Thilli$, Burr help another radical leftist get on the federal payroll
The GOP-controlled US Senate — you know, the one that was going to strike down that evil ObamaCare ASAP? Well, just when you thought they couldn’t do anything dumber or more shameless, they surprise you:
Conservative critics of President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Library of Congress were blindsided Wednesday when a key Republican engineered her lopsided confirmation by the Senate despite concerns she is, in the words of one opponent, “an unqualified, far-left progressive.”
The Senate voted 74-18 to confirm Carla D. Hayden, who leads Baltimore’s public library system, as the 14th librarian of Congress.[…]
All 18 senators who voted no on Hayden are Republicans, as are seven of the eight senators who did not vote.
Thilli$$$ and Burr both voted YES on this woman. So did Lindsey Graham. Tim Scott, thankfully, said NO. (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio all voted NO. Strangely, Rand Paul voted YES.) MORE:
Critics said Hayden falls short of the scholarly credentials traditionally expected of the nation’s librarian of Congress.
However, Blunt, chairman of the Rules and Administration Committee, scheduled a June 9 committee vote that recommended Hayden’s confirmation to the full Senate.
“Hayden has made a name for herself in the far-left community as a radical activist,” the conservative group Concerned Women for America wrote Blunt and the committee before that vote. “This position is not one for radical activism, but for academic honesty and integrity.”
Before the Senate vote, Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, called Hayden “an unqualified, far-left progressive.”
“Republicans should be very concerned about what her confirmation could mean for the Congressional Research Service, which is the research arm from which they get unbiased, nonpartisan research,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.
“This is someone so far to the left that The Nation magazine ran a headline when she was nominated about how a ‘radical librarian’ may soon run the Library of Congress,” von Spakovsky said in an interview just hours before Blunt’s unexpected move to bring the nomination to the Senate floor.
Hayden, 63, succeeds James Billington, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who served for 28 years before retiring last fall.
Ah, feel the turn of that SCREW. More:
In its voice vote June 9, the Rules Committee approved Hayden, former president of the American Library Association, for a 10-year term as the 14th librarian of Congress. After Billington’s resignation, Obama signed a bill in November that changed the position from a “lifetime” appointment.
The Library of Congress, with an annual budget of $630 million and about 3,200 employees, controls the nation’s Copyright Office as well as the Congressional Research Service. The library also provides members of Congress with legal advice.
Although Hayden may be qualified to serve in the public library system, the librarian of Congress is a unique, distinct position that should be occupied by well-credentialed scholars and authors, Heritage’s von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.
Unlike prior occupants of the post, Hayden is not an accomplished author and her experience is primarily as a local librarian, von Spakovsky and other conservative critics say.
Hayden, who Obama noted would be the first black and the first woman to serve as librarian of Congress, is CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, a position she has held since 1993. She received her doctorate in library science from the University of Chicago.
She has not published a book as an author but was the editor of “Venture into Cultures: A Resource Book of Multicultural Materials and Programs.”
By comparison, Billington has authored five books and dozens of scholarly articles, and has taught history at Harvard and Princeton.
“Leading the Library of Congress requires multitasking on a scale rarely seen in other government organizations,” Blunt said in a press statement June 9. “I am confident Dr. Hayden will bring a great background and skill set to the job.”
[…]
Comments Hayden made in a video touting her candidacy, produced by the White House, were of particular concern to those wary of her nomination. Her remarks, they say, demonstrated a lack of understanding of why the Library of Congress was created and its fundamental mission today.
“She was talking in the video about the Library of Congress as if it were some local public library and as a place where you go to borrow Harry Potter books and where you have internet access to find jobs,” von Spakovsky said.
“That’s not what the Library of Congress is all about,” he said. “It’s the foremost cultural institution of the U.S. government, and that’s why we’ve had renowned scholars in this position.”
Critics say the video, Obama’s nomination remarks Feb. 24, and Hayden’s background indicate she is less a scholar and more a political activist who could compromise the library’s neutrality and integrity.
[…]Von Spakovsky described Hayden’s April 20 confirmation hearing before Blunt’s Rules Committee as a “coronation with softball questions.”
