Decision ‘08

The Case Against Hastings

Let’s be crystal clear about one thing: whether Jane Harman gets the job or not (and I think she should), anyone but Alcee Hastings is a better choice than Hastings. I’ve been accused of being a hypocrite and a race-baiter for my troubles in trying to beat the drum against his nomination, but no one I’ve seen yet has made the case quite as thoroughly as Byron York does here:

Eighteen years ago, Democratic Rep. John Conyers came to believe that Alcee Hastings, at the time a federal judge in Florida, was guilty of impeachable offenses. Hastings stood accused of conspiring to take bribes, and, although it is little remembered today, Conyers served as the chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that investigated Hastings and unanimously recommended his impeachment. After the House voted 413 to 3 to impeach Hastings, Conyers went on to serve as one of the House impeachment managers who successfully argued before the Senate that Hastings should be convicted and removed from office.

Conyers was also the author of perhaps the most dramatic words to come from the entire impeachment saga. In the summer of 1988, after he had played a key role in drawing up the articles of impeachment, Conyers made a speech before the House in which suggested that some of the allegations against Hastings, the first black to serve on the federal bench in Florida, might have been racially motivated. But as troubling as he found that possibility, Conyers said those concerns did not change the facts of the case. And the facts pointed to Hastings’s guilt.

In the speech, Conyers looked back to civil-rights days, when corrupt judges sometimes twisted and ignored the law. “We did not wage that civil rights struggle merely to replace one form of judicial corruption for another,” Conyers said. “The principle of equality requires that a black public official be held to the same standard that other public officials are held to.…Just as race should never disqualify a person from office, race should never insulate a person from the consequences of wrongful conduct.”

Conyers’s argument won the day, and Hastings was removed from the bench.

There’s much, much more…read it all, as they say in the big leagues…

One Response to “The Case Against Hastings”

1 Jo Says:
November 23rd, 2006 at 5:08 am
This so flies in the face of stupidity its not funny anymore. Just proves that Pelosi lies as she tries to smile through the botox.