BuzzFlash Editor's Blog

Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com

After 7 1/2 years, the BuzzFlash Editor and Publisher is starting a blog, which will appear from time to time. Technically, it will really be a series of postings on our original content site -- BuzzFlash.org -- but we'll see how it goes. Who knows, maybe we'll spin it off into a regular blog.

Read it for awhile, I'll be as surprised as you about the direction it takes.

November 12, 2007

Ever since reading "The Hunting of the President" by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, BuzzFlash has been fascinated by the impact one Reagan federal appointee has had on the course of this nation's political history.

His name is David Sentelle -- and he is still doing damage as was revealed by a ruling just a short time ago upholding the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld travesty of justice: military tribunals in Guantanamo for detainees [1].

Sentelle has had a destructive impact on democracy and justice without parallel, considering his longevity on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

We have called David Sentelle the Zelig of partisan GOP judges.

Over the next couple of postings, we will be talking a bit more about Sentelle (who we have covered in the past on BuzzFlash). But for the moment, let's recap just three of his key party line judicial decisions:

• He was a key vote in the appellate panel that overturned the felony conviction of Oliver North and John Poindexter for their roles in the illegal Iran-Contra operation.
• He was the judge who appointed Ken Starr to oversee the effort to impeach Bill Clinton. William Rehnquist, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had placed Sentelle as the judge overseeing the Clinton special prosecutor. When Robert Fiske, a respected non-partisan prosecutor, was ready to exonerate the Clintons, Jesse Helms stepped in and asked Sentelle -- his protege -- to get rid of Fisk and appoint the GOP lapdog, Ken Starr, to take over the Republican hit job on Bill Clinton. Sentelle did as he was told.
• When a special prosecutor was needed to investigate if George Herbert Walker Bush had abused his office by having the State Department search through Bill Clinton's passport application during the 1992 campaign, Sentelle appointed the partisan Republican former prosecutor Joseph DiGenova (husband and law partner [2] of the FOX talking point attorney, Victoria Toensing). DiGenova's job was, we assume, to clear Poppy Bush and everyone on his staff of any improprieties. Case Closed.

We'll be blogging a bit more about Sentelle and the devastating impact of the Republican assault on the judiciary -- by and large enabled by Democratic senators who defect and vote to confirm unqualified GOP loyalists.

No, the Sentelle story is not the kind that you read about in the rush of news soundbites, but it is a model of how the partisan GOP hacks appointed by Reagan, Bush and Bush will leave a destructive legacy for decades to come.

BuzzFlash Editor's Blog

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