The conservative National Review opposed Hayden’s confirmation in an April 27 editorial, writing in part:
If President Obama wants to promote Hayden’s professional talents, her fervor for social work, and the community-spiritedness she has demonstrated during her time in Baltimore, he could make her the first head of his presidential library. It would be a suitable homecoming; Hayden and the Obamas first met through the public-library system in Chicago. The Library of Congress, though, is not the place for ideological agenda-pushing. It’s a place for serious, public-spirited scholarship, and much better candidates than Carla Hayden are available to facilitate that mission.
[…] But Obama’s focus on identity politics appeared to have the desired political effect, von Spakovsky said in a telephone interview:
In his cynical statement nominating Carla Hayden to be librarian of Congress, President Obama cited her race and gender as her major qualifications, hoping that would immunize her from scrutiny. Obama’s plan worked and he has intimidated Senator Blunt into giving the nominee a pass.
[…]Before the surprise floor vote, conservative analysts said they weren’t sure why Blunt was advancing a nominee who sparked strong opposition from conservatives.
“This is someone who clearly believes you should have uncensored access to pornography in public libraries, and that’s the person the Republicans and Blunt want to rush through,” von Spakovsky said, adding:
Blunt is acting like the de facto leader of the Democrats in the Senate. He’s taking on the role of [Minority Leader] Harry Reid, and he’s acting like a Democrat and doing Obama’s bidding on this nominee when there’s no Democratic pressure for this nomination. […]
Again, what’s the importance of a GOP majority? A check-and-balance? They GIVE Obama pretty much everything he wants. Is that what the voters communicated in 2010 and 2014?
Once again, we get votes from our “Republican” senators that are not far off from what Kay Hagan or Elaine Marshall would have done.
”Tricky Dick” Burr keeps giving us more reasons to sit out the Senate race in November, and Tillis keeps giving us more reasons to gear up to eviscerate him in his 2020 primary. They make me embarrassed to admit i am from North Carolina.
Of course, as bad as this is, it pales beside Burr and Tillis voting in favor of cloture, the key vote to assure the confirmation of radical Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
No wonder that the scores of both Burr and Tillis on the respected Heritage Action rating have been trending left of center for some time. It is like they are channeling Terry Sanford and John Edwards instead of Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth.
I’m not voting for him this year; the bubbles for senator will be left blank. Ross is going to win with 110+% of the Demo(n)crat vote; the dead will rise to give her the victory but then again most Conservatives will sit this one out. Here in NC02, I’m glad Ellmers is gone and definitely will not shed a tear if Burr is sent packing.
Both Senators are letting our Nation down. TILLIS HAS TO BE FIRED IN 2020, he took our motivation as conservatives and bunch us right in the face, saying,I have to follow the ESTABLISHMENT, OR I DONT GET A KEY TO THE EXECUTIVE TOILETS
Didn’t butt I mean burr just win re-election?
He won his primary, regrettably. If we had had a stronger challenger, he should have lost. Now he is in a general election which features three bad choices and no good ones.
Truly, we must send his sorry ass packing in November.
Interesting how this article’s focus is on the labeling of Ms. Hayden as a radical leftist while completely ignoring why she would fit that bill. You rely on name calling as opposed to building a case that she is unqualified.
Considering the GOP nominee to run for President of the Country I find it most amusing that you are concerned about “credentials traditionally expected” of the office.
Heck PBJ, The leftist rag The Nation even calls her a radical leftist by their own terms.
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-radical-librarian-may-soon-run-the-worlds-largest-library/
Definitely a dyed in the wool SJW.
The Nation link you provided did call her a radical but I read nothing that was radical leftists.
It noted that she is “…? a champion of privacy rights, and an outspoken critic of the Patriot Act.” ? Also that “Hayden went head to head with then–Attorney General John Ashcroft over the post-9/11 surveillance law.” – against it that is.
And injecting that mind-set into a library position is not radical? You are so deluded you cannot admit that the largest words on the page describe her as radical…in a radical leftist site?
Yes, a radical is another word for leftist, and I’m sure everyone knows that a leftist will remind everyone that “reactionary” is their term for a rightist.
