Joel Connelly, a veteran blogger for the Seattle PI (now entirely online), goes out of his way to refrain from painting liberals in a negative light. SHIFT recently pointed out that Connelly, while blasting Republicans for theirdonors, conveniently left out the part that Democrats are swimming in contributions from their own high-rollers—including California billionaire Tom Steyer (who has already influenced local elections in Washington State).
If Connelly is really all that concerned with how big donors impact politics, he might consider looking into the truly stunning story of how a liberal progressive group called the American Constitution Society (ACS) successfully packed the D.C. Court of Appeals with liberal justices of its choosing. ACS is funded by a secret network of wealthy liberal donors—the Democracy Alliance.
The best part of this particular story is that Connelly will not have to worry that it is an unsubstantiated allegation. Why? Because the ACS openly boasted of meeting this particular “performance goal” (i.e. securing the Senate filibuster reform that led to a successful reshaping of the D.C. Court of Appeals) while delivering its fundraising presentation at a Democracy Alliance event in Chicago last spring.
Under the inspiration of informing his readers of how secretive liberal donors have influenced the make-up of one of the most powerful district courts in the country (and, therefore, future national policy), SHIFT urges Connelly to write about this case of cronyism. But we already know he won’t.
Aren’t those judges approved by the United States Senate?
Yep, they sure are. The difference they made was to change the senate rules so that it only took a simple majority to bring it to a vote instead of the 60 as previously required. The senate is currently a democrat majority, but that is about to change and I hope the republicans leave this rule change in place.