« NM-Sen: More Video Clips of Udall's Official Announcement | Main | Campaign Fundraiser for State Rep. Mimi Stewart Set for 12.11.07 »
Friday, November 30, 2007
New Mexico First to Host Speech by Ret. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
From New Mexico First:
New Mexico First is pleased to invite you to a special presentation by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She will speak about civic engagement and its role in a vibrant democracy. The Justice will also answer questions submitted by the public about her life, her judicial decisions, and citizen participation in government.
Students, members of the community, local leaders, and others are invited and encouraged to attend this civically engaging and educational evening. The special event is free and open to the public; however, tickets are required. To obtain a ticket, individuals must register for the tickets at the New Mexico First home page. The tickets will then be sent to the requester’s email
When: December 13, 2007
Where: Kiva Auditorium, 2nd and Marquette NE, ABQ
Time: Doors open at 6:45 PM; the program is from 7:30-9 PM
Click here to register
Suggest a question for the Justice. You do not have to register for the event to submit a question.
Parking: Give yourself time to park. The Kiva Auditorium is located inside the Greater Albuquerque Convention Center. Parking options include:
- Civic Plaza garage, Marquette & 3rd Street, $6 per vehicle
- Convention Center Garage, Martin Luther King Blvd & Broadway, $6 per vehicle
For more information please contact Jacey Blue Campbell at 505-241-4814 or jaceyc@nmfirst.org.
Co-founded by Senators Pete V. Domenici and Jeff Bingaman in 1986, New Mexico First is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging citizens in policy.
November 30, 2007 at 09:25 AM in Events, Justice | Permalink
Comments
Is this the same Justice O'Connor who held the swing vote in the unconstitutional decision to stop the recount of the Florida votes on 2000?
Is this the same Justice O'Connor who could have single-handedly prevented the last seven years of bloody madness?
Is this the same Justice O'Connor who said that she wanted to retire during a Republican administration so that her replacement on the bench would not be a liberal?
Her actions in the last years of her tenure effectively negated any positive influence she might have had over her career.
A pox on her. The only reason I would go to this event would be to chastise her for her irresponsible behavior in December 2000 and beyond. She disgusts me.
Jason Call
www.Call4Democracy.org
Candidate, US Congress, New Mexico CD 1
Posted by: | Nov 30, 2007 2:32:23 PM
O'Connor has pubicly stated she considers her decision re the election in 2000 to be the most serious error in judgment in here career and often discusses the issue in her talks. She's also been sounding the alarm about the attacks on our civil liberties and Constitution from the right. Her presence on the court is one reason women still have choice and privacy in medical decisions. Like most things, her tenure on the court can't be judged in purely black and white terms. There are many shades of gray-something Mr. Call hasn't seemed to learn yet. Putting a pox on her shows how shallow and juvenile his judgment is.
Posted by: UNM law student | Dec 1, 2007 10:10:54 AM
By purposely waiting to retire until the Republicans were back in the White House, she opened the door for justices like Roberts and Alito. What did she think a Bush apppointee's position was going to be on women's choice and privacy, I wonder? As I said, her swing vote decision, regardless of whether she regrets it or not, is one of the main reasons that we have had a criminal presidential administration for the last 7 years.
What has her decision done for all of our privacy?
She could not apologize enough to bring back 1.3 million dead Iraqis. Or 4000 US troops and the tens of thousands who have suffered life-altering injuries.
Call me shallow and juvenile if you must, at least I am identifying myself and my positions, UNM Law Student.
She knew her decision to stop the vote count was wrong when she made it, but she wanted a Republican in office. That she didn't know Bush was going to be as bad as he has been is no absolution.
Jason Call
www.Call4Democracy.org
Posted by: < | Dec 1, 2007 12:00:28 PM
https://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct07/OConnor.cover.gl.html
https://www.news10now.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=124018
I don't see in either of these articles that she regrets her decision. She may regret the results, but she still sees the court's decision as constitutionally sound. Not the same thing as an "error in judgment" as you have characterized the issue, UNM Law Student.
A good analysis of any regret O'Connor might have for the results of her decision are below, excerpted from a CommonDreams.org titled "Buyer's Remorse: Their Purchase, Our Regret." (Full article link here: https://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/28/4168/)
Still, though, the all-time prize for hypocritical inanity has to go to Sandra Day O’Connor, at least if Jeffrey Toobin has portrayed her accurately in his new book, “The Nine”. Not only does it seem likely that his portrait is accurate, it seems even more likely that the direct source for his characterization is none other than the former justice herself, who - like Powell - doesn’t have the courage to directly tell the truth herself, in public.
