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Cardinal Spellman’s Cold War Patriotism | Society for US Intellectual History
In the first full narrative chapter of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, Michelle Nickerson sets up the contextual train of teaching and ideas in the United States, Catholic and otherwise, that allowed the “Camden 28” to come into being. Her goal is to explain how a Catholic Left,
Founding the Congressional Hispanic Conference | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
“A person’s political agenda is not predisposed based on their skin color. I’m here to prove it,” declared Henry Bonilla, a Mexican-American Republican who represented San Antonio, Texas, in the House, in 2003. Bonilla was speaking for himself. But he was also defending Miguel Estrada, a Honduras-born attorney who had been nominated by Republican President George W. Bush to a seat on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, an assignment that many viewed as a steppingstone to the U.S. Supreme Court. For the better part of two years, Estrada’s nomination had languished amid fierce opposition from Senate Democrats. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which provided legislative support to lawmakers and was composed primarily of congressional Democrats in the House, had come out against Estrada as well, infuriating Hispanic Republicans in Congress. Bonilla had had enough. Given the stakes of Estrada’s nomination, it was “time for the Hispanics of America to have a unbiased voice," Bonilla announced.Strengthened by their growing numbers and frustrated by the opposition to Estrada—a man whom they admired and whose politics and background they shared—Hispanic Republicans in Congress formed the Congressional Hispanic Conference in 2003. In so doing, they created an organization that would serve as a center of Hispanic power within the GOP Conference and would compete with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a variety of liberal organizations to best express the hopes and dreams of America’s largest minority population.Leaving the Hispanic CaucusSince its founding in 1976, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had been the organized voice of Latino Members of Congress. An overwhelming majority of those members belonged to the Democratic Party, and the posture of the caucus therefore tended to reflect Democratic priorities. While Republicans, including Henry Bonilla who had first been elected in 1992, had in the past joined the group, the calculus for their participation changed after the GOP regained control of the House for the first time in 40 years heading into the 104th Congress (1995–1997). With the majority change in 1995, Republicans suddenly had control over the legislative agenda. Moreover, the new rules package adopted by the House restricted the role of the Hispanic Caucus in the legislative process and cut funding for staff. While the caucus reconstituted itself without public financial support, its path forward had become more complicated.In 1997, two Cuban-American lawmakers from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, resigned from the caucus after caucus chair Xavier Becerra of California visited Cuba and had an audience with Fidel Castro. The legislators criticized Becerra for not imploring Castro to hold free elections or meeting with political dissidents. At the time, Diaz-Balart had called it “mind-boggling” that his colleagues would fail “to support even the most elemental freedoms for these oppressed people” in Cuba. Within a year, Henry Bonilla also left the caucus, and not a single Republican remained in the group.A Critical Mass of LawmakersIn 2003, almost three decades after the Hispanic Caucus’s founding and six years after the Cuba incident, the fight over Estrada’s nomination to the bench began a new chapter for Hispanic representation on Capitol Hill. In March that year, Bonilla announced the advent of the new Congressional Hispanic Conference and criticized the Hispanic Caucus as an “arm of the extreme left of the Democratic Party” and “the attack dogs of the left.” Ros-Lehtinen was less confrontational, describing the Estrada nomination as having revealed the need to establish another Hispanic group “that represented another more moderate position.”Faced with the creation of a rival organization, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus downplayed the rift. Representative Ciro D. Rodriguez, a Texas Democrat, noted that the two groups were “actually on the same page on a lot of issues.” But in the eyes the Hispanic Conference’s first executive director, the Hispanic Caucus had become “the establishment” and it was up to the conference to offer a new approach.While the Estrada nomination fight was critical to the formation of the conference in 2003, other factors also contributed to the decision. Crucial was the redistricting process that followed the 2000 Census. Population growth in Florida led to the creation of a new seat adjacent to Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s Miami district. In 2002, Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln’s brother, won election in the new Florida district, and Devin Nunes, a Portuguese-American Representative from California, won a seat from the Central Valley, increasing the number of Hispanic Republicans in Congress to six. By comparison, 20 Hispanic Democrats served in the 108th Congress (2003–2005).Defining Hispanic RepublicanismFor members of the new conference, the Estrada nomination fight not only furnished the legislators with a rationale for organizing, it helped them to explain what it meant to be a Hispanic Republican. Estrada’s resume included an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a law degree from Harvard. He later clerked for a Supreme Court Justice and then, as an attorney with the Office of the Solicitor General, had argued before the highest court in the land. “So many of us who are the sons and daughters of immigrants,” explained the founders in a Wall Street Journal op-ed marking their group’s debut, saw in Estrada’s hard work building a career all that was right about the country, the realization of the “American promise” to its newcomers.The Hispanic Conference also did not shy away from promoting Estrada as a candidate who would diversify the federal bench, in both his cultural and ideological background. Opposition to his nomination, the founders wrote, reflected “a pervasive and troubling trend whereby the advancement of minorities is only applauded when it reinforces liberal politics.”The rise of the Hispanic Conference and its work on behalf of Estrada’s nomination gave the House rare influence over judicial nominations, an issue ordinarily understood as the domain of the Senate which has the constitutional power to advise and consent on presidential appointments. Per a request from Senate GOP leadership, Mario Diaz-Balart, the chief organizer and “engine” of the conference, championed Estrada’s confirmation cause