Abe Fortas Filibuster "buster", 1968

[splat@14]

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/NBC1968-10-01.wmv

[OldLeftieLawyer]

1. Thanks for that

I'm old enough to remember those newscasts, and the Fortas nomination in particular. This was the time when nightly body counts were comng from Vietnam, when every evening newscast showed dead soldiers. I wonder how the situation here would change today if the dead soldiers were being shown on the nightly news. The MSM are such neutered wimps.

Notice how different Brinkley's tone and substance were from the talking heads of today, the ones who do nothing but read? Brinkley sounded more like a teacher, filling in the tiny places where expansion was needed.

I miss Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen. Those guys were Senators, and those guys were pros. Most of the people there now are such pitiful amateurs.

Thanks again. Now I have to go find my Geritol.

[whistle]

3. Geritol is making a come-back as a laxative.....

[whistle]

2. That's right, the Republicans have never used a senate...

...filibuster to block any judge nomination because they disagreed with their political/judicial views....in a cat's ass they haven't. Senator Dirkson was the republican from Illinois. Abe Fortas a long time liberal democrat and LBJ nomination to the supreme court. Thanks for that reminder from history. There are probably many other examples of Republicans taking advantage of the filibuster. There just aren't a lot of recorded examples like that one.

There is more to the Ade Fortas story as there most certainly is with almost everyone in the United States of America.

<snip>
In June 1968, at the end of the 1967 Term of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren had Fortas arrange an appointment at the White House, at which time Warren announced his retirement, effective upon the confirmation of his successor. On June 26, LBJ nominated Fortas as Chief Justice. To Fortas’s seat, LBJ nominated a friend from Texas, Homer Thornberry. In July, Fortas erred, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee despite the fact that no sitting Justice had ever done so. During those hearings, Fortas lied to the Committee, although he had not yet been caught in that lie. The Senate recessed without voting on the nomination. When Senator Robert Griffin learned in September that Fortas had accepted $15,000 to give some summer school lectures at American University’s law school, money that had been raised by Fortas’s former partners and clients, the nomination was in trouble. In early October, after a vote to end the filibuster on the nomination failed, Fortas asked that his nomination be withdrawn. By 1969, further revelations led Fortas to resign from the Court. A convicted financier named Louis Wolfson had agreed to pay Fortas $20,000 per year for the remainder of his life, an amount that continued until the death of his wife if Fortas died before she did. Fortas received the first check in January 1966, after joining the Court, and though he returned it in December, Fortas's actions were condemned as ethically improper.

<more>
<link> http://www.michaelariens.com/ConLaw/justices/fortas.htm

None of us are saints, not even the people who point fingers. Senator Frist and the republicans in both houses need to remember that.

[splat@14]

4. I remember parts of that, thanks for the real story.

My ass was in Viet Nam then, Geritol is a good mixer now!

[whistle]

5. hahaha, that's the second time someone mentioned Geritol today

...I think Imus might have talked about it this morning on his show. He was in the studio in his pajamas and bathrobe, he looked like a homeless millionaire:woohoo: