Columnist.
Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, has become my go-to guy for good-government issues. His wife, Joan, he recently confided, calls him "the Sisyphus of reform." The analogy to the Greek mythological character -- whom the gods condemned to spend eternity pushing a rock up a hill, only to have it roll down before he reached the top -- seemed especially apt when I asked him to send me a list of the good-government propositions that were on the California ballot over the last decade. He quickly rattled off 15 propositions that were arguably -- some tenuously so -- reform-minded, seven of which voters passed.
When now-Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito faced a Senate confirmation vote in 2006, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had no qualms about rejecting Alito simply because she did not agree with him. "If one is pro-choice in this day and age, in this structure, one can't vote for Judge Alito," Feinstein declared. Feinstein went even further. When Republicans argued that simple fairness demanded a full floor vote on Alito, Feinstein, like Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., supported the use of the filibuster to prevent it. They tried, but failed to prevent a majority-rules vote.
When he ran for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama argued that earmarks account for a mere "0.5 percent of the total federal budget," so eliminating earmarks would not solve the problem. With that attitude, they ought to put up a new Welcome to Washington sign that reads: Prodigo ergo prodigo. I spend, therefore I keep spending.
There are two ways the Senate can approach a president's judicial nominees -- and specifically President Barack Obama's nomination of University of California, Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco. One: "We had an election. A Democrat won. And the president can pick who he likes." To wit: Liu -- a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Stanford and Oxford universities and Yale Law School who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- is highly qualified. Republicans should not use delay tactics and the filibuster to thwart a full-Senate up-or-down vote on Liu.
In June, comedian Bill Maher complained of President Obama, "You don't have to be on television every minute of every day -- you're the president, not a rerun of 'Law & Order.'" I get paid to listen to politicians tell the same old jokes, repeat the same canned sound bites and -- as often occurs -- not answer questions. But I do not think it too much to ask that, now that Obama has signed legislation to overhaul the health care system, he ditch the health care spiel.
