Just say no
California Judicial Nominee Questioned Sharply
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer
1:28 PM PDT, October 22, 2003
WASHINGTON -- California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals here, ran into skeptical questioning from Senate Democrats today for speeches in which she referred to the New Deal era as "the triumph of our socialist revolution" and disputed whether the Bill of Rights applied to the States.
Three years ago, Brown described herself in another speech as a "true conservative" who believes that "where the government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates....The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she found Brown's pronouncements troubling.
"Your speeches are extraordinarily intemperate for a sitting justice," Feinstein told Brown. "Is that the real you?"
Feinstein and the minority Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they would be reluctant to approve her nomination to a federal appeals court in which judges determine the fate of many government rules and regulations.
Answering with a soft-spoken calm, Brown, 54, said she tried to be provocative at times, especially when speaking to groups of young conservatives. But the views she expressed were hers, she added.
"I don't have a speechwriter. I do these myself. And it speaks for itself," she said of her catalog of speeches.
The state justice also sought to assure liberal-leaning senators that her conservative views would not shape her rulings as a judge.[P6: How is that possible?]
