The Devolution of the Republican Party into Being Butt-Heads — Just to Be Butt-Heads — Symbolizes Most of What’s Wrong with the American Political Process — the Absurd Hold Up of Uncontroversial Judge Adalberto Jose Jordan’s Appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals

© 2012 Peter Free

 

15 February 2012

 

 

This is the kind of behind-the-scenes, integrity-lacking and destructive, silliness that badly damages the United States’ prospects for a workable future

 

In the one corner — “Hard Work and Brilliance”

 

President Obama nominated Florida federal district court judge Adalberto Jose Jordan to a vacant position on judicial panel that comprises the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

The judge’s background is a picture of success that even a Supreme Court justice would respect.

 

According to Wikipedia:

 

Jordan was born in Havana, Cuba, and came with his family to Miami, Florida when he was a young boy, in 1968.

 

He received a B.A. in politics, magna cum laude, from the University of Miami, in 1984.

 

While an undergraduate at the University of Miami, Jordan was a walk-on member of the baseball team.

 

Jordan then earned his J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law in 1987, graduating second in his law school class.

 

Jordan went on to clerk for Judge Thomas Alonzo Clark on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia from 1987 to 1988, and for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the United States Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989.

 

© 2012 Adalberto Jordan, Wikipedia (visited 15 February 2012)

 

Judge Jordan’s tale of success continues, in the same “people to be proud of” vein, from there.

 

In the opposing corner — the “Air-Headed Twits of the Grand Obstruction Party”

 

Judge Jordan’s record apparently isn’t good enough for our Republican Senators’ soul-less eyes, whose approval His Honor needs in order to be confirmed to the vacant position in the 11th Circuit.

 

Slinking around behind the concealment granted them by an uninquisitive American press, these oily Slack-Jawed Senators of Schlock tried to block the Judge’s nomination.

 

Fortunately, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank keeps a keen nose to the pretend and garbage activity that characterizes the democracy-crumbling body that we call the Senate of the United States.

 

He wrote:

 

Republicans slow-walked his nomination (he was approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee in July), then filibustered his confirmation vote on the Senate floor.

 

Even when the filibuster was broken Monday night (by a lopsided 89-5), a lone Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, used a procedural hurdle to postpone the confirmation vote by two days, to Wednesday.

 

Congressional staffers I checked with couldn’t recall a similar instance of blocking a confirmation even after a filibuster had failed.

 

© 2012 Dana Milbank, Does the GOP care about Latino voters?, Washington Post (14 February 2012)

 

 

Was there an honorable purpose in humiliating the Judge? — No, just run-of-mill Republican Party obstructionism in the name of political game-playing that would not otherwise stand on its merits

 

Libertarian Republican Rand Paul (Kentucky) — whose philosophy revolves around enhancing personal rights at the community’s expense — apparently does not have the intellectual capacity to recognize that an emphasis on his prerogatives as Senator implies a responding respect for the rights due others.  Including not humiliating an honorable judge.

 

In the absence of congruity with personal philosophy, Senator Paul — as paragon exemplar of dishonorable manipulation — left Judge Jordan hanging.

 

He apparently wanted to leverage his obstruction to the nomination into forcing the withholding foreign aid to Egypt, as part of an amendment to an unrelated transportation bill.

 

According to columnist Milbank, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell (also from Kentucky) said only, “I’m a great admirer of the junior Senator of Kentucky.”

 

With that kind of fatuous leadership, no Republican Senator rose to oppose Senator Paul’s delay of the confirmation.

 

 

The moral? — the Party of (mainly) Old White Guy Plutocrats is adrift and sinking at sea and taking the United States to the ocean bottom with it

 

“We hate him because he’s Latino/Hispanic, comes from Cuba, and is smarter, more accomplished and honorable than us.”

 

Is that the Grand Obstruction Party’s message to humanity?

 

As I have said before, “Low level baboon-cognition is not a successful evolutionary adaptation, when it is exercised in human form.”