Now This Is How You Politicize the Judiciary

Sometimes you read something that is such a diamond-hard perfect example of personal chutzpah that you step back and look for flaws in the chutzpah and you absolutely cannot find one. There was one of these gems in Monday's Wall Street Journal. It concerned the outspoken Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

"Her comments were as openly political as any justice has been in my memory — perhaps ever," the author wrote.

The author was Judge Laurence Silberman, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and his contention here is…odd. I can come up with one example of a judge whose political meddling makes RBG's outspokenness look like the prayers of a cloistered Carmelite nun. That would be Judge Laurence Silberman, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The Enemy of the People Speaks

In 2004, Michelle Goldberg wrote in Salon about how many fingers in how many pies Silberman actually has had. His political involvement goes all the way from the October Surprise in 1980, through Iran-Contra, into the Great Penis Hunt of the 1990s. David Brock was Silberman's protégé during Brock's days as a right-wing button man. But, if Brock isn't your cup of tea, Goldberg reminded us that other Republicans looked on Silberman in much the same way. From Salon:

Kevin Phillips, the former Nixon staffer who authored the recent "The Bush Dynasty," said on NPR on Monday, "In the past, Silberman has been more involved with coverups in the Middle East than with any attempts to unravel them."

Silberman truly is the Zelig of the conservative politicization of the American judiciary.

Silberman's sojourn in the world of political scandal began during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election when, as a member of Ronald Reagan's campaign staff, he, along with Robert C. McFarlane, a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Richard V. Allen, Reagan's chief foreign policy representative, met with a man claiming to be an Iranian government emissary. The Iranian offered to delay the release of the 52 American hostages being held in Tehran until after the election — thus contributing to Carter's defeat — in exchange for arms. A controversy continues to rage over whether the Reagan team made a bargain with the Iranians, as alleged by Gary Sick, a former National Security Council aide in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations who now teaches at Columbia University. Yet no one denies that the meeting Silberman was at took place, and although Silberman has said the Iranian's offer was immediately rejected, none of the three Reagan operatives ever told the Carter administration what had happened. McFarlane, Allen and Silberman have all since insisted that they don't know the name of the Iranian man they met with.

Who among us hasn't forgotten the name of the Iranian man they met with to discuss hostages? Is there more? Of course, there's more.

After the Iran-contra scandal, he was part of a three-judge panel that voted 2-to-1 to reverse Oliver North's felony conviction. Voting with him was David Sentelle, a protégé of Jesse Helms who according to Brock named his daughter "Reagan" after the president who put him on the bench. In his book "Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up," Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican who served as deputy attorney general during the Dwight Eisenhower administration, described Silberman as "aggressively hostile" during oral arguments. Walsh wrote that he regretted not moving to disqualify him.

And, also, too.

Both Silberman and his wife continued to play important behind-the-scenes roles in the Clinton investigations, something that didn't stop the judge from ruling on important aspects of the case. As Brock reports, Ricky Silberman founded an anti-feminist group, the Independent Women's Forum, which received backing from Clinton-hating sugar daddy Richard Mellon Scaife (Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick, was a member of its board) and which filed a friend of the court brief in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. Ricky Silberman approached Ken Starr to handle the brief. It was his introduction to the case. He turned it down, but he later consulted with Jones' lawyers in telephone conferences.

I'm telling you. There are no mirrors in their houses.