Nat Hentoff
Bush address, Constitution Day
Fri Sep 16, 2005 09:11
64.140.158.229
Bush address, Constitution Day
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/09/15/transcript.fri/
(CNN Student News) -- September 16, 2005
Quick Guide
Presidential Address - Lend an ear to the president in his speech to victims of the nation's most destructive hurricane.
Constitution Day - Teach about Constitution Day using this example of how the document is at work today.
Week in Review - Check out our recap of the top stories of the week.
Transcript
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PHYLLIS JACKSON, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: You've made it to Friday, and we're glad you're spending part of it with CNN Student News! I'm Phyllis Jackson.
This city will rise again: Words from President Bush, as he promised the U.S. would do what it takes, to help hurricane victims rebuild.
This document is hard at work, 218 years after it was written... As evidenced by one of our week's top stories.
And this animated octogenarian proves you're never too old to tackle a sport that moves between heaven and Earth!
First Up: Presidential Address
JACKSON: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared Katrina the most destructive hurricane to ever strike the U.S. Even though it wasn't as strong as some other storms to make landfall, Katrina's large size made it particularly damaging. And when he took to the airwaves to address the nation last night, President Bush carried a message of reassurance and rebuilding, to Katrina's victims. Chris Wolfe brings us the highlights of the president's speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WOLFE, CNN REPORTER: President Bush picked Jackson Square, in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans to announce an unprecedented federal aid package providing housing, health care, job assistance and education for hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. When that job is done, all Americans will have something to be very proud of, and all Americans are needed in this common effort.
WOLFE: Many Americans may be stunned by the speed thus far of the recovery in New Orleans. Thursday, Mayor Ray Nagin gave details about the first part of his "phased repopulation plan." It should resuscitate some of the most lively parts of the city, including the French Quarter, in the next two weeks.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: We're re-opening up the city and almost 200,000 residents will be able to come back and get this city going once again.
WOLFE: The situation in some surrounding areas isn't nearly as positive. In the ninth ward, in the shadow of one of the breached levees in eastern New Orleans, it looks like a bomb went off. Only one structure is still standing. Federal emergency workers are looking for 300-thousand trailers and RVs to temporarily house Katrina victims in both Louisiana and Mississippi.
The death toll in Mississippi is standing at 218, but here in Louisiana, the number has continued to grow. It has now reached 558. In New Orleans, for CNN Student News, I'm Chris Wolfe.
==============
Excluded from the High Court
Has any present Supreme Court justice seen a cop lying on the witness stand?
by Nat Hentoff
September 15th, 2005 5:44 PM
http://villagevoice.com/news/0538,hentoff,67940,6.html
The reason judges sit on courts is to do justice. Yet unless you've experienced life outside the rarified circles in which most of our judiciary operate, it would be hard to see the humanity behind the facts of a case. Constitutional attorney John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, August 1
The swirling debates about the nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States have obscured a deeper fault line in the selection and confirmation of the nine distant determiners of our fundamental rights and liberties. Bringing a sharp light on the ignorance of most present high court justices about actual life in the streets is Stuart Taylor's "Remote Control" in the September Atlantic Monthly.
Taylor, a former Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times and a challenging commentator for National Journal and Legal Times, asks questions that were almost entirely overlooked during the extensive coverage of the Roberts elevation:
"Now that Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement, how many remaining justices have ever held elective office? . . . How many have ever been either criminal-defense lawyers or trial prosecutors? How many have presided over even a single criminal or civil trial? The answer [is only] David Souter [who] was a New Hampshire prosecutor once upon a time, and later served as trial judge." (Emphasis added.)
Taylor goes on to make a point that you ought to keep in mind as more openings come up on the Supreme Court. For all the strife about getting proper racial, gender, ethnic, ideological "balance" on the Supreme Court, Taylor focuses on "the greatest imbalance—the one in the collective real-world experience of its justices."
For example, Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking at the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Awards dinner on August 6, emphasized that although Marshall, just before going on the high court, was an Appellate Court judge, he previously spent years "in countless trial court proceedings in hostile surroundings" in the cause of civil rights, and that "vast experience as a trial lawyer gives especial credence to opinions that he later delivered as a member of the Supreme Court."
By contrast, as William Raspberry wrote in the August 15 Washington Post about John Roberts: "Son of a wealthy steel executive, Roberts attended private schools, Harvard and Harvard Law School." He then went to clerk for a federal Appeals Court judge and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, followed by two tours in the Justice Department and most recently two years on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Roberts's carefully planned next step was to what Stuart Taylor calls "a sort of aristocracy," the current Supreme Court—"unable or unwilling to clearly see the workings, glitches, and peculiarities of the justice system over which it presides from such great altitude."
