Paying off
Another Bush loyalist is enjoying his reward. Miguel Estrada has been nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals after his work as a legal strategist for George W. Bush’s in the 2000 Florida election dispute at the Supreme Court, which made it possible for Bush to steal the electionC in broad daylight. Much has been made of his lack of any written legal opinions (he’s never served as a judge), but it’s not as if we don’t know what he’s hiding. The People for the American Way point out that Miguel Estrada has worked to defend anti-loitering laws “which have been demonstrated to disproportionately harm African-America ns and Latinos. Federal and state courts, including the Supreme Court, have inva lidated a number of these provisions as violating the First Amendment and the du e process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, including in several cases that Es trada has worked on.” His former former direct supervisor in the Solicitor General’s office, Paul Bender, told the Los Angeles Times that Estrada is so “ideologically driven that he couldn’t be trusted to state the law in a fair, neutral way,” and that he is a “right-wing ideologue” with “an agend a that’s similar to Clarence Thomas”. Miguel Estrada doesn’t believe the courts have any role in striking down unconstitutional laws.
Senator Grassley (R-IA) has defended Estrada, saying that for the Senate to refuse to confirm Estrada “would be to shut the door on the American dre am of Hispanic-Americans everywhere.” Strange talk from a Republican who has voted against affirmative action in the past. Maybe Trent Lott changed Grassley’s mind on that.