TO BORK

To attack shamelessly, with no regard for the truth, and with total disregard for doing the right thing. Word came into existence after the Democrat-controlled United States Senate voted not to confirm Robert Bork's nomination (by President George Herbert Walker Bush) for the Supreme Court. The man held what until then had would have been considered the necessary credentials, so why wasn't his nomination confirmed? It was certainly not because he lacked the ability, the intellect, or the qualifications. What he lacked was likeability and a liberal bent; he definitely didn't meet the Democrats' ideological criteria: he was most avowedly a conservative judge. Democrats during the 1980s had come to the conclusion that they would never succeed in getting laws passed that would advance their liberal agenda. Their solution (Thought up by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe and cohorts?): use whatever means necessary to stack the United States judicial system with liberal, activist judges, judges willing to make new law through their interpretations of the laws on the books. In order for their plan to succeed, it was necessary to hold up judicial appointments as long as possible in the hopes that a Democrat would soon be returned to the Presidency--while concurrently claiming that they were trying to keep a Republican President from stacking the court with radical conservatives so far out of the mainstream as to be a threat to the nation's very existence. The ploy remains in use today as many of President George W. Bush's judicial nominations languish without even a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. God forbid that the nominees actually get to the Senate floor for a vote--most would probably be confirmed. If you're a liberal Democrat, you may choose to believe that today's Democrats are just doing to President Bush what yesterday's Republicans did to President Clinton. The facts and the corresponding judicial appointment statistics belie any sound basis for such a claim. A possible result: We have virtually no criminals in the United States today--just misunderstood, downtrodden members of society--people who committed their crimes because society made them do it. Example: Judicial nominee after judicial nominee gets borked by the Democrats.