| I hadnt played a note in three yearsIs there any sheet music? I askedWhat key is it in? She answered, I dont have a clueCan I have a couple of minutes to warm up the horn? Again, NoI gave the only possible answer: Okay, Ill do itI went up to the stageThey gave me a horn, promptly attached a mike to the bell, and the music startedI played as softly as I could until I tuned the horn and figured out the keyThen I joined in and did pretty wellI still keep a picture of JrWalker and me doing a riff together
September was a busy monthWith the new school year starting, I appeared on NBCs Meet the Press along with Bill Bennett, who had succeeded Terrel Bell as President Reagans secretary of educationI got along well with Bennett, who appreciated my support for accountability and teaching kids basic values in school, and he didnt disagree when I said the states needed more federal help to pay for early-childhood programsWhen Bennett criticized the National Education Association as an obstacle to accountability, I said I thought the NEA was doing better on that score and reminded him that Al Shanker, leader of the other big dior handbag sale teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, supported both accountability and values education
Unfortunately, my relationship with Bill Bennett didnt fare well after I became President and he began promoting virtue for a livingAlthough he had once inscribed a book to me with the words To Bill Clinton, the Democrat who makes sense, he apparently came to believe that either he had been wrong or I had lost whatever sense I had when he wrote those words
Around the time of the Meet the Press interview, Senator Joe Biden, the chairman of the judiciary committee, asked me to testify against Judge Robert Bork, who had been nominated to the USupreme Court by President ReaganI knew Joe wanted me because I was a white southern governor; the fact that I had been Borks student in Constitutional Law was an added bonusBefore I agreed, I read most of Borks articles, important judicial opinions, and published reports of his speechesI concluded that Judge Bork should not go on the Supreme CourtIn an eight-page statement, I said I liked and respected Bork as a teacher and thought President Reagan should have considerable latitude in prada clutch his appointments, but I still believed the nomination should be rejected by the SenateI argued that Borks own words demonstrated that he was a reactionary, not a mainstream conservativeHe had criticized almost every major Supreme Court decision expanding civil rights except Brown vIn fact, Bork had been one of two lawyers, along with William Rehnquist, to advise Barry Goldwater to vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964As a southerner, I knew how important it was not to reopen the wounds of race by disturbing those decisionsBork had the most restrictive view on what the Supreme Court can do to protect individual rights of anyone who had been nominated to the Supreme Court in decadesHe thought dozens of court decisions needed to be reversedFor example, he said a married couples right to use contraceptives was no more deserving of privacy protection from government action than a utilitys right to pollute the airIn fact, as his ruling against Arkansas in the Grand Gulf case showed, he thought utilities and other business interests were entitled to more protection than individual citizens from government actions he cheap chanel purse disagreed withHowever, when it came to protecting business interests, he threw judicial restraint out the window in favor of activismHe even said federal courts shouldnt enforce antitrust laws because they were based on a flawed economic theoryI asked the Senate not to take the risk that Judge Bork would act on his long-held convictions rather than on the more moderate assurances he was then giving in the confirmation process
I had to file the testimony rather than give it in person, because the hearings were delayed and I had to leave for a trade mission to EuropeIn late October, the Senate rejected the Bork nomination, 5842I doubt that my testimony influenced a single votePresident Reagan then nominated Judge Antonin Scalia, who was as conservative as Bork but hadnt said and written as much to prove itIn December 2000, in the case of Bush vGore, he wrote the Saturday opinion of the Supreme Court granting an unprecedented injunction to stop counting votes in FloridaThree days later, by a 54 vote, the Supreme Court gave the election to George WBush, partly on the ground that the outstanding disputed ballots couldnt be counted gucci handbag new collection by midnight of that day as Florida law requiredOf course not: the Supreme Court had stopped the counting of legal votes three days beforeIt was an act of judicial activism that might have made even Bob Bork blush
After the trade mission, Hillary and I joined John Sununu and Governor Ed DiPrete of Rhode Island for a meeting with our Italian counterparts in FlorenceIt was the first trip to Italy for Hillary and me, and we fell in love with Florence, Siena, Pisa, San Gimignano, and VeniceI was also fascinated by the economic success of northern Italy, which had a higher per capita income than GermanyOne of the reasons for the regions prosperity seemed to be the extraordinary cooperation of small-business people in sharing facilities and administrative and marketing costs, as northern Italian artisans had been doing for centuries, since the development of medieval guildsOnce more I had found an idea I thought might work in ArkansasWhen I got home, we helped a group of unemployed sheet-metal workers set up businesses and cooperate in cost-sharing and marketing as I had observed Italian leatherworkers and furniture makers gucci bag doin |
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