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Robert Bork Dies at 85

Dec. 19, 2012 9:43am Madeleine Morgenstern

Failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has died at age 85.

The conservative jurist was nominated to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 but rejected by the Senate. The seat ultimately went to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Bork’s family confirmed the news of his death Wednesday morning to Fox News. Bork had a history of heart problems and a lung condition.

As President Richard Nixon’s solicitor general, Bork was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for Nixon when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973.

Bork’s drubbing during the 1987 Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.

This post has been updated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Comments (25)

brknhrt
Posted on December 20, 2012 at 10:47am
Could this site be any more disrespectful to Robert Bork? No picture on the Stories page. Instead all you see is the McRib sandwich for the next story under his name. No real story about his accomplishments, just a note that he was the “failed Supreme Court nominee”.

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ewashington
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 8:37pm
God Bless the Dead… R.I.P. Judge Robert Bork.
For 30 years I have labored in obscurity as a Black conservative intellectual. 24 years ago (1988) I attended Harvard for a year with Barack Obama (I have no distinct memory of him). During these emergent years while Obama took the easy road actively reaching out to and being celebrated by a number of affluent liberals, progressives, Marxists, communists, Post-structuralists, anarchists, socialists and radicals, I took the Judge Bork/Justice Clarence Thomas road reaching out to Jewish, Christian, neo-conservatives, libertarian, liberal, and conservative politicians, academics, professors, and intellectuals like President Reagan, President Bush (41 & 43), Thomas Sowell, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Scalia, Judge Richard A. Posner, Dean Guido Calabresi, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Randall Kennedy, Lawrence Tribe, Charles Ogeltree, Alan Dershowitz, Elie Wiesel, Walter Williams, Bill Bennett, William F. Buckley, President Derek Bok, Judge Bork, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and many, many others to get wisdom, knowledge, and to obtain help in furthering my academic and speaking career.
After numerous letters, law review articles and books I sent to these celebrated individuals including Bork, I received an email from him in the late 1990s-early 2000s when he was a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. I was shocked

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- mash4077
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 8:44pm
  I’m so glad someone like you is on this site. your knowledge and experience will help fellow conservatives lift the veil of socialism for all the people to see.
  
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- ndmOB
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 12:17am
  God bless Robert Bork and God bless you, Ellis Washington. Welcome to The Blaze.
  
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- @leftfighter
  Posted on December 20, 2012 at 9:04am
  In retrospect, maybe it’s a good thing Bork got Borked.
  
  Follow my reasoning: If Bork made it onto SCotUS, Obummer would have just been freed of a hardline Conservative which he could replace with an ultra-Progressive.
  
  Also, remember that Kennedy was the guy that finally filled Powell’s seat on the Court. Kennedy has been the swing vote more often than not lately, meaning that OMarxist would likely have just gained swung the Court Left.
  
  He wouldn’t've made any difference in Obamacare, which has been the single biggest piece of… um… legislation… SCotUS has looked at since the late ’80′s. Bork would have voted against it, Kennedy voted against it.
  
  Yeah, sure. Some of the smaller cases where he swung would have been different, but in the biggest Grand Scheme Of Things cases like Obamacare, DC v Heller and McDonald v Chicago, he voted as Bork would have.
  
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Spitfire1938
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:20pm
Robert Bork Died today! The AP, masterful ‘neo-Stalinist’ communist propagandist that they are, ran a photograph of him as the lead to their report. The picture was printed so far to the right of the column that 90% of his figure was outside the frame. His image was deliberately obscured, literally and figuratively, to the point that he no longer retained a recognizable identity. Isn’t that ironic… the entire ‘Liberal’ machine spent almost all of Judge Bork’s life attempting to smear his character and accomplishments as the insane raving of a Fascistic Anti-American; an outrageously militant conservative who represented an unfathomable danger to the Nation’s future. They actually took ‘pride’ in employing every dishonest, sneaky, seductive tool available to them, regardless of how outrageous the use of a particular tool might appear. Now, AP, publishing their thoroughly hateful screed behind the facade of a “Respectable Journalistic Organization” (thereby hiding their unquenchable zeal for the destruction of America and it’s Patriots) can only be described as hideously manipulative cowardice; cowardice that indeed proves the effectiveness of using their lovingly developed and constantly tweaked Alinsky-ite tactics to defeat ‘any’ innocent individual or national target.

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Spitfire1938
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 5:11pm
Part 2: The illustration is also a brilliantly deceitful piece of propaganda because it convincingly conveys the FALSE assertion that Robert Bork in fact, after all was said and done, and… in their gracious opinion, really was an obscure non-entity who lived ideologically so far inside the political ‘right’ as to be a buffoon of little or no consequence… without even needing a caption or further comment! This was an incredibly effective Life-Long “Assassination” campaign; there is no doubt!

