Author Archives

Stuart Taylor, Jr.

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Legal Affairs – Now Here’s A Cause: Those Poor, Poor Rich Folks

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Listening to the Republican rhetoric, you might get the idea that making children of wealth work for a living is a radical, confiscatory assault on family farms, property rights, fairness, and the American way. In one of countless screeds in The Wall Street Journal, Melik Kaylan, of Forbes.com, likened the idea of taxing inherited wealth to "the Maoist notion of `perpetual revolution,’ where every generation must embrace the struggle anew," and noted approvingly that "the Renaissance was built on a society of dynastic privilege." Less-extravagant critics denounce what they call the "death tax" as a manifestation of class warfare.

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Legal Affairs – Bashing the SAT Won’t Make Life More Fair

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

In his much publicized Feb. 18 speech attacking the SAT, University of California President Richard C. Atkinson proposed that his university’s eight campuses stop using the test as an admissions requirement. The result, he said, would be to "help all students, especially low-income and minority students, determine their own educational destinies."

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Legal Affairs – How the Marc Rich Pardon Could Spawn a New Prosecution

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Here we go again. Another criminal-congressional tag-team crew investigating Bill Clinton. This time, it’s to determine not whether he lied under oath about sex-which Clinton essentially admitted at long last on Jan. 19-but whether, on the very next day, he sold a pardon, or two, or a few before he left office.

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NewsHour: Pardon Probe – February 22, 2001

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JIM LEHRER: Now how all of this looks tonight to four columnists. Stuart Taylor of The National Journal and Newsweek; Tom Oliphant of The Boston Globe; David Brooks of The Weekly Standard; and Joe Conason of The New York Observer. First on the Hugh Rodham matter, Stuart, is there anything illegal in what he did?

STUART TAYLOR: Not from what meets the eye immediately. It’s legal for the brother of the First Lady to lobby the president. It’s legal for him to get a huge fee for a small effort, as seems to have been the case in the Braswell case. However, I think… I hope we’re getting to the point in this country where something doesn’t have to be illegal to be recognized as inappropriate and smelly.

JIM LEHRER: We’ll get to that part of it in a moment. Joe Conason, have you discovered anything about what Hugh Rodham did or did not do that’s against the law?

JOE CONASON: Well, I’m not a lawyer, Jim, so I’d be hesitant to offer an opinion about that. But on the face of it, there was nothing illegal, as Stuart said, in his representing someone or collecting an exorbitant fee for it either.

JIM LEHRER: David, Tom, either of you come down differently on that?

TOM OLIPHANT: No, not at all at that point.

DAVID BROOKS: No.

JIM LEHRER: All right, then, back to Stuart, to your point, if it wasn’t illegal, what’s wrong with what he did?

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Legal Affairs – Good Pardons, Bad Laws, and Bush’s Unique Opportunity

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The uproar over ex-President Clinton’s abuse of his pardon power in some cases has overshadowed his salutary use of it in others-in particular, his commutations of the savagely severe prison terms of more than 20 nonviolent, nondangerous bit players in drug deals. These clemencies were long overdue palliatives to the cruel and irrational sentencing laws that sailed through a drug-crazed Congress in the 1980s. But Clinton freed only a fortunate few of the tens of thousands of nonviolent prisoners-mostly black and Hispanic-currently serving mandatory minimum prison terms of five, 10, and 20 years for relatively minor drug crimes. Thousands more will disappear into the gulag every year.

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Legal Affairs – Tobacco Lawyers and the Case For Cover-up Reform

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Two decades ago, when Big Tobacco still seemed invincible, a top Brown & Williamson attorney named Ernest Pepples laid out in stark terms what might be called the honesty option: "If we admit that smoking is harmful to heavy smokers, do we not admit that [the company] has killed a lot of people each year for a very long time? Moreover, if the evidence we have today is not significantly different from the evidence we had five years ago, might it not be argued that we have been `willfully’ killing our customers for this long period? Aside from the catastrophic civil damage and governmental regulation which would flow from such an admission, I foresee serious criminal liability problems."

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Legal Affairs – The Risk Is Not Establishing Religion, But Degrading It

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The folks who see incipient theocracy in every crucifix hanging on a federally financed soup-kitchen wall are in a lather about the sayings, prayings, and doings of Ayatollah George W. Bush. They have legitimate grounds for complaint. Consider the words with which a clergyman concluded Bush’s swearing-in: "We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name that’s above all other names, Jesus, the Christ. Let all who agree say, `Amen.’ "

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Legal Affairs – How Clinton Trashed the Constitution to Save It

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Mr. Clinton admits and acknowledges … that he knowingly gave evasive and misleading answers, in violation of Judge [Susan Webber] Wright’s discovery orders … in an attempt to conceal … the true facts about his improper relationship with Ms. Lewinsky…. He engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice in that his discovery responses interfered with the conduct of the Jones case.-Agreed Order of Discipline, signed by President Clinton on Jan. 19, 2001

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Legal Affairs – Smearing Linda Chavez: The Poison of Partisan Thinking

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"The narcissism and duplicity of Chavez’s [Jan. 9] press conference announcing her withdrawal … was simply staggering…. She trotted out a gaggle of immigrant admirers to offer staged testimonials about her history of assisting those in need…. Even the Bush team had abandoned the absurd pretense that Marta Mercado was not Linda Chavez’s employee…. You shouldn’t exploit [illegal immigrants]…. What’s more, rather than tell the Bush team the truth … she lied." -The New Republic

"Reasonable people would call a two-year houseguest who is not a relative and who vacuums, does laundry, looks after the kids, and receives free room and board and spending money a maid. But Ms. Chavez had insisted that Marta Mercado … was a needy charity case…. [Chavez] telephoned a former neighbor, presumably to coach her on what to say about Ms. Mercado [to] FBI agents…. The law is quite clear. Harboring an illegal alien is a felony." -The New York Times

"As one online political wag put it, is this the definition of compassionate conservatism, to bring illegal immigrants into your house, put them to work, and then not pay them?" -Los Angeles Times

These are some of the things they said about Linda Chavez as her nomination to be Labor Secretary was going up in smoke. For giving from 1991-93 what liberals used to call "sanctuary" to a battered and depressed illegal immigrant from Guatemala who clearly was a needy charity case, the conservative Chavez has now been smeared as an exploiter, a criminal, a liar, and a hypocrite.

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Legal Affairs – A character assassin should not be Attorney General

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Former Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., is an able and accomplished man who won the respect of many Senate colleagues in both parties. But he is unfit to be Attorney General. The reason is that during an important debate on a sensitive matter, then-Sen. Ashcroft abused the power of his office by descending to demagoguery, dishonesty, and character assassination.