11.01.2006
Protect our Supreme Court-- Vote for Carol Hunstein
Most of us don't think too much about voting for a judge - but Crazy-Asses in Washington, DC do and this race has been targeted. Right-wingers, Big Businesses, & Insurance Companies from all across the country have funneled MASSIVE amounts of money into a little old local race for a judge here in GA. Why? They know that we are one of the states where the scales of justice can be tipped if the right nutcase can win this election. If Wiggins is elected, it will change the face of our Supreme Court, law, and precedent in the most insidious ways possible. This guy is seriously SCARY. PLEASE VOTE FOR HUNSTEIN!!
Please vote to reelect Justice Carol Hunstein to the Supreme Court of Georgia next Tuesday. The first in her family to attend college, she has built a distinguished career during her 22 years as a judge. Unaffiliated with any political party, she has wide support among both Republicans and Democrats who respect her skill, independence and fairness. Surprisingly, GA still has a fair judiciary-- and those in DC know this and are trying to remedy that to their liking.
An anonymous group of billionaires and large corporations acting through an "independent" Washington-based committee have funneled $1.3 million into the campaign of her opponent, Mike Wiggins. Locally, big business and insurance companies have raised about $600,000. The state Republican Party has raised $1 million more. One must ask what promises he made about what he would do on the bench in return for that money.
A note on Mike Wiggins-- he was appointed by Bush to Homeland Security and rose to the Assistant Deputy Attorney General. This guy did not just drink the wacko kool-aid, he hepled make it and then sold it all over the country. Mike Wiggins is a right-wing idealogue. He is bought and sold as a commodity by big business and insurance companies.
A bit about Hunstein-- Carol Hunstein was forced at an early age to learn the value of hard work, discipline and dedication. Born into poverty, she contracted polio when she was two, survived her first bout of bone cancer at age five, and lost her mother at age 11. Her father did not think girls needed a college education, so she married at 17 and had a child at 18. When she was 22, her husband abandoned her, she lost a leg to cancer, and doctors told her she had only a year to live. Struggling to support herself and her child, she entered a community college on a vocational rehabilitation scholarship. She made her way through college and most of law school while raising her son on less than $200 per month. After remarrying she had two daughters. Her kids are all grown, and she has one grandson.
In 1977, Hunstein opened a law practice in Decatur, where she represented ordinary people in a wide variety of domestic, criminal and civil cases. Spurred by a county judge who repeatedly called her "little lady" in court, she ran for Judge in 1984, defeating four men to become the first woman elected to DeKalb Superior Court.
In 1992, then-Governor Zell Miller appointed Carol to the Supreme Court of Georgia. During 14 years on the Supreme Court, Carol has participated in more than 5,000 cases and authored more than 600 published opinions. She is widely regarded as one of the hardest working members of the Court, a model of impartiality and fairness, and a judge who strictly adheres to the rule of law. She is particularly known for being hard on repeat criminal offenders, deadbeat dads, purveyors of domestic violence, and lawyers who violate ethical rules.
Justice Hunstein has achieved national stature based on her work and her character. In 1999, the American Bar Association gave her an award given to less than 90 women in history. Other winners include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
No matter what her well-funded opponent's TV ads may tell you, Justice Hunstein is not a "liberal activist judge." Any judge who has ruled fairly on thousands of cases, based on the facts and the law, is vulnerable to having a few individual decisions taken out of context and misrepresented by a political opponent in slick TV ads.
She has struck back with a tough but truthful ad about the fact that her opponent's mother sued him and his sister gave an affidavit saying he threatened to kill her. I don't know about his family dynamics, but I have seen copies of the court documents and the statements in the Hunstein ad are as true as they are tough. I would rather see a judge that applies the rule of law to domestic violence offenders than one who has been a domestic violence offender.
The extremely well funded campaign against Justice Hunstein is part of a coordinated nationwide assault on judicial independence that seeks to overwhelm with big money state Supreme Court justices around the country, and thereby intimidate all other state judges. In state after state, these campaigns have used very similar TV ads to misrepresent judges' records and mislead voters. In this instance, the candidate running against Justice Hunstein is an academically bright ideologue and has been a political appointee in Washington, but he has never tried a case in any trial court and has never argued a case in a Georgia appellate court. .
But this race is beyond who the two candidates are. At this point, they are both merely the front-people for the reality of the situation. Big businesses that formed tax-exempt organizations (like the swift boat veterans during Kerry's presidential campaign) believe they can buy a seat on our Supreme Court.
You must vote and let this corporations know that you will not allow them to buy a seat on the highest court in Georgia. Your vote counts.
Please join me in re-electing Justice Carol Hunstein next Tuesday.
1 Comments:
JELENA....FIX MY BLOG (MY PROFILE AND STUFF IS FOR SOME REASON DOWN AT THE BOTTOM AND I NEED HELP!).
