In its March 9 editorial on judicial nominations (which I discussed here), the New York Times called for eliminating the use of "blue slips," through which home-state Senators can block judicial nominations. Specifically, the Times' editorialists wrote:
Mr. Leahy must decide whether to follow the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which holds that judicial nominees should not move forward without their home-state senators’ support. Blue slips have no constitutional basis, are undemocratic and are subject to abuse. The Republicans abandoned them when they controlled the Senate under Mr. Bush. Blue slips should be allowed to die a quiet death.
I am no fan of blue slips, and never have been. Yet, as Robert Alt notes, this is something of a change of heart for the Times. Back in 2001, the Times was all about blue slips, encouraging their use by Senate Democrats to block President Bush's judicial nominees. Back then, just before and after Bush announced his first crop of nominees, the Times wrote:
"[P]ast abuse does not mean the Democrats should now abandon the blue-slip policy completely and give the Republicans carte blanche . . . ." (April 27, 2001, A24)
"A key is for the Democrats to stand firm on enforcing the prerogative under the so-called blue-slip policy that allows any senator to block a nominee from his home state." (May 11, 2001, A34)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Filibusters and Blue Slips (Again):
- The NYT's Love-Hate Relationship with Blue Slips:
- Judicial Nomination Filibusters for the NYT, but Not the GOP:
- Senate Republicans Unite to Defend “Blue Slips”:
After all a traditional rule is only good when you can count on the other guy respecting it as well.
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Also, while not directly applicable to this case, in general I think your claims of hypocrisy or inconsistency by the Times or similar organizations (same applies to conservative organizations though they aren't brought up here as much) is often overstated.
I mean I believe that it's good to use deadly force as a last resort to stop a rape. I however believe it is bad to use deadly force as a last resort to stop a car theft.
Similarly one might believe that undemocratic means such as blue slips are necessary as a last resort against truly awful candidates who threaten the very fabric of our justice system but not useful as a general process to object to reasonable candidates.
Now of course what they define reasonable and grave threat to be may not be the same as what you do but that doesn't make it inconsistent. I mean who wouldn't advocate using blue slips or anything else to stop Rob Blagoveich from being nominated to the supreme court even? Everyone will use whatever means necessary in extreme enough cases, largely the question is about how extreme this is.
Of course it is misleading to cloak the arguments in terms that make it sound applicable regardless of whether you agree with them about reasonability but unfortunately that is a behavior which pervades all political discourse.
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"[T]ruly awful candidates who threaten the very fabric of our justice system" always seems to equal “nominated by a Republican”.
"Reasonable candidates" always seems to equal "nominated by a Democrat."
I have always favored getting rid of blue slips and filibusters across the board - they are patently undemocratic, maybe even unconstitutional. So I hope that Leahy does ignore them and bring judicial nominees to the committee and then to the floor for a vote if the Dems have enough votes - just as should have happened with President Bush's nominees – it will set a precedent for the way the process should work. I say that even though I suspect that I would not agree with many of this President's nominees given his stated expected emphasis on "empathy" (and I do think ideology/judicial philosophy is a perfectly legitimate reason to vote for or against a judicial candidate).
But mark my words, if that does happen, the NYT will be cheering it on, only to completely reverse it's position – with the most over-heated rhetoric possible about the Senate’s institution role, tyranny of the majority, the long, important tradition of blue slips and the filibuster, etc. – when there is a Republican President and Senate.
Only they’ll say: That was different.
-Someone on the right of the Democratic party gets the scary label "conservative Democrat." Someone on the left of the GOP gets the label "moderate Republican." Bucking the GOP is the "moderate" thing to do, after all.
-A Republican politician who exploits a broken system is corrupt. A Democrat who exploits a broken system is pragmatic.
Given a choice between Blago and treasonous clowns like Leahy and Jay Rockefeller Blagoveich is the better choice. Better an honest crook than perfidious traitors would you not agree?
The fact is the NYT is to the democratic party what Pravda was to the Soviet communist party, a house organ and nothing more. Now if in 2010 the republicans were to take control of the congress will you have a problem if they blue slip or advocate any other measure to keep the Obamunist from nominating execrable nominees to the courts?
