Romney & Bork: A Dangerous Team

A message from PFAW:

Today, People For the American Way launched a major new campaign -- including a website, a web ad and an exclusive report -- exposing Mitt Romney’s dangerous agenda for America’s courts.

The first phase of the campaign highlights Romney’s choice of Robert Bork to lead his constitutional and judicial advisory team. Yes, that Robert Bork. By allying with Bork, a jurist so extreme he was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Senate 25 years ago, Romney has sent a clear signal that he means to drag America’s courts even farther to the right, endangering many of the civil rights, liberties and economic protections won by the American people over the past five decades.

Check out the ad and download the report now at RomneyCourt.com. Then, help spread the word using social media and by asking others to check out the site.

Now more than ever, the Supreme Court should be an issue of utmost concern to all Americans. However, few are aware of the extreme agenda Mitt Romney has for the High Court -- an agenda exemplified by his close alliance with Robert Bork.

In 1987, People For the American Way led the fight to keep Judge Bork off the Supreme Court. 25 years later, we are as relieved as ever that we succeeded. When Bork was nominated, Americans across the political spectrum rejected the dangerous political agenda that he would have brought to the bench -- his disdain for modern civil rights legislation, his acceptance of poll taxes and literacy tests, his support of government bans on contraception and criminal sodomy laws, his continued privileging of corporations over individuals. Since then, he has dug his heels even deeper into a view of the law that puts corporations first and individuals far behind.

It is frightening that a quarter century after Robert Bork’s jurisprudence was deemed too regressive for the Supreme Court, a leading presidential candidate has picked him to shape his legal policy.

Find out more at RomneyCourt.com now and please help spread the word.

PFAW Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin, the author of the report, said, “The return of Robert Bork and his reactionary jurisprudence to national politics should be a three-alarm wake-up call for all Americans. In his work on the bench as a judge and off the bench as a polemicist, Bork has consistently placed corporations above the government and government above the rights of the people. The idea that Bork could be central to shaping the Supreme Court in the 21st century is shocking because he wants to turn the clock back decades in terms of the civil rights and civil liberties of the people.”

The new report and ad review Bork’s record from his days as solicitor general to President Richard Nixon to his turn as co-chair of the Romney campaign’s committee on law, the Constitution and the judiciary. Highlights of Bork’s career include:

• Consistently choosing corporate power over the rights of people. As a judge, Bork regularly took the side of business interests against government regulators trying to hold them accountable, but the side of the government when it was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers pressing for more corporate accountability. 
• Opposing civil rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, gay rights and individual free speech. Bork disparaged the Civil Rights Act of 1964; defended the use of undemocratic poll taxes and literacy tests in state elections; believes the government should be allowed to ban birth control; disagrees with the Supreme Court ruling that overturned sodomy laws; and believes that the government should be able to jail people for advocating civil disobedience.
• Advocating censorship and blaming American culture first. Bork promotes censorship to combat what he calls the “rot and decadence” of American society, saying “I don’t make any fine distinctions; I’m just advocating censorship.” He writes that “the liberal view of human nature” has thrown American culture into “free fall.”
• Rejecting the separation of church and state. Bork rejects the science of evolution, advocates legalizing school-sponsored prayer and has written that he wants to see the Constitution’s wall of separation between church and state “crumble.”

Learn more at RomneyCourt.com and please make sure to share the video on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

Thank you for all you do, and for your ongoing vigilance in defense of liberty and equality -- the American Way.

Sincerely,

Michael Keegan, President

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