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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (142588)	10/12/2005 12:00:29 PM
From: KLP	Respond to of 793964

Just was musing on another thread about Justice W. O. Douglas...Would he be nominated and confirmed today? The far left would be in partyville, the middle left and right would be yowling to the heavens, and the far right in a total swoon... en.wikipedia.org law.uchicago.edu The Anti-Hero By Richard A. Posner The New Republic February 24, 2003 Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas by Bruce Allen Murphy (Random House, 688 pp., $35) I met justice William Douglas, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, when I was clerking for Justice William Brennan. Douglas struck me as cold and brusque but charismatic--the most charismatic judge (well, the only charismatic judge) on the Court. Little did I know that this elderly gentleman (he was sixty-four when I was a law clerk) was having sex with his soon-to-be third wife in his Supreme Court office, that he was being stalked by his justifiably suspicious soon-to-be ex-wife, and that on one occasion he had to hide the wife-to-be in his closet in order to prevent the current wife from discovering her. This is just one of the gamy bits in Bruce Allen Murphy's riveting biography of one of the most unwholesome figures in modern American political history, a field with many contenders. Murphy explains that he had expected the biography to take six years to complete but that it actually took almost fifteen. For Douglas turned out to be a liar to rival Baron Munchausen, and a great deal o0f patient digging was required to reconstruct his true life story. One of his typical lies, not only repeated in a judicial opinion but inscribed on his tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery, was that he had been a soldier in World War I. Douglas was never in the Armed Forces. The lie metastasized: a book about Arlington National Cemetery, published in 1986, reports: "Refusing to allow his polio to keep him from fighting for his nation during World War I, Douglas enlisted in the United States Army and fought in Europe." He never had polio, either. Apart from being a flagrant liar, Douglas was a compulsive womanizer, a heavy drinker, a terrible husband to each of his four wives, a terrible father to his two children, and a bored, distracted, uncollegial, irresponsible, and at times unethical Supreme Court justice who regularly left the Court for his summer vacation weeks before the term ended. Rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed, and devoured by ambition, he was also financially reckless--at once a big spender, a tightwad, and a sponge--who, while he was serving as a justice, received a substantial salary from a foundation established and controlled by a shady Las Vegas businessman. Cont'd......

To: greenspirit who wrote (142588)	10/12/2005 4:18:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

That is an interesting post, and if accurate would explain quite a lot.

To: greenspirit who wrote (142588)	10/12/2005 5:04:53 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

I was wrong; so please join me in supporting Harriet Miers. Posted on 10/09/2005 3:28:25 PM PDT by Pukin Dog freerepublic.com; I don't buy this. Couldn't have President Bush nominated a Senator from Texas (either one) and gotten him/her confirmed by the Senate. Either one would have been preferable than Harriet "GWB Your Kool" Miers.