VOTE NO ON THE JOHN ROBERTS NOMINATIO (TAKE ACTION)

VOTE NO ON THE JOHN ROBERTS NOMINATION (USE THIS FORM TO TAKE ACTION NOW)
We the people of the United States hereby call for a NATIONAL REFERENDUM, by email, by phone call, by fax, and by letter, on the choice of a new chief justice for our Supreme Court.

We are presented in John Roberts with a pleasant, smiley face who so far has refused to answer questions about whether he agrees with the holdings in cases upon which we have long relied, which we have a right to know, and who has refused to deliver for examination any of his memos for the last 20 years, which we have a right to see.

The now most unpopular second term president in history does NOT have the carte blanche to appoint any crony ideologue of his own choosing, and we are deeply suspicious of the motives of this particular nominee, who cannot even tell the truth about his leadership role in the reactionary Federalist Society. We therefore call on our senators to DEMAND a different and more forthcoming nominee who better represents the mainstream of the American people.

The one click form below will send your personal message to both of your senators at the same time, according to your address, and a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper if like.
http://www.trotn.com/

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The Bolton Precedent

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.trotn.com

The first thing we need to understand is that we the people have the

unilateral POWER, right now by ourselves, to stop John Roberts as chief
justice of our Supreme Court. All that is required is the WILL for us to do
it. He CAN be stopped.

The second thing we need to understand is that Roberts represents game,

set and match for the dismantling of EVERY progressive court decision we
hold so dear. He MUST be stopped.

Robert's proponents say that the president warned us he would put forward

a judge in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. We all know their extreme biases.
And yet in his hearing Roberts has repeatedly denied that he has any policy
values of his own, just as he has denied that he was a member of the
Federalist society (where he had a leadership role). Therefore, he is not
only a reactionary ideologue, he is a LYING reactionary ideologue, a walking
Trojan Horse of right wing policy initiatives. And that makes him all the
worse.

HOW WE'RE GOING TO DO IT (a practical plan)

Let's get right to the HOW. There are 44 Democratic senators and one

independent. Let us assume we will get no Republican votes against. It is
pointless to appeal to their constituency, who are in fact in the minority
if the truth be known. All we have to do is mobilize our OWN constituency.
If we just do that we can have a filibuster and we WIN.

Mobilize means for us, ALL of us, to get serious about getting people to

talk to their members of Congress. That is how the other side has always
done it. This is what we must do:

1. WEB SITE ACTIONS

All progressive blogs must FEATURE a prominent Stop Roberts action center.

If you have a web page of any kind, the absolute bare minimum is to have in
the top fold of your main index page (if not on every page of your site) the
toll-free Capitol telephone number (877-762-8762), plus an exhortation to
call your senators specifically to oppose Roberts, and not in teeny-tiny
type, but in large bold type that nobody could miss.

If you want to do more, we have a dedicated action page at

http://www.trotn.com that you can link to. It will send a personal message
directly to both of your senators, and at the same time you can
automatically send a Letter to the Editor of your nearest daily newspaper
all with just one click. If you have another action page somewhere you like
post a PROMINENT featured link to that instead, but for heaven's sake DO
something.

If you have a mailing list of any kind of your own opt-ins, do a mailing

emphasizing the importance of this action and provide the toll-free number
AND link to http://www.trotn.com. Direct email is one of the most effective
tools for generating messages to Congress.

2. RADIO ACTIONS

All progressive radio personalities must dedicate part of EVERY show to

giving out the toll-free Senate phone number (877-762-8762) and to rally
your listeners to take action on this. Don't just assume people know it
already or can find it on their own. PROMOTE it. Talk is not enough, not
even close. We must convert advocacy into ACTION. In the same way that a
single run of an ad on your radio station will not have sufficient impact
standing alone, you must make this a recurrent theme of your show and keep
REPEATING it, at least for the next week or so.

At the same time you can give out the URL of the main action page,

http://www.trotn.com, or any other easy to say and remember web address you
like, to get people to email or phone or fax their members of Congress. In
addition all the other things above that apply to other web sites apply to
you as well. Feature the Senate toll-free phone number and action links and
do it prominently on your main page, your blogs, and ideally on ALL your
pages at least in one of your side columns.