This is why conservative voters—the GOP base–hates the Republican Establishment and, in particular, Burr and Tills. Rather than wait six months for Trump to name a conservative to this post, they rush through a radical Obama appointee. The GOP establishment has been doing this for decades because they think we are so stupid as to keep voting for them. No more! There just comes a time when you have to do what’s right.
AS I read this it makes me sick, That is why I am for trump. I am 80
years old ,Have always supported Republicans, the canadet;s,you
spoke about don’t worry I will let at least 200 more know.thanks for the Information.
Peers the establishment = elitist = “hybrid royalty” has struck again.
Browny Douglas
I SOOOOO want Burr gone.
“This is someone who clearly believes you should have uncensored access to pornography in public libraries”
Everything that I can find about this is that way back in 2000, she opposed the early Internet filters that went too far, such as blocking searches on things like “breast cancer”. She now makes clear that pornography has no place in a library, and has modern filters that block pornography at her library in Baltimore. The Heritage statement appears to be a lie.
As for the Nation calling her a “radical”, the only thing that they cite is something I would have thought Haymakers would support – she resisted the Patriot Act, and particularly the part where John Ashcroft wanted to come into libraries and spy on what you are reading. Good On Her! If only more people had spoken out against the blanket privacy abuses of the post-9/11 days. Would you all really want Hillary to have the authority to demand your library, internet search or video store records without a warrant? Carla Hayden was one of the first and loudest voices to stand up against that sort of thing.
Could the rightwing freakout be solely because she’s A) a woman B) a black woman and C) a black woman nominated by Obama?
I had my own run-in with that early Internet filtering technology. In 2002, I was in the Asheville library reading a book online about the Bush family. When I went to open the chapter about the Bushes and their involvement with the Nazi war machine in the ’30s – ’40s (something that has been well-documented as factual), the filtering software kicked in and wouldn’t let me read it, calling it “hate speech”. I went to the reference desk to ask the librarian to override – he refused, saying I had no business reading a smear about “Our President”.
Thank goodness we now have a Librarian of Congress that has the integrity to stand up to censorship and political correctness.
It is more about being radical and inserting the SJW/political correctness agenda into the research that is performed in the library. But I guess that research can go the way of “science” has in the globalclimatewarmingchange issue.
Wonder what word(s) Obama, Hillary and all of your fact denying liberal friends will call the Nice attack — reckless driving, perhaps? Honest to God, Barry, what WILL it take for you to wake up?!?!
Barry is right about this. Your changing the subject just avoids the issue.
Lol! It starts at the top, pal. Take a break from Salon today and do a little research about how the Obama administration is scrubbing the words “jihad” “extremist” etc from its reports/records. You are living in a liberal fantasy land if you do not think this will not happen at the Library of Congress under this whack job. This is what the liberal thought police (and the elitists from both sides of the aisle) do. I repeat — what WILL it take for you to wake up!?!
Why is she a “whack job”? Is if because she promotes privacy rights for citizens? Again, you avoid the subject.
Hey, give PBJ a break, At least he comes over here for a few minutes between visits to Salon and Huffpo.
Again, you are unable to answer a simple question.
I was not trying to answer a question.
Maybe we need to have a ban on dump trucks! It was the truck not the person committing the crime you know.
Speaking of, did you see that Tillis just said that confirming judges had “nothing to do with doing our jobs,”?
Thom, have the integrity to just come right out and say that you don’t want to confirm judges because they were nominated by Obama. But to stand up in the well of the Senate and say it’s not even your job?
I’m gonna buy a pocket version of the US Constitution & send it to him to read.
Better provide someone to read it to him – and explain the big words.
I interviewed Tillis once about drones, and was not impressed with his ability to think on his feet.
Heck, I am not impressed at all with the guy. He is just out for whomever will line his pockets regardless of political position. But, here is the key, he is light years ahead of Kay Hagan. Thom will likely be out in the next election anyway. That seat usually changes hands pretty much every cycle. But first we need to get Burr out, much better to have a radical leftist there who will admit to trying to do harm to the country rather than someone who will spout the correct views then go vote to harm the country with radical progressive policies.
We aren’t going to eliminate our wayward office holders until we eliminate their best defense….the people holding the highest positions in the NCGOP who cover for them.