Slashdot Mirror
Judicial Nominations In the Internet Age
Hugh Pickens writes "Chris Good writes in the Atlantic that nominees to the Supreme Court and other high-profile positions are required to provide the Judiciary Committee with everything they've ever written or said publicly, to the best of their abilities within reason. Thanks to the Internet, the last major judicial nominee reported out by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, included links to YouTube videos of lectures and talks he gave, 573 pages of public writings, news articles about him, syllabi from courses he taught, and statements about legal issues. Even so, Liu was admonished for failing to fully disclose his writings and public speeches to senators, including appearances at such occasions as brown bag lunches and alumni gatherings. 'In preparing my original submission, I made a good-faith effort to track down all of my publications and speeches over the years,' wrote Liu. 'I checked my personal calendar, I performed a variety of electronic searches, and I searched my memory to produce the original list. But I have since realized that those efforts were not sufficient.' Not so long ago, entire news articles in local papers could go wholly unnoticed, by both the nominee and committee members and staff, but not so in the era of the Internet. 'Imagine what will happen when, decades from now, a president nominates someone to the Supreme Court who had access to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook at the age of 15.'"
Don't be so certain they are completely gone. Google, The Internet Archive, and other crawlers may or may not have saved that information in some form that is accessible. Now with Twitter being archived by the Library of Congress and the never-ending FB account, the age of discarded information is slowly disappearing.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
a president nominates someone to the Supreme Court who had access to Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook at the age of 15.
This is why it is important to realize that everyone has multiple lives: private, public, serious, fun, sexual, intimate, bigoted, religious, etc...
It is not enough to inquire about a person's character. People have many characters. The characters or personae overlap somewhat, but not greatly.
Consider the English judicial court. The lawyers and judges put on ceremonial robes and wigs to specifically separate their lives, personalities, and past histories outside of the courtroom from the current business inside the courtroom.
Consider the thousands of women who have posed for men's magazines. Millions of men use their images for sexual projection ('wanking' for all you insensitive UK sods). Thousands of men have found themselves in the situation where they are working with women that they masturbated to, and felt an intimate connection for a ten second window. Only a serious jerk would dig up the old magazines or internet erotic photos and flash them to the other co-workers. Porn is a separate realm: what is in the stroke rag or porn film stays there. The woman that you work with is not the same woman whose picture is in the magazine, even if it is the same person. One person; multiple personae. Simple Puritan brains can't handle this concept. But,hell, you mastered C language and Linux APIs, you can master real-world sophistication also.
We see this also in the peculiar American obsession for destroying people's careers over the presence of molecules of marijuana in their urine. What a weird obsession! 'You are the purity of your piss!'. When people are stoned they are not the same personae as when they are sober. Both conditions are valid. But have their place. The only valid reason to destroy a person's career over their intoxicational preference is if (and only if) they are uncontrollably intoxicated in a situation where they are supposed to be sober. Outside of that, different drugs make different personae. Only fascists refuse to accept this.
These politicians digging into the judge candidate's background and demanding every brain fart of the candidate's past are all assholes. They are transparent chickenshit party hacks of a corrupt and bankrupt political system. They have some minor importance now, but they won't in future. All they will have then is the eternal hatred and contempt of the people trying to live with the consequences of their stupidity.
If by "better qualified" you mean being a silver tongued bastard who has an innate ability to always say what's politically expedient.
Please note that this is not the same as being either honest or competent.
I think you missed the point. He's saying that nobody can live up to the standard of perfection demanded by voters. Everybody has "skeletons" in their closets, and the internet makes that even more important because it grabs and archives everything, even embarrassing posts.
Look at Senator Specter in Pennsylvania. He said something he should not have said at a Town Meeting. Normally that would disappear into the ether and be forgotten, but now everyone has cameras on their cellphones. It spread from the cellphone to the youtube, and then the national consciousness. Now you might say "Well Specter is an ass and deserves to lose," which I agree with, but I also think EVERYONE is an ass.
We all have said things we regret later. So we're ALL disqualified for the job, if you hold to that standard.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'm less worried about Congress and more worried about the voters. Congressmen can be reasoned with, because for the most part they have embarrassing events in their lives too and can understand slips of the tongue. But not the voters. Imagine if you will:
VOTER #1: "OMG! Did you see what Senator Joe Smith posted when he was in college! Quote: Hey roomie: I am going to score some pussy tonight. Can I have the dorm from 8 to 12? thx."
VOTER #2: "Woah. He treats women like sex objects!"
VOTER #3: "Horrible. Let's protest against this womanizer."
VOTER #4: "Yeah! Girl power! Death to chavenists!"
And it spreads from there. It doesn't matter if Senator Smith is now in his 60s and does an annual walk with his wife & daughters to raise money for a breast cancer cure..... the idiot voters will skewer him for a post he made ~40 years earlier.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall