The lead editorial in the print version of the Wall Street Journal today is very relevant to California politics… Of course, when she isn’t burning American flags, Senator Boxer is probably burning issues of the WSJ… (This didn’t make the main page as they didn’t put it online until just now…)
Hillary’s Revenge
Bygones are never bygones with Mrs. Clinton.
Thursday, December 6, 2007 3:00 p.m. EST
Summoning the ghosts of the Clinton impeachment may be taboo in the Democratic Presidential race, but it’s apparently fair game as payback against those who participated in it. Thus is California Senator Barbara Boxer exacting revenge against James Rogan, who has been nominated for a district court judgeship in California.
Mr. Rogan was a California Congressman in the 1990s and one of 13 managers of the impeachment hearings in the House. He also has served as a prosecutor, a municipal judge, head of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and, since last year, a Superior Court Judge in California. Yet now Ms. Boxer, his home state Senator, is exercising her prerogative to "blue-slip" him, blocking a nominee to the federal bench even before he gets a hearing from the Judiciary Committee.
Asked what she had against him, Senator Boxer’s office told the Associated Press that Mr. Rogan "was one of the most enthusiastic backers of impeachment–he thought President Clinton had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. The Senate certainly disagreed with that conclusion, as did Sen. Boxer."
It’s an unusual spectacle for a mere district judgeship, especially in California. Ms. Boxer and fellow Senator Dianne Feinstein had worked out a system with the Bush Administration for filling federal district court vacancies through a commission designed to find consensus candidates. Known as the Parsky commission, its 27 proposed nominees so far have all met the satisfaction of the two Democrats. Until now.
Mr. Rogan is undeniably qualified, and has support from the likes of former Clinton Chief Counsel Lanny Davis and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Ditto for such partisans as Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and a good chunk of the California House delegation, including Jane Harman, Anna Eshoo and Grace Napolitano.
Even President Clinton and Mr. Rogan have reportedly had a cordial correspondence: The Judge sent him flowers in the hospital during his heart bypass surgery and even some impeachment memorabilia from Mr. Rogan’s private collection as a donation to the Clinton Presidential Library. Let’s also recall that Mr. Clinton did lie under oath in a civil case, for which he was ultimately barred for five years from practicing law, so the House had a duty to consider charges.
In her Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has tried to portray the 1990s as a halcyon era of peace and prosperity, while forgetting vanishing billing records and other ethics unpleasantness. But the revenge against Mr. Rogan is an indication that forgive and forget is precisely what a Hillary Presidency would not do. Senators Boxer and Clinton have been close for years, with Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham marrying Ms. Boxer’s daughter Nicole in the Rose Garden in 1994. That marriage ended in divorce, but the two women have remained stalwart allies. If Mrs. Clinton wanted her friend to desist, she need merely say so.
Barack Obama has been saying that Hillary Clinton can’t transcend the nasty partisan wars of which she was so central a part, and the Rogan payback suggests he’s right. She’s also assembling the same retinue of Clinton aides–Harold Ickes, Sidney Blumenthal–who made the 1990s such a parade of grand jury proceedings. Even when she has every incentive to let Mr. Rogan pass to serve her own campaign image, she and her allies can’t help themselves.