If a candidate is truly awful and threatens the very fabric of our justice system, then I expect they would not get a majority vote in the Senate. The point of having a democracy is so that one person's vision of what's right and wrong doesn't control everyone, even if 99.99% of the people disagree with that one. If you think a candidate's bad, get the Senators to oppose him.
I'm definitely NOT an Obama supporter and I fully expect that I'll be complaining about the decisions of Obama-nominated justices at some point. But that doesn't mean I think they shouldn't be confirmed at all. As long as someone is minimally qualified (and I opposed Harriet Miers for that reason, even though I supported Bush), then they should be confirmed if the President nominates them. If a candidate is Miers-bad, then the Senate should not confirm as a group, not as one person making the decision for everyone.
This whole the-NYT-is-a-useless-rag meme is simply part of the conservative movement's desperate attempt to appear the victim of the media.
There's no doubt that the Times is influential. Many people take the Times seriously and attach great weight to the opinions expressed therein, even those expressed by the predictable editorial board, the even more predictable Bob Herbert, "conservative" Obama-slobberer David Brooks, and serial metaphor abuser Tom Friedman. Influence is not evidence of value. If - as is often the case - the Times says something ludicrous, it's important to correct it.
The Times is not a "useless rag." It can cover news stores better than almost any other news organization when it wants to. However, it often elects to cover news stories of little value because it's political agenda (remember the weird focus on Augusta before the Masters a few years back?), and the political opinions are almost always as useless as they are predictable.
2) They are not "undemocratic," because the senate itself, with equal representation for every state, is undemocratic. A majority of Senators do not necessarily represent a majority of the country.
3) By what theory could they possibly be unconstitutional? The constitution grants each house the power to set its own rules.
But we are not talking about conservative or liberal organizations, we are talking about the news media. Once upon a time we expected them to be honest and consistent. Now most of them just take whatever side helps the Dems.
It appears that the vast majority of periodical links on this and most other blogs are to the NYT, and that the NYT seemingly puts out more thought-provoking material than other periodicals. You may not like the perspective of the NYT's editors, but these facts demonstrate the NYT's value. Further, if one cared to subject other periodicals to the exacting microscope under which the NYT exists on this blog, I imagine similar flaws would be illuminated.
This whole the-NYT-is-a-useless-rag meme is simply part of the conservative movement's desperate attempt to appear the victim of the media.
3.17.2009 9:23am"
Their declining revenues and readership prove otherwise. It is a rag, even liberals can't be bothered enough to keep it afloat and away from looming bankruptcy. They can't get it in their heads people who read newspapers want news in their news and opinion in the opinion section. Before the rise of competing media, the opinion as news was not always so blatant, now it is. The NYT's only value is that of Pravda and Izvestia in Soviet days, not for any inherent news value but simply as the view of the of the party elite on a given subject on a given day.
It appears that the vast majority of periodical links on this and most other blogs are to the NYT, and that the NYT seemingly puts out more thought-provoking material than other periodicals. You may not like the perspective of the NYT's editors, but these facts demonstrate the NYT's value. Further, if one cared to subject other periodicals to the exacting microscope under which the NYT exists on this blog, I imagine similar flaws would be illuminated.
This whole the-NYT-is-a-useless-rag meme is simply part of the conservative movement's desperate attempt to appear the victim of the media.
3.17.2009 9:23am"
Their declining revenues and readership prove otherwise. It is a rag, even liberals can't be bothered enough to keep it afloat and away from looming bankruptcy. They can't get it in their heads people who read newspapers want news in their news and opinion in the opinion section. Before the rise of competing media, the opinion as news was not always so blatant, now it is. The NYT's only value is that of Pravda and Izvestia in Soviet days, not for any inherent news value but simply as the view of the of the party elite on a given subject on a given day.
The quality of those thoughts, and the general benefit of the underlying process, may not be so great.
Your characterization- or support of Robert Alt's characterization- of "the Times" being hypocritical on the blue slip issue is disingenuous. All of the articles you quote are editorials. Would it be fair to characterize "the Times" on the basis of Bill Kristol articles?
