Thread: A Trump judicial nominee apologizes for controversial articles mocking multiculturali

A Trump judicial nominee apologizes for controversial articles mocking multiculturalism








By Meagan FlynnMay 10Email the author

Ryan Bounds is sworn in before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in D.C. on May 9. (Yuri Gripas)
This story has been updated.
President Trump’s nominee for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit apologized during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. At issue: a slate of articles disparaging multiculturalism that he wrote more than 20 years ago as a Stanford University student.
Ryan W. Bounds,...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Senate withdraws Trump circuit judge nominee over racial writings

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AFP19 Jul 20187Washington (AFP) – Senate leaders took the rare step of withdrawing President Donald Trump’s latest circuit court judge nominee on Thursday, after an African-American Republican lawmaker expressed concern about the attorney’s race-tinged college writings.


Senator Tim Scott ultimately tanked the nomination when it became clear that Ryan Bounds, an assistant US attorney in Oregon, would not have sufficient support for confirmation as a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.


“For the information of all senators, the nomination will be withdrawn,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Republican-controlled chamber minutes before the scheduled vote.


It was a surprise move that dealt a blow to the White House, as judicial nominees are rarely withdrawn at such a late stage.


Bounds wrote a 1995 article for a conservative student paper while attending Stanford University, in which he discussed the concept of “race think” and diversity promotion by “strident racial factions” of the student body.


As a nominee to the circuit court Bounds had faced opposition from his home state’s two senators, both Democrats, along with all other Democrats in the chamber.


But a GOP source familiar with the proceedings said Bounds ran into deep trouble when Scott, the Senate’s only black Republican, raised concerns about the college writings.


Scott expressed his concerns to Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who said he, too, would vote no.


“With more Republicans heading to no, Bounds was withdrawn,” the source said.


Trump’s Republicans hold a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. But with Senator John McCain battling brain cancer back in Arizona and unable to vote, a 50-49 majority effectively means that a single Republican defector can sink a nominee.


The Senate has nonetheless confirmed a record number of judicial nominees in the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency.


The Bounds rejection comes as the Senate also considers Trump’s US Supreme Court nominee, conservative jurist Brett Kavanaugh, to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.


Kavanaugh worked for years in President George W. Bush’s administration, and as a federal judge has written hundreds of opinions.


Democrats want extra time to study Kavanaugh’s extensive paper trail before the Senate confirmation vote, and they warn that Republican leadership is seeking to block release of Kavanaugh’s writings from his time in government.


After Republicans sank the Bounds nomination based on his college writings, “how are they going to argue that Judge Kavanaugh’s White House papers aren’t relevant to his nomination to the Supreme Court?” said Matt House, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

This is one of the articles they are using for withdrawing the nomination......

One of Bounds’ articles criticized “race-think” in which groups of “multicultural demagogues” create racial divisions at Stanford.
“During my years in our Multicultural Garden of Eden,” he wrote, “I have often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempts to ‘heighten consciousness,’ ‘build tolerance,’ ‘promote diversity’ and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil. I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.”

http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...ollege_writing

Originally Posted by stoptheinvaders

This is one of the articles they are using for withdrawing the nomination......

One of Bounds’ articles criticized “race-think” in which groups of “multicultural demagogues” create racial divisions at Stanford.
“During my years in our Multicultural Garden of Eden,” he wrote, “I have often marveled at the odd strategies that some of the more strident racial factions of the student body employ in their attempts to ‘heighten consciousness,’ ‘build tolerance,’ ‘promote diversity’ and otherwise convince us to partake of that fruit which promises to open our eyes to a PC version of the knowledge of good and evil. I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning.”

http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...ollege_writing

I don't see anything damaging here. The whole of his working career should hold considerable weight over a few writings from over 20 years ago. Our Congress, especially the Senate, has become completely disfunctional!

I didn't see anything wrong either, at least not with the writings I found.

I posted the articles with the hope others might weigh in.

It appears to me it was withdrawn because he is not 100% in lock step with the brainwashing from the left and the media.

If you don't have the votes, you have to withdraw. Shame, because now they have to start all over to fill that spot on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Originally Posted by stoptheinvaders

I didn't see anything wrong either, at least not with the writings I found.

I posted the articles with the hope others might weigh in.

It appears to me it was withdrawn because he is not 100% in lock step with the brainwashing from the left and the media and their brainwashing.

I hear what you're saying, but I really think it simply boils down to the only black Republican Senator and his swaying of Rubio that killed the nomination. It's a shame when you know ahead of time that regardless of who you bring forth 100% of the Democrats are going to vote to oppose that individual. Senator Scott had the power in this situation and screwed us.

100% agree about Tim Scott and Rubio, they derailed it, and McConnell didn't reign them in.


First time I saw Tim Scott speaking, I was very impressed, but like so many---what they said initially is not who they are or what they intend to do.