In reality, “The Liberal Leftist” in and out of Congress perceived His Honor, Robert Heron Bork as their most feared Champion, of small government, The US Constitution and Americas Founding Principles, of anyone from his generation. Their FEAR was so palpable at the time that they were willing to do ANYTHING to defeat President Reagan’s nomination. They were willing to tell any Lie; break any Law, or twist any truth. And they did!

Shame on AP: He was a good man and a loyal citizen! Antonin Scalia

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izukiddin
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 12:38pm
A great man and intellect that was kept from serving his country by the radical left. God bless him.

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- QuincySmith
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 8:12pm
  Wonder what this country would look like today if teddy hadn’t had his conniption fit.
  
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just happy
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 12:17pm
great man

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just happy
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 12:12pm
a man to be emulated by those who respect the Constitution of the United States of America

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3Tesla
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:35am
The Obama (Person of the year — yikes) nefarious legacy will be defined by the two dolts he has already picked for the Supremes (Sotomayor & Kagan) . Compared to the towering intellect of Bork those two wouldn’t be qualified to shine his shoes.

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- The_Jerk
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:04am
  You’re being played, and have been for years. By a 1.3% minority. They talk about it, but you’re not allowed to talk about it.
  
  http://mondoweiss.net/2010/05/kagan-appointment-shows-jews-are-the-new-wasps.html
  
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- Red Meat
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:32am
  I guess all those pins John Roberts was sticking into his Bork doll finally paid off.
  
  RIP
  
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GrayPanther
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:11am
I met Judge Bork in California at a conservative conference. A very well grounded man and author of “The Tempting of America” published in 1989. The subtitle of the book is “the political seduction of the Law” and well worth the read. R.I.P. good and honorable friend. And if you can find teddy Kennedy where you are please kick his *ss when you see him. Quite possibly he is in “another” place.

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- The_Jerk
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:27am
  His confirmation debacle raised political decadence, via the always claiming tolerant left, to new levels. It set the stage for what we now see in D.C.. It was a disgusting time, and it came from the political left.
  
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- HigherRoad
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 12:07pm
  One of the first alerts to the state of our nation/culture was in Robert Bork’s SLOUCHING TOWARD GOMORRAH published in 1996. Robert Bork was sounding a warning bell when the rest of us were mostly oblivious to the negative path on which the nation was headed. It is too bad he wasn’t approved for the Supreme Court. He would have done an excellent job.
  
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crazyrightwingmom
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:07am
Oh, my, what a giant of a man! It was insane to watch the democrats treat him like dirt as they tried to find some little crumb to deny him the seat on the Supreme Court. Evil vultures!

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TIME_2_END_THE_PAUL_CAMPAIGN_IN_12
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:04am
Read Bork’s book “Slouching Towards Gomorrah” and his critique of Libertarianism. Good read.

“…because both libertarians and modern liberals are oblivious to social reality, both demand radical personal autonomy in expression. That is one reason libertarians are not to be confused, as they often are, with conservatives. They are quasi- or semiconservatives. Nor are they to be confused with classical liberals, who considered restraints on individual autonomy to be essential.”

“Free market economists are particularly vulnerable to the libertarian virus. They know that free economic exchanges usually benefit both parties to them. But they mistake that general rule for a universal rule. Benefits do not invariably result from free market exchanges. When it comes to pornography or addictive drugs, libertarians all too often confuse the idea that markets should be free with the idea that everything should be available on the market. The first of those ideas rests on the efficacy of the free market in satisfying wants. The second ignores the question of which wants it is moral to satisfy. That is a question of an entirely different nature. I have heard economists say that, as economists, they do no deal with questions of morality. Quite right. But nobody is just an economist. Economists are also fathers and mothers, husbands or wives, voters citizens, members of communities. In these latter roles, they cannot avoid questions of morality.”

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DougHuffman
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:04am
The barbarians at the gates have taken another warrior.

Good people ought to be armed as they will, with wits and Guns and the Truth. God Bless Bitter Clingers, damn know-nothings, progressives.

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RaydocX
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 9:59am
Rest in Peace, judge.

And offer the Dems a thank you, when you see them… had they let President Reagan have his first choice, Time’s ‘Man of the Year’ would be poised to tip the balance of SCOTUS!

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- autofixer
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 10:43am
  Ironic, isn’t it?
  
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- KennyG920
  Posted on December 19, 2012 at 11:40am
  That is such a great point! That being said, how many times did the balance of the court bite us with Kennedy siding with the Libs. And further is the balance of the court even at stake anymore? Robert’s “argument” on the legality of Obamacare was thin to say the least. If this is what a conservative court produces I dont think it really matters how its comprised…
  
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DZ-015
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 9:58am
Just read comments on another The Blaze story in which Bork was identified as a Supreme Court Justice. I wish! He was a towering legal figure who far outshone his detractors, including his nemesis, Ted Kennedy.

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Sharon Rose
Posted on December 19, 2012 at 9:53am
May he rest in peace.

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