Apparently, however, O’Connor was a wee bit shy of sympathy for those Florida voters back in 2000 whom she considered dumb (nevermind that they weren’t responsible for the ballots they were handed), and so she thought the whole darned thing just need to be over with and the presidency handed over to the (extremely) right candidate. You know who. Didn’t hurt, of course, that she was big pals with the Bush family, tennis partner with Barbara, and that she wanted to retire but didn’t want to turn the seat on the Court over to a Democratic president. So she not only signed onto the most blatantly partisan and jurisprudentially embarrassing decision in the Court’s history, but by providing the fifth vote to make that opinion the majority, she in fact became the decision.
And vice versa. Now we find out that she’s more than a tad disappointed with the results of her work in the Supreme Court laboratory! Now we learn that being known as the Dr. Frankenstein who built the monster that produced the Guantánamo and habeas corpus and Fourth Amendment horror shows is not exactly what O’Connor had in mind for the second sentence of her freakin’ obituary, dude! Sorry, Sandy, if you’ve come to find George W. Bush “arrogant, lawless, incompetent and extreme”. Welcome to our world, dark and foreboding as it’s now long been. You certainly won’t get an argument with your assessment here, other than to wonder why you broke every law and principle in the book to make someone with exactly those qualities president. (Or did you simply think, way back in 2000, that Boy George was merely stupid, dumb, uneducated and dimwitted, as opposed to “arrogant, lawless, incompetent and extreme”?) So sorry that you are reported by Toobin to be appalled at Ashcroft, the Schiavo case, Harriet Miers, the administration’s position on everything from affirmative action to the war on terror, and having the Iraq Study Group on which you served dissed by your own monster, only then to suffer the greatest indignity of having the very guy (Alito), whose lower court opinion requiring husbands to notify their wives in advance of an abortion horrified you enough to label it “repugnant”, appointed by Bush to fill your own seat.
But, gosh, Sandy, if you think you’ve got it bad, you ought to chat with the 1.2 million or so dead Iraqis about their opinion of the mess you made at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Oops! Oh, shoot - I forgot. You can’t actually talk to them anymore. They’re dead. Bush murdered them, and you - well, you created the murderer. And you weren’t even smart enough to cover your tracks in doing so. You broke every single major judicial principle that you Neanderthals always say you stand for in the process of making the monster - from states’ rights, to judicial restraint, to opposing civil rights rules, to respecting precedent. In casting one vote, on one decision, you wrecked the world. And now you’re disappointed with the results?! The least you could have done in penance is to have ruined your own reputation in the process, which, actually, is what you did.
Posted by: | Dec 1, 2007 1:58:18 PM
First off I'd suggest you cut down the length of your comments so someone will be tempted to read them.
Second, I don't get what you want us to do. Ban her speech? People can go and make up their own minds or not. You seem to take it as a personal affront that info is on here about her speech.
Posted by: UNM law student | Dec 1, 2007 2:01:52 PM
The length of the last comment was because I had excerpted an article, as I stated.
I didn't say I wanted anybody to DO anything. This is a "comment" section, right? So I commented. The woman's a menace. My opinion. A perspective. No affront because of the info posted...I didn't say "How dare DFNM promote this event." She can speak, people can listen. I don't find her to be credible.
Furthermore, I presented an opinion, backed it up, and was called shallow and juvenile. What's that all about?
Posted by: | Dec 1, 2007 2:35:17 PM
The length of the last comment was because I had excerpted an article, as I stated.
I didn't say I wanted anybody to DO anything. This is a "comment" section, right? So I commented. The woman's a menace. My opinion. A perspective. No affront because of the info posted...I didn't say "How dare DFNM promote this event." She can speak, people can listen. I don't find her to be credible.
Furthermore, I presented an opinion, backed it up, and was called shallow and juvenile. What's that all about?
Posted by: | Dec 1, 2007 2:35:57 PM
Shame, shame on Sandra Day O'Connor. When the chips were down in the 2000 election, she chose loyalty to the GOP over her sworn oath to uphold the constitution.
Posted by: trixter | Dec 1, 2007 10:57:25 PM