And as a listener of your favorite progressive radio show, call in.

Encourage them to get on the case to give out the toll-free number, and to
give out web links and post them on their sites. Talk about this on the air
when they put you on.

We must communicate to our members of Congress in every way that this is a

deal breaker for us. This particular nominee is a threat to absolutely
anything else Congress might try to do in the future, as he UN-legislates
from the bench. Any democrat who votes for this nominee or even for cloture
must never hold public office in any capacity again and they must be made to
understand this by our emails, our faxes, our phone calls, and our letters
to the editor. We stopped Bolton (at least in the Senate) and we can and
will stop this nominee as well. To any remaining doubting Thomas's we say
this to you, "Defeatism is the treason of our own minds."

THE ARGUMENTS:

1. CONCEALMENT OF CRITICALLY RELEVANT DOCUMENTS

Some people thought that the compromise on the filibuster would doom any

opposition to offensive nominees, and indeed, some very offensive ones were
allowed to pass to obtain that compromise. And yet, just three days later
the Senate sustained a filibuster of John Bolton (which continued to hold),
on the grounds that the administration was refusing to disclose documents
relevant to the consideration of the nominee. That is exactly the situation
here. They have totally frustrated any meaningful opportunity to
cross-examine this nominee by stonewalling access to any of his memos from
the last 20 years, materials that previous administrations have always
disclosed as to other Supreme Court nominees.

The senators on the other side and the nominee in particular have

repeatedly complained about being asked about 20 year old documents. Well,
guess what, because of the bad faith refusal of the administration to
cooperate that's all we have to work from. Mr. Roberts the lawyer would
never even consider trying a case without access to ALL the documents and
evidence he had a RIGHT to review. And just like Bolton, this nominee must
be rejected until and unless all relevant documents are produced.

2. AN UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT HAS NO PREROGATIVE

The primary argument we have heard from the other side is that he's the

president's choice and that should be enough. They are saying in essence,
"Ha, ha, we won the last election, too bad." And yet now, just 10 months
later, Mr. Bush is the most UNPOPULAR second term president in history. His
bad judgment in crisis after crisis has brought shame and destruction to our
country and cost thousands if not tens of thousands of innocent American
lives. There are now too many dead bodies for even them to hide, though
they've tried that in New Orleans too. Bush's nominee Bolton, who he
stubbornly rammed through over the objections of the good judgment of the
Senate, has done nothing but create chaos and disruption at the UN already,
to the dismay of even our closest ally, Great Britain. His selection of
partisan cronies for FEMA management positions crippled that agency's
ability to protect us. We no LONGER trust the choices of Mr. Bush.If there
were to be an election today, with his popularity in free fall, there is no
doubt Bush would be soundly defeated. And by calling on people to contact
their members of Congress, what we are doing is calling for a NATIONAL
REFERENDUM, by email, by fax, by phone call and by letter to the editor, not
only on this nominee, but on the Bush presidency. If the other side wants to
rest their argument on whether this president has any mandate, then let us
demonstrate just how little support Bush actually retains. Roberts will
wreck the Supreme Court just as Bush has wrecked every other aspect of our
lives, and we must speak out now to stop the looming catastrophe.

Indeed, even the last election would certainly have gone the other way had

it not been for widespread vote fraud and suppression, COMBINED with the
corrupt collaboration of the corporate mainstream media in suppressing or
ignoring any stories negative to Bush's election prospects, and exaggerating
the importance of any stories smearing his opponents. Just yesterday there
was a story on the AP wire service with the headline "Roberts DODGES
questions about abortion," and yet within hours the word "dodge" had
disappeared from the Yahoo site and was REPLACED with a spin job using the
word "rebuff" and the word "abortion" was gone too. This is scary, SCARY
stuff. There's a Greek chorus out there of big media voices trying to sell
the public on this nominee like it's a foregone conclusion, but still they
have NOT heard from we the people yet. Be ye not conned, this is not over no
matter what the talking heads say.

