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| Uncredited photo from a post by BJ's Mistermix, April 2014 (he said it was Andrew Sullivan and Conor Friedersdorf, but I think that must be some of that satire). |
Steven Roberts/New York Times, 8 November 1987:
Under enormous pressure from Administration officials and his own conservative supporters on Capitol Hill, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg today asked President Reagan to withdraw his nomination to the Supreme Court.
The judge announced his decision only nine days after he was chosen to fill the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. He acted after disclosures about his personal and ethical conduct stirred a storm of criticism.
The disclosures, which culminated Thursday with Judge Ginsburg's admission that he had smoked marijuana several times, embarrassed Mr. Reagan, who had called his confirmation ''vitally important to the fight against crime.''
It was the media that sunk Ginsburg—I didn't remember that. He was outed by Nina Totenberg of NPR (who had weekly lunches, still does for all I know, with that Times reporter's spouse, Cokie Roberts, and Linda Wertheimer). There was a bipartisan outcry from the nation's young potheads, from Claiborne Pell (D-RI) to Newton LeRoy Gingrich (R-GA), including potential presidential candidates Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore, but fearful conservatives begged him to withdraw (he was also accused of "handling a cable television case when he was an investor in a cable company" as a DOJ official, which looks practically innocent by today's Republican standards), and he did, and the nominator named Anthony Kennedy to be vitally important to the fight against crime instead.Hey, it was a simpler time.