Let me be clear: if the articles advocating the different stances on blue slips were written by the same author, that author would certainly be a hypocrite and probably politically biased. But, these editorials hardly suggest the entire paper, and its reporting staff, is hypocritical or biased.
The editorials in question are unsigned editorials by the entire editorial board. The board is the "author" of these articles. They reflect the views of the entire board, and through them the NY Times as a whole. True, not every reporter must ascribe to every opinion expressed in every editorial published every day. But the editorials reflect the collective views of the editors of the paper.
If the editors want to change their views over time, that's fine. But they never acknowledge that they do so -- nor that the changes almost always conveniently fit a partisan agenda. E.g. blue slips are good when they might hinder Bush nominees, they are bad when they might hinder Obama nominees.
Now that we live in a digital age, it is quite easy to call the editors out on their own contradictions. If they don't like that, maybe they should try to be more principled and less partisan.
(BTW, do the editors at the Times ever bother to check their own prior positions on these issues? One would think that would be very easy for them.)
(*) Of course, they may not be hypocritical anyway; they may have legitimately changed their minds. But that seems rather unlikely.
Diane Feinstein "blueslipped" him, saying the Trott seat "belonged" to California. When he was nominated to take Thomas Nelson's seat, the blue slip vanished and Judge Smith was confirmed.
"The NYT's only value is that of Pravda and Izvestia in Soviet days, not for any inherent news value but simply as the view of the of the party elite on a given subject on a given day."
Or as the citizen's of the USSR used to say: "There's no news in the Truth, and no truth in the News.
The NYT's financial situation is due to the internet, not the politics of its editorial page. Or can you explain the Wall Street Journal's financial difficulties? Is that because of the politics of its editorial page?
Now, if you want to say the NYT unsigned editorials are absurdly liberally biased, I'm with you. But that's not true of the news section, which maybe has occasional biases but is still the best source for news available.
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It didn't. AFAIK, "blue slips" aren't a matter of public record. See, e.g., the Republican (either McCain or Graham) hold against Haynes.
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But then, I don't expect the NYT to be accurate, let alone be void of hypocrisy.
Uh, if the claim is true, it proves that Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, was able, under Rebublican rules, to blue-slip a nominee. I'm not sure what you think the problem is
This comparison is unfair. The attention garnered by Rush is the result of his outrageousness (is that a word?), not his ability to provoke thought. Point in case: The VC bloggers, to my knowledge, have never cited a Rush manuscript as a means of facilitating conversation and debate. But the same VC bloggers cite to the NYT almost every day.
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In a semi-related topic, I thought ya'll would be interested in today's article in the Washington Times on the Republicans' use of blue slips
Your right, "republican rules" is imprecise. But point is not which side is using them, it's which side allows them to be used when they are in control. Feinstein can blue slip untill she's blue in the face, if the Republicans confirm the nominee anyway it doesn't matter.
And the concern the Republicans have now is not that the Democrats will stop using blue slips, it that the Democrats will ignore Republican blue slips.
I couldn't find any links to stories about financial difficulties at the WSJ, but I did find stories saying that their circulation is growing at the same time the NYT is seeing their circulation plummet.
"This whole the-NYT-is-a-useless-rag meme is simply part of the conservative movement's desperate attempt to appear the victim of the media."
So what?
What are non-conservatives, chopped liver?
The ever-widening disparity in quality between the rest of the paper and the editorial page has been an embarrassment since Pinch took over from Punch. The corresponding leakage from the editorial page would not be near the problem it is were the editorial page not so banal, and likewise the brain-dead editorial page could be safely ignored did it not inevitably leak into the rest of the paper.
I'm thinking primarily here of the once cherished Book Review. There weren't enough conservative subscribers in the first place for your theory to explain the dramatic drop-off in readership, compared to, say, the WSJ.
A serious paper needs a serious editorial voice. The Times has not offered one for decades.
Also, if the New York Times is hurting, that is not unusual -- a lot of big newspapers are now in big trouble.