Hightower Lowdown

In 1981, when blowhard televangelist Jerry Falwell exclaimed that Sandra Day O'Connor was not right wing enough for him, and that every good Christian should rise up in righteous opposition to her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Barry Goldwater retorted: "I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass."

Twenty-four years later, here we go again. O'Connor is now stepping down from the top court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist will soon follow, and there are several openings on the little-known but equally important federal courts of appeals. So here come Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and other flamethrowers of right-wing religious extremism demanding that their very own president must reward the faithful by stacking the courts—America's third branch of government—with judges in their image. No mere strict conservatives in the O'Connor/Goldwater mold will do, they screech, instead insisting on nominees from the certifiably kooky right.

Sure enough, Bush has nominated some nutballs to the appeals courts— judges whose views on such social issues as abortion, gay rights, and Biblical government bring the Falwells to orgasm. In recent years, these issues have become preeminent in every debate over a court seat, as though they were all that courts deal with. Accordingly, the current battle in the U.S. Senate for confirmation of W's nominees is being cast by the media and partisans on both sides as a titanic clash over the judicial enforcement of social values—the politically potent evangelical right versus moderates and liberals. But this singular focus on social issues deceives the larger public about the real reason these particular people have been chosen by Bush, and it drastically understates the true depth of what's at stake for America in filling these judgeships. The essential populist reality is that whatever other ideological agenda Bush's nominees will seek to impose from the bench, every single one of them will be dutiful and aggressive pushers of the corporate agenda. They will use their enormous judicial power to steal rights, money, property, and power from us consumers, workers, farmers, small businesses, the middle class, poor people, and other ordinary citizens on behalf of the corporate interests they have spent their entire careers serving.

Bush proclaims that he has "no litmus test" for people he chooses for judgeships—but that's a lie. It's true that, as governor of Texas, he named some judges who were not rabidly antiabortion, and not all of his federal nominees have been Falwellian on the subject. But being procorporate is an absolute litmus test for him.

The courts and you You wouldn't know it from the establishment media's coverage, but the vast majority of federal court decisions are not about gay marriage, abortion, the Ten Commandments, and the like. A far bigger chunk of appellate cases involve such matters as corporations trying to loot pension funds, HMOs denying proper care to patients, nursing homes abusing Granny, polluters contaminating our drinking water, executives defrauding stockholders, manufacturers making shoddy products, biotech companies and meat processors adulterating our food supply, retail giants practicing predatory pricing to squeeze out small competitors, bosses engaging in sexual or racial or age discrimination, companies injuring or cheating workers, developers grabbing other people's property—and other variations on corporate profiteering. ... [ read more ]