Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies.” To. Sen. Durbin this comment indicates that Brown is “a conservative judicial activist, plain and simple,” and presumably not qualified to serve on the federal bench.
Query: if a liberal nominee had once said, “Where government moves in, community is strengthened, civil society flourishes, and our ability to control our own destinies is enhanced,” do you think Sen. Durbin would regard that nominee as a liberal judicial activist, plain and simple, and not qualified to serve?
Even though it was a rhetorical question, I will respond. As we well know, the same rules do not pertain to liberals as to conservatives. Thus liberals can’t be out of the political mainstream. Therefore, only conservative judges can be judicial activists. Also, by their definition, a black conservative is ipso facto out of the political mainstream.
She should have repsonded with “NO, sir, I do not have a “tough row to hoe” as my people were freed two centuries ago.”
Aw, come on! It’s a common expression, and has nothing to do with what Brown’s ancestors might have been doing a couple hundred years ago.
I mean, I loath Schumer as much as the next guy, but find something reasonable to criticize him for! Knowing him, you won’t have to search long…
Sorry. I thought it was funny. It certainly wasn’t meant to be a serious criticism of Schumer, with whom there are many, many more serious bones to pick than rows to hoe….
Ahh! The cartoon was linked via lawyer, just not the perfesser:
volokh.com/2003_10_19_volokh_archive.html#106677441242572069
Given that government, depending on what it does/how it implements the people’s will, can do either good or harm or both, someone making either blanket statement in a prepared speech isn’t really qualified to serve on such a high court. Change statement 1 to “Where an over-regulating government…” or statement 2 to “Where a government that embodies compassionate conservatism…” and they both make actual sense and don’t make their speakers look like idiots.
Yeah, it was supposed to be a joke.