Sens. Rubio and Scott tanked Trump nominee for criticizing multi-culti PC in college


Daniel Horowitz · July 20, 2018

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Roberto Koltun/Miami Herald | Getty Images

Yesterday afternoon, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blocked the confirmation of a conservative judicial nominee to the leftist Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at the last minute, based on the nominee’s college writings criticizing multiculturalism. This information had been available since February, but they waited until the last minute, after 30 hours of debate time had been wasted. This is a very revealing betrayal and is ominous for several reasons.



On September 7, 2017, President Trump nominated Ryan Bounds to a vacant Oregon seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Bounds is currently an assistant United States attorney for the District of Oregon. He also clerked for Diarmuid O’Scannlain, the rare conservative Ninth Circuit judge whom he was nominated to replace.



From day one, Democrats made hay of Bounds’ writings at college (not even in law school), which poked fun at the snowflake mentality of college students and criticizing the divisive nature of identity factions on campus. Bounds, even at a young age, actually perfectly articulated a view that many conservatives hold — that an obsession with dividing people into factions is not only superfluous but harmful to our common cause as Americans. Bounds contended that the “existence of ethnic organizations is no inevitable prerequisite to maintaining a diverse community — white students, after all, seem to be doing all right without an Aryan Student Union.”



Yes, I understand why that would rile up Democrats. It challenges their entire belief of racial supremacism and politics of division over a true color-blind meritocracy. This is why both Oregon Democrats in the Senate — Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley — opposed Bounds’ nomination. His writings served as the predominant point of contention during his confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee in May. At the hearing, Bounds apologized, a bit too much in my view, for his remarks as a youngster. This is why all the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voted to confirm him. Even Jeff Flake, a champion of sanctimonious virtue-signaling and identity politics, defended him during the hearing.



Why is it that Rubio and Scott waited until the last minute, at the most embarrassing time for the president and the majority leader, to act offended about something that was the most notorious fact about the nominee from the get-go? Evidently, Scott shared this information with Rubio at the last minute and they both agreed to virtue-signal and walk into the devastating identity-politics trap of the Left and oppose the nomination. The White House, in turn, withdrew his nomination.
This is very disturbing for a number of reasons:

• Now the Democrats know how to pick the lock on the all-important issue of Republican judicial nominations. Any true originalist will likely have writings that upset the political correctness cartel because, by definition, anti-constitutional jurisprudence is always threaded with the protection of identity politics. All they have to do is threaten those who are sensitive to such virtue-signaling, like Scott and Rubio, to scuttle the nominee. They will try this tactic on Supreme Court nominees as well. Kavanaugh has a wealth of writings. As Schumer spokesman Matt House told the media, “A lower court nominee’s college writings are relevant but a Supreme Court nominee’s White House writings aren’t? I don’t think so.”
• Rubio claims that he’s upset Bounds failed to disclose his writings to this phantom judicial selection committee created by Oregon’s two senators. But Bounds was explicitly told that he only had to disclose writings from law school onward. The writings that caused the uproar were from college. What’s next? Are we going to draw the line as far back as elementary school? Rubio and Scott are creating a baseline precedent where nominees will either have to inform Democrats of every non-liberal sentence they’ve ever uttered in their lives or risk being disqualified as dishonest.
• This will incentivize the White House to pick more stealth nominees who don’t wind up being conservative. Ironically, just last week the Senate voted to confirm the first left-wing Trump nominee — also to the Ninth Circuit. Mark Jeremy Bennett of Hawaii believes gay marriage is in the Constitution but self-defense is not, yet Marco Rubio (but not Tim Scott) voted to confirm him! What gives? Either way, the White House will now be more inclined to nominate those who garner Democrat support.
• It is this political view of racial division that is the hallmark of the Ninth Circuit — ruling based on identity politics rather than the written letter of the law and the Constitution. If we ever hope to make a dent in the Ninth Circuit, we must nominate people to the court who believe in the rule of law, not in divisive identity politics. Often, even originalists are scared to issue originalist rulings because they contradict the prevailing politically correct culture on a given issue. In that vein, Bounds is exactly the man we need on the Ninth Circuit. Bounds didn’t write anything racist; he was calling out the racist names, dogma, and mindset of those who seek to divide by race.
• The fact that Rubio and Scott are bothered by such views is very troublesome even outside the context of judicial nominations. Identity politics is the lead ship in the leftist armada, and if we are not willing to show we don’t fear it, the Left will win on every issue. Either Rubio and Scott have an incorrigible fear of Democrats playing the race card, or, to echo Dianne Feinstein, the dogma itself lives loudly within them.

Where are the gutsy U.S. senators who believe in conservative dogma?

https://www.conservativereview.com/n...pc-in-college/

Originally Posted by Judy

If you don't have the votes, you have to withdraw. Shame, because now they have to start all over to fill that spot on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Of course it would be worse if Reid hadn't changed the rules to a simple majority vote!