John Roberts has never presided over a criminal trial—at which what Alan Dershowitz describes as "testilying" quite often takes place by police officers. But I know a judge who has been familiar with such prejudicial testimony. He is Andrew Napolitano. These days, as senior judicial analyst for the Fox News Channel, Napolitano continually denounces the Bush administration's serial violations of the Bill of Rights—often instructing Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson (of Fox News'
The Big Story) in the commands of the Constitution. (He should get extra pay for that tough a job.)
In his valuable book Constitutional Chaos (Nelson Current, a subsidiary of Thomas Nelson), Napolitano writes that before he went on the Superior Court of New Jersey, he was so strong a conservative that he supported Richard Nixon's law-and-order, pro-police campaign. In the 1970s, Napolitano proudly wore a T-shirt proclaiming, "Bomb Hanoi!"
But by the time he ended his judgeship after eight years, he writes, "I was a born-again individualist, after witnessing first-hand how the criminal justice system works to subvert and shred the Constitution. You think you've got rights that are guaranteed? Well, think again."
While on the bench, Judge Napolitano issued a ruling, upheld by the appellate courts, that, as he writes, "forbade cops from stopping someone on a whim. . . . The police could stop any cars they wished. They didn't need any rationale." The judge's decision made these arbitrary stops illegal, thereby making any evidence secured by them excluded from a trial. Cops would "testilie" about the stops.
He applied "the exclusionary rule," going back in federal cases to Weeks v. United States (1914) and to state cases in Mapp v. Ohio (1961).
Judge Napolitano brought New Jersey back into the Constitution. By contrast, John Roberts—as constitutional-law professor Jonathan Turley notes—"has criticized the exclusionary rule . . . and [as an appellate judge] has favored police powers over privacy concerns."
Moreover, the prospective chief justice Roberts has approved the "good faith" exception to police searches and seizures. This would allow police to testify that they acted in "good faith" in what would eventually turn out to be an illegal search. As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told me, this "exception" lets judges wholly rely on the word of the police, "but on whom may the citizens rely to protect their Fourth Amendment rights?"
I use John Roberts's glaring lack of experience of the real, gritty world as an example of cloistered judges. But as for future nominations to the Supreme Court, Stuart Taylor's warnings should not be forgotten: "The Supreme Court is supposed to sit above politics and apart from popular whims. But when a large majority of the Court's justices have never cross-examined a lying cop or a slippery CEO, never faced a jury . . . something has gone wrong. As the Court has lost touch with the real-world ramifications of its decisions, our judicial system has clearly suffered."
If the leaders of the Democratic Party were awake, this might well be an invigorating, rallying message for them to send to the people about the lords of our fates.
=========
Constitution Day
JACKSON: Today is Constitution Day, a day when students nationwide learn about the document that serves as the blueprint for the U.S. government. Have you ever wondered how the preamble, seven articles, and 27 amendments apply to the real world? Well, listen up, as Deanna Morawski tells us, John Roberts' nomination for the Supreme Court is an illustration of the Constitution at work today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEANNA MORAWSKI, CNN STUDENT NEWS REPORTER: When the Supreme Court has a vacancy, for example, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced she'd retire, or when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, someone needs to choose a replacement.
According to the Constitution, the job of nominating Supreme Court justices and other federal officers belongs to the president. So President Bush nominated John Roberts as his first pick for the bench.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He has the qualities Americans expect in a judge: experience, wisdom, fairness and civility.
MORAWSKI: This duty falls under the president's role as head of the executive branch of the government, which is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land. But the writers of the Constitution didn't intend for the president to have the final say. As part of a system of "checks and balances," Roberts and other nominees must be confirmed by the Senate. That's what's been happening this week.
The Senate and House of representatives together make up the second branch of government, known as the legislative branch, which is charged with making the nation's laws.
In another example of "checks and balances," those laws can be reviewed by the third branch of government - the judicial branch, which includes the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The Constitution charges this branch with interpreting the law. In other words, deciding the meaning of laws, how they should be applied, and whether they violate the constitution.
JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE NOMINEE: Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role.
MORAWSKI: If confirmed by the Senate, Roberts will become chief justice of the United States - the top spot in the judicial branch. So what about powers not delegated specifically to the three branches? Those are left to the states and to the people. The Constitution guarantees individual civil liberties - including the First Amendment right to free speech in the Bill of Rights. That was exercised by these folks... demonstrating both in favor of and against Roberts' nomination.
The Constitution...alive and well among us. For CNN Student News, I'm Deanna Morawski.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/09/15/transcript.fri /
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/09/15/transcript.fri/
(CNN Student News) -- September 16, 2005
Quick Guide
Presidential Address - Lend an ear to the president in his speech to victims of the nation's most destructive hurricane.
