It's been over a year since Americans elected Barack Obama, but we're still living in George Bush's world – two wars, a recession, a deficit, and so much more.

President Obama has his hands full cleaning up these messes and establishing a legacy on healthcare and climate change. I get that. But there's one blind spot that he can't afford to ignore any longer.

We're living under the rule of George Bush's judges. He picked over 40% of all current federal judges. We're talking about lifetime appointees, and so few cases ever make it to the Supreme Court that they usually get the last word.

Bush's judicial legacy didn't happen by accident, or overnight. He made it a priority. The numbers are telling: as Obama approaches the end of his first year, he’s picked roughly 30 nominees, 11 of whom have been confirmed. By the end of his first year, Bush had nominated 65, and nearly 30 had been confirmed.

To be sure, Republicans have been obstructing Obama's nominees at every turn – that's why so few have been confirmed. But Obama has played into their hands by not nominating more people, which would throw their obstruction into sharp relief and amp up pressure on the GOP.

I know it might not seem this way – in the midst of the healthcare fight – but Obama's legacy, the future of progressive legislation, and the well-being of our nation depend on the character, and quantity, of the judges he nominates. This issue deserves equal billing with the others at the very top of the administration's agenda.

The good news is that, unlike with many problems we face, Obama can ramp up nominations without sacrificing progress on his other priorities. There is no shortage of highly qualified – and progressive – nominees, and Senate Democrats can crush judicial filibusters when they set their mind to it.

The bottom line is that Obama may never have another opportunity like the present, with 60 Democrats in the Senate, to push through his nominees and return some balance to the judicial branch. And he has only four or so months before the 2010 election season causes the Senate to grind to a halt.

President Obama, your legacy clock is ticking. We need you to act now.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (58)

PLAYS: (130)

November 19, 2009 FOX News
A federal judge says the agency showed 'gross negligence' in the years before Katrina. The ruling could leave the government open to billions in claims.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1177)

PLAYS: (7240)

Poor old crazy birther Orly Taitz just can't get any respect. Dylan Ratigan treats her with the disdain she deserves in this segment where she's asked to react to the ruling against her. And it looks like the judge has had a belly-full of her as well.

Judge ready to slap Orly Taitz with $10,000 fine:

Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the Birther movement, may have finally crossed one too many lines. The courts will, after all, overlook the occasional frivolous lawsuit, even when filed by an attorney who can't get basic procedural issues right -- just the cost of doing business. But even a federal judge has a breaking point, and Clay Land appears to have reached his.

Earlier this week, Land dismissed a suit that Taitz had brought on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who claimed that she couldn't follow her orders to deploy to Iraq because she's not sure President Obama is eligible, under the Constitution, to hold his current position. At the time, Land warned Taitz that if she filed any more "similarly frivolous ... actions in this Court" she'd face sanctions.

Taitz, of course, didn't seem to listen. Instead, she filed an angry motion asking Land to reconsider his decision and stay Rhodes' deployment. Apparently unaware of that old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar (not true, incidentally, but that's an issue for another time), Taitz essentially accused the judge of committing treason. And, referring to the U.S. District Court on which Land serves, she wrote, "there is increasing evidence that the United States District Courts in the 11th Circuit are subject to political pressure, external control, and, mostly (sic) likely, subservience to the same illegitimate chain of command which Plaintiff has previously protested in this case, except that the de facto President is not even nominally the Commander-in-Chief of the Article III Judiciary."

For some reason, Land wasn't especially happy about this.

In an order issued Friday, Land denied Taitz's request and announced that he was considering making good on his threat of sanctions. He ordered the attorney-slash-dentist "to show cause why the Court should not impose a monetary penalty of $10,000.00 upon Plaintiff’s counsel for her misconduct," and gave her 14 days to do so.

Land also took a swipe at Taitz's performance as an attorney, writing at one point that "competent counsel would have understood" one part of the law that was at issue. The implication was obvious.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (105)

PLAYS: (406)

June 15, 2009 News Corp

Fox News--be afraid. The "terrorist ambulance chasers" are coming.

April 17, 2009 CNN

Transcript from CNN:

BLITZER: Waiting to hear from the president of the United States. We'll go there as soon as he starts speaking. He's expected to respond to Raul Castro. The latest overture is going back and forth between the U.S. and Cuban governments. Stand by for that.

Images of hooded detainees we've seen this before but secret memos just released are giving America and the world a whole new look at some interrogation tactics okayed by the Bush administration. Techniques some consider torture and now there's new fallout from the decision to make the documents public. We asked CNN's Brian Todd to take a closer look at these unfolding developments. Brian?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the images presented in these memos are still reverberating. For example, the sanction of waterboarding where Bush administration lawyers outline how to pour water on a suspect's face to create the sensation of drowning, rules which according to the memos released were often broken by using larger volumes of water than allowed. Sleep deprivation where a suspect is shackled standing up sometimes for almost 11 days straight, all designed to get information from terror suspects. But now the release of these memos is turning into one of President Obama's most scrutinized moves.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TODD (voice-over): Much of the push back comes from those who served on President Bush's security team, who say his successor is tying his own hands in the future fight against terror. Former CIA director Michael Hayden and former attorney general Michael Mukasey write in the "Wall Street Journal", "The release of the opinions on interrogations will invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past. And that we came to sorely regret on September 11." They and former homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, a CNN analyst, also argue that methods like cramped confinement for a limited time used against al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah worked in locating the 9/11 mastermind.

FRANCES TOWNSEND, FORMER BUSH HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: The use and technique led to the ultimate capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. So there is an argument to be made that in limited circumstances these techniques can be effective in preventing terrorist attacks.

TODD: But techniques that were not as harsh have worked just as well says a former army lawyer who's now a human rights advocate.

BRIG. GE. JAMES P. CULLEN (RET.), HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: We got the top guy in al Qaeda and Mesopotamia by using techniques that army military intelligence used in accordance with the manual and we got excellent information.

TODD: Another key question moving forward, consequences for those involved in the use of these techniques. The Obama administration says CIA officials won't be prosecuted. But what about Bush administration lawyers who wrote that methods like stress positions and sleep deprivation were legal, like top Justice Department officials Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: We need to know the facts, but we don't need a witch hunt. I don't think that's appropriate for the people who are working in the agency. I also don't think it's something that Barack Obama needs in his presidency right now.

(END OF VIDEOTAPE)

TODD: Still Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman John Conyers, democrats who head the judiciary committees in congress are both calling for independent commissions outside congress to investigate the drafting of these memos. When we pressed them, aides to Leahy and Conyers would not say whether they would want Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury specifically called before those commissions. Wolf?

BLITZER: Brian, there's still very much the possibility that officials elsewhere around the world, especially in Spain could not only investigate but charge some of these Bush administration officials.

TODD: That is possible. A Spanish judge just today went against recommendations of prosecutors and kept alive an investigation into whether Jay Bybee, also former attorney general Alberto Gonzales and other Bush administration officials broke international law when writing some of these interrogation guidelines. So those possibilities still technically exist.

Continue reading »