Burr + Tillis: yes AND no on Loretta Lynch confirmation | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Brant Clifton uses the words of others, in part, to keep a tight rein on our U.S. Senate representatives in his "bare knuckles" Conservative online publication known as The Daily Haymaker.

    Talk about profiles in courage. *There's nothing better to make you stand up and salute someone who takes both sides of an important issue. Thom Tillis is learning his way around Washington very well. For the confirmation vote on Barry Obama's attorney general, the rookie Republican senator voted FOR and AGAINST her. (Of course, he was merely following the lead of "Tricky Dick" Burr - who has been hanging out on Capitol Hill for more than two decades now.)

    Here Tillis is in February explaining his decision to oppose Lynch. That statement was followed by a bunch of drive-by criticism for opposing a North Carolina native and a potentially history-making FIRST black female US attorney general. Never mind her far-left views. Here are the folks at Heritage detailing some of those far-left views:

    [...] Lynch's Views on Voter ID

    Lynch, who is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York (which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties), has made it clear that she would continue Holder's war on election integrity.

    In a speech at the Long Beach Martin Luther King Center in New York in January, Lynch claimed that efforts to improve the integrity of the election process were an attempt "to take back" what Martin Luther King, Jr. had fought for and that state legislatures were trying to "reverse" the gains made in voting. Lynch made it clear she approved of the Justice Department's lawsuits against states such as North Carolina to stop voter ID laws and changes in early voting and same-day registration rules, saying such suits "will continue." [...]

    Lynch and the Death Penalty

    Lynch also apparently views the death penalty as racist. She is cited as saying in a 2002 roundtable discussion that she had to repeatedly "explain decisions not to seek the [death] penalty" when she was a prosecutor. She claimed that the relative ease with which the death penalty was applied against blacks and Hispanics suggested a systematic disregard for minority citizens. Lynch would not apply the death penalty even if all of the "problems" with it could be fixed, according to the article, simply because of its supposed disparate impact on minorities: "You can be as fair as possible in a particular case, but the reality is that the federal death penalty is going to hit harder on certain groups."

    Although the death penalty does not come up often in federal prosecutions, if Lynch was attorney general, she would be called upon to apply the death penalty in relevant cases, particularly terrorism prosecutions.[...]

    Lynch's Perspective on Disparate Impact

    The death penalty, voter ID and Lynch's seeming-acquiescence to the recommended "Action Items" in the COPS report also bring into sharp focus an important issue: Lynch's view towards the dubious legal theory of disparate impact that, as the Wall Street Journal has said, Eric Holder has used to "coerce settlements from banks and other businesses based on statistics but no proof of discrimination."

    In fact, a federal court just threw out the use of disparate impact with respect to the Fair Housing Act in a scathing decision in which the judge called the administration's attempt to establish disparate impact as a legitimate legal theory as "chutzpah (bordering on desperation)" and "nothing less than an artful misinterpretation" of the law.[...]

    Well, the Republican majority in the Senate cut a deal to allow a vote on Lynch in exchange for Democrat agreement to allow a human-trafficking bill to move forward. Burr and Tillis voted YES to end a filibuster of Lynch, but voted NO on final confirmation. Ending the filibuster basically surrendered any leverage you had on Obama to force him to submit a more moderate, reasonable nominee. Since there were TEN Republicans ready to vote for Lynch, voting to END the filibuster was basically a vote for her confirmation.

    It was laughable to hear all of these Democrats moaning about Republicans opposing a nominee on the basis of ideology, instead of competence and qualifications. The political record is chock full of nominees by Republican presidents getting chewed to bits in the Senate because their views contrasted with the Democrat platform. (Talk to Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas about Senate Democrats' fairness. Well, Bork is dead so you can't talk to him. But you get the idea.)

    When the Democrats stopped the Republican nominations, they quite often forced the Republicans to submit an alternative that was much less conservative. The Republicans always fold when a doctrinaire liberal gets sent to them for confirmation. We're feeling the effects of that with the current state of the federal judiciary, and the wacko rulings coming out of federal agencies.

    When the voters elect you to stop Obama - you need to at least TRY to do it. We didn't ask for a partnership with the man in The White House.