Constitution Day - Teach about Constitution Day using this example of how the document is at work today.
Week in Review - Check out our recap of the top stories of the week.
Transcript
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PHYLLIS JACKSON, CNN STUDENT NEWS ANCHOR: You've made it to Friday, and we're glad you're spending part of it with CNN Student News! I'm Phyllis Jackson.
This city will rise again: Words from President Bush, as he promised the U.S. would do what it takes, to help hurricane victims rebuild.
This document is hard at work, 218 years after it was written... As evidenced by one of our week's top stories.
And this animated octogenarian proves you're never too old to tackle a sport that moves between heaven and Earth!
First Up: Presidential Address
JACKSON: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared Katrina the most destructive hurricane to ever strike the U.S. Even though it wasn't as strong as some other storms to make landfall, Katrina's large size made it particularly damaging. And when he took to the airwaves to address the nation last night, President Bush carried a message of reassurance and rebuilding, to Katrina's victims. Chris Wolfe brings us the highlights of the president's speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WOLFE, CNN REPORTER: President Bush picked Jackson Square, in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans to announce an unprecedented federal aid package providing housing, health care, job assistance and education for hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen. When that job is done, all Americans will have something to be very proud of, and all Americans are needed in this common effort.
WOLFE: Many Americans may be stunned by the speed thus far of the recovery in New Orleans. Thursday, Mayor Ray Nagin gave details about the first part of his "phased repopulation plan." It should resuscitate some of the most lively parts of the city, including the French Quarter, in the next two weeks.
MAYOR RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: We're re-opening up the city and almost 200,000 residents will be able to come back and get this city going once again.
WOLFE: The situation in some surrounding areas isn't nearly as positive. In the ninth ward, in the shadow of one of the breached levees in eastern New Orleans, it looks like a bomb went off. Only one structure is still standing. Federal emergency workers are looking for 300-thousand trailers and RVs to temporarily house Katrina victims in both Louisiana and Mississippi.
The death toll in Mississippi is standing at 218, but here in Louisiana, the number has continued to grow. It has now reached 558. In New Orleans, for CNN Student News, I'm Chris Wolfe.
==============
Excluded from the High Court
Has any present Supreme Court justice seen a cop lying on the witness stand?
by Nat Hentoff
September 15th, 2005 5:44 PM
http://villagevoice.com/news/0538,hentoff,67940,6.html
The reason judges sit on courts is to do justice. Yet unless you've experienced life outside the rarified circles in which most of our judiciary operate, it would be hard to see the humanity behind the facts of a case. Constitutional attorney John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, August 1
The swirling debates about the nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States have obscured a deeper fault line in the selection and confirmation of the nine distant determiners of our fundamental rights and liberties. Bringing a sharp light on the ignorance of most present high court justices about actual life in the streets is Stuart Taylor's "Remote Control" in the September Atlantic Monthly.
Taylor, a former Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times and a challenging commentator for National Journal and Legal Times, asks questions that were almost entirely overlooked during the extensive coverage of the Roberts elevation:
"Now that Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement, how many remaining justices have ever held elective office? . . . How many have ever been either criminal-defense lawyers or trial prosecutors? How many have presided over even a single criminal or civil trial? The answer [is only] David Souter [who] was a New Hampshire prosecutor once upon a time, and later served as trial judge." (Emphasis added.)
Taylor goes on to make a point that you ought to keep in mind as more openings come up on the Supreme Court. For all the strife about getting proper racial, gender, ethnic, ideological "balance" on the Supreme Court, Taylor focuses on "the greatest imbalance—the one in the collective real-world experience of its justices."
For example, Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking at the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Awards dinner on August 6, emphasized that although Marshall, just before going on the high court, was an Appellate Court judge, he previously spent years "in countless trial court proceedings in hostile surroundings" in the cause of civil rights, and that "vast experience as a trial lawyer gives especial credence to opinions that he later delivered as a member of the Supreme Court."
By contrast, as William Raspberry wrote in the August 15 Washington Post about John Roberts: "Son of a wealthy steel executive, Roberts attended private schools, Harvard and Harvard Law School." He then went to clerk for a federal Appeals Court judge and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, followed by two tours in the Justice Department and most recently two years on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Roberts's carefully planned next step was to what Stuart Taylor calls "a sort of aristocracy," the current Supreme Court—"unable or unwilling to clearly see the workings, glitches, and peculiarities of the justice system over which it presides from such great altitude."