3. ROBERTS HAS NOT BEEN CANDID ABOUT HIS TRUE AGENDA

Who are they trying to kid? We ALL know exactly how Roberts is going to

rule. He's going to vote AGAINST us, we the people, and in favor of every
corporate special interest, in favor of absolute power for the chief
executive, every single time and without exception. They know it, we know
it, and Roberts himself knows it. That's why all the most extreme
reactionaries in the country are so hot for this guy. And the shame of it is
that this nominee will not even admit he has an opinion on PAST cases upon
which we have come to trust on and rely. Even worse, for all his theoretical
legal platitudes about stare decisis he has been breathtaking in leaving the
door open that under him it would be open season on revisiting just about
every progressive court decision of the last 100 years, if only a case were
to come before him.

The Republican senators on the judiciary committee have repeatedly

encouraged the nominee to NOT answer questions on the merits, to be evasive
and call it integrity. Roberts has testified at length and said absolutely
nothing of substance, like the enormously slick lawyer he is. But one
interesting thing he did say is that as a lawyer he could take EITHER side
of a case and make a reasonable argument. And you better believe that in
ruling against us time after time, he will always find a CLEVER way to make
extremism sound reasonable, and that is precisely why he is so dangerous. He
said it is not the job of a lawyer to have a position on the issues, but
ultimately it IS the job of a judge. The law is not just a mechanical
exercise in applying precedents to the facts. All judges have values that
they bring to every case, which they at last must fall back on. And in not
disclosing the agenda that his entire career strongly suggests that he has,
he does NOT deserve and cannot be trusted with the job of a Supreme Court
judge, let alone chief justice.

The American people now understand that they were sold a dishonest bill of

goods in the last election and are having big time buyer's remorse. As
recently as a year ago Mr. Bush seemed to many like a wise and capable
leader, but now many more realize the depth of his perverse bad judgment.
The only reason why he has not ALREADY been called out for impeachment for
his many crimes and catastrophes is because the Republican party cares more
about their own power than the good of the American people. He has wrecked
our economy, our budget, our military, and in the exercise of his criminal
negligence now an entire major U.S. city. But still he will be removed
eventually. It is not so easy to remove an equally destructive Supreme Court
chief justice.

And superficially Mr. Roberts may seem like a nice, reasonable guy. That

is the biggest lie of all. His hearing responses bear an uncanny resemblance
to a press conference with Scott McClellan, only infinitely more smooth. He
might as well have said over and over, "Again, we're not going to get into
playing the agenda game." In fact, for all we know he is WORSE than the
flaming reactionary that peeks through some of his early memos, he's just
gotten a lot better at concealing it. A person who claims to stand for
nothing is the very DEFINITION of someone with an agenda. If he would just
be honest with the American people, we might consider him on that basis. His
failure to evidence any such candor makes his rejection mandatory.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Nobody expected Roberts to beat himself. We all expected a masterful

exercise in dodging any questions about what he really stood for. The
reactionary elements who are pushing this guy were not going to repeat the
Bork mistake, who spoke freely and was quite forthcoming about his positions
on the issues, and who left a wide paper trail of statements, writings and
speeches. Instead they have spent decades grooming a stealth candidate, with
little visible record, and are trying to hustle him into the top slot of the
Supreme Court before anybody else can get a handle on what they are really
voting for.

Never before has a judge been pushed upward with such rash haste. The idea

that a president with plummeting popularity should have carte blanche to
appoint any closet reactionary he likes is absurd. We don't want a pig in a
poke for chief justice. Give us a nominee for the Supreme Court with a track
record. Give us a nominee with enough opinions out there so that we know who
it is that is actually going to control every aspect of all of our lives for
the rest of all of our lives. Tell your senators that if Roberts gets the
job IT WILL SURELY COST THEM THEIR OWN. They will get the message and we
will win.

We stopped Bolton and everyone thought it was a miracle. It was not. We

generated 30,000 emails opposing Bolton, each to two senators. And we're
going to stop Roberts, all we have to do is believe. It is said that evil
can only prevail when good people do nothing.

TAKE ACTION NOW at http://www.trotn.com

or to get no more simply email to no_more@actspeak.com