John Roberts has never presided over a criminal trial—at which what Alan Dershowitz describes as "testilying" quite often takes place by police officers. But I know a judge who has been familiar with such prejudicial testimony. He is Andrew Napolitano. These days, as senior judicial analyst for the Fox News Channel, Napolitano continually denounces the Bush administration's serial violations of the Bill of Rights—often instructing Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson (of Fox News'
The Big Story) in the commands of the Constitution. (He should get extra pay for that tough a job.)
In his valuable book Constitutional Chaos (Nelson Current, a subsidiary of Thomas Nelson), Napolitano writes that before he went on the Superior Court of New Jersey, he was so strong a conservative that he supported Richard Nixon's law-and-order, pro-police campaign. In the 1970s, Napolitano proudly wore a T-shirt proclaiming, "Bomb Hanoi!"
But by the time he ended his judgeship after eight years, he writes, "I was a born-again individualist, after witnessing first-hand how the criminal justice system works to subvert and shred the Constitution. You think you've got rights that are guaranteed? Well, think again."
While on the bench, Judge Napolitano issued a ruling, upheld by the appellate courts, that, as he writes, "forbade cops from stopping someone on a whim. . . . The police could stop any cars they wished. They didn't need any rationale." The judge's decision made these arbitrary stops illegal, thereby making any evidence secured by them excluded from a trial. Cops would "testilie" about the stops.
He applied "the exclusionary rule," going back in federal cases to Weeks v. United States (1914) and to state cases in Mapp v. Ohio (1961).
Judge Napolitano brought New Jersey back into the Constitution. By contrast, John Roberts—as constitutional-law professor Jonathan Turley notes—"has criticized the exclusionary rule . . . and [as an appellate judge] has favored police powers over privacy concerns."
Moreover, the prospective chief justice Roberts has approved the "good faith" exception to police searches and seizures. This would allow police to testify that they acted in "good faith" in what would eventually turn out to be an illegal search. As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told me, this "exception" lets judges wholly rely on the word of the police, "but on whom may the citizens rely to protect their Fourth Amendment rights?"
I use John Roberts's glaring lack of experience of the real, gritty world as an example of cloistered judges. But as for future nominations to the Supreme Court, Stuart Taylor's warnings should not be forgotten: "The Supreme Court is supposed to sit above politics and apart from popular whims. But when a large majority of the Court's justices have never cross-examined a lying cop or a slippery CEO, never faced a jury . . . something has gone wrong. As the Court has lost touch with the real-world ramifications of its decisions, our judicial system has clearly suffered."
If the leaders of the Democratic Party were awake, this might well be an invigorating, rallying message for them to send to the people about the lords of our fates.
=========
Constitution Day
JACKSON: Today is Constitution Day, a day when students nationwide learn about the document that serves as the blueprint for the U.S. government. Have you ever wondered how the preamble, seven articles, and 27 amendments apply to the real world? Well, listen up, as Deanna Morawski tells us, John Roberts' nomination for the Supreme Court is an illustration of the Constitution at work today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEANNA MORAWSKI, CNN STUDENT NEWS REPORTER: When the Supreme Court has a vacancy, for example, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced she'd retire, or when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, someone needs to choose a replacement.
According to the Constitution, the job of nominating Supreme Court justices and other federal officers belongs to the president. So President Bush nominated John Roberts as his first pick for the bench.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He has the qualities Americans expect in a judge: experience, wisdom, fairness and civility.
MORAWSKI: This duty falls under the president's role as head of the executive branch of the government, which is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land. But the writers of the Constitution didn't intend for the president to have the final say. As part of a system of "checks and balances," Roberts and other nominees must be confirmed by the Senate. That's what's been happening this week.
The Senate and House of representatives together make up the second branch of government, known as the legislative branch, which is charged with making the nation's laws.
In another example of "checks and balances," those laws can be reviewed by the third branch of government - the judicial branch, which includes the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The Constitution charges this branch with interpreting the law. In other words, deciding the meaning of laws, how they should be applied, and whether they violate the constitution.
JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF JUSTICE NOMINEE: Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules, but it is a limited role.
MORAWSKI: If confirmed by the Senate, Roberts will become chief justice of the United States - the top spot in the judicial branch. So what about powers not delegated specifically to the three branches? Those are left to the states and to the people. The Constitution guarantees individual civil liberties - including the First Amendment right to free speech in the Bill of Rights. That was exercised by these folks... demonstrating both in favor of and against Roberts' nomination.
The Constitution...alive and well among us. For CNN Student News, I'm Deanna Morawski.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/09/15/transcript.fri /
- Learn the Constitution, Or Else —Gary M. Galles, Fri Sep 16 15:04
- Karl Rove, in charge of reconstruction..... —Magic City Morning Star, Fri Sep 16 10:19
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