in the House and managed debate on the House Floor during which GOP Representatives publicly backed Estrada. Diaz-Balart also publicized letters in which he criticized Democratic Senators, calling their effort to stymie a confirmation vote “‘not only an injustice to the courts, but also to the advancement of well-qualified Hispanics.’” Ros-Lehtinen, too, pressured Florida’s U.S. Senators, both Democrats, to end the filibuster against Estrada.On March 4, 2003, Diaz-Balart led a “rally” on the Senate side of the Capitol, delivering remarks and serving as interlocutor for Republican Senators who spoke on behalf of Estrada. The Senators echoed his charge that congressional Democrats were “us[ing] race to try to disqualify Mr. Estrada.” The conference members kept up the campaign for months, but it ultimately proved unsuccessful. When the Bush administration withdrew Estrada’s nomination, Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen were the only Members of the House to join Senate leaders in a press conference to protest the defeat. First in English and then in Spanish, the Miami lawmakers excoriated the opposition for its “partisan” derailment of Estrada’s confirmation. Ros-Lehtinen called it “discriminación total,” all because of Estrada’s conservative beliefs. Diaz-Balart described it in terms apropos of a death in one’s family, saying that when the Senate refused to confirm Estrada, “We lost a brilliant young Hispanic.” “Nosotros, los Hispanos, nunca lo podremos olvidar,” (“We, the Hispanics, will never forget it”) he added. The Estrada nomination had cemented a sense of collective purpose, and given Hispanic Republicans in Congress a chance to develop ways of thinking and communicating what made them unique and important to their party and the nation.Building a New OrganizationAt the organizational level, Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior member of the new conference, was elected chairperson, and Henry Bonilla was named vice chair. Lawmakers tasked Mario Diaz-Balart’s chief of staff, Omar Franco, with hiring the conference’s first executive director. The members wanted to reach beyond the conference’s Cuban-American nucleus to enlist someone of Mexican-American descent for the position. Because the successful applicant still had to demonstrate an ability to represent the diverse constituency, candidates interviewed with each Member office in the conference. In the summer of 2003, the conference hired Octavio Hinojosa Mier, the son of Mexican immigrants who had been raised in the established Mexican-American community of Hutchinson, Kansas, and who later worked for U.S. Representative Jerry Moran. Hinojosa had come of age during the Ronald Reagan presidency, his worldview shaped by the Cold War. But it was Republicans’ embrace of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s, and the promise of prosperity for Mexico, that led him to political activism. Hinojosa worked out of a cubicle in Mario Diaz-Balart’s office, a staff of one who learned to rely on the Member’s staff for support, particularly in the legislative process.Early on, the conference worked to build a set of procedures for operating. It held monthly policy meetings, typically in Ros-Lehtinen’s office, that lasted about 30 minutes. Hinojosa would present on a topic and encourage Members and their staffs to adopt a common position on the issue. The conference at times struggled to find a “specific wording” that Members could agree upon. Hinojosa’s successor as executive director, Mario H. Lopez, a former aide in the House Republican Conference office of Representative J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma, learned that one of the best ways to create a common “statement” on any given matter was to aggregate quotes from individual lawmakers on the issue, and release them under the same umbrella. This allowed the conference to act collectively, while still preserving the prerogatives of individual Members and their staffs to communicate with their constituents directly.Leading House Republicans at the time largely welcomed the Hispanic Conference. In the mid-1990s, Republican leadership under Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia had taken an adversarial stance toward legislative service organizations such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. By the early 2000s, recalled Hinojosa, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois and other GOP leaders remained open to the group’s activities, which he attributed to a growing appreciation that Republicans could succeed among Hispanic voters. Not unrelated, the Congressional Hispanic Conference formed at a time when the Republican Party under President Bush was engaged heavily in Hispanic outreach, the Estrada nomination being only one highly visible aspect.The conference also enlisted “associate” members from the House’s rank-and-file who were not themselves Hispanic. The conference’s first two executive directors would comb census records and invite Republicans whose represented districts that had substantial Hispanic populations, and who thus had what Lopez called the “very logical incentive” to join the group.Often, Mario Diaz-Balart would follow up on these invitations, whether in the Republican Cloakroom off the House Floor or elsewhere. Such appeals had additional credibility with some Members because Diaz-Balart belonged to the Republican Study Committee, then the organization of the most conservative House Republicans. By 2006, associate members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference included Bob Beauprez of Colorado, Christopher B. Cannon of Utah, Randy Neugebauer of Texas, and Gerald C. “Jerry” Weller of Illinois.With the formation of the conference in the early 2000s, Hispanic institutional organization in Congress was becoming more complex and more dynamic. But many questions remained. How the Hispanic Conference might relate to a Republican Party itself undergoing changes as the Bush presidency came to a close was unclear. And how the new group might yet work with the Hispanic Caucus remained to be seen. It had been “a troubled divorce,” in the words of Ros-Lehtinen, but there was potential for productive relations between the two, hope in at last arriving, she said, at “a very amiable spot where we agree to disagree.”Sources: Hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United States, 109th Cong., 1st sess. (2005); Congressional Staff Directory, Fall 2006 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2006); “Octavio Hinojosa Mier Oral History Interview,” Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives (29 August 2023); Mario H. Lopez, email message to the Office of the Historian, September 23, 2024; Austin American Statesman, 21 March 2003; Gannet News Service, 19 March 2003; New York Times, 15 March 2003; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 February 1997; San Antonio Express-News, 19 March 2003; South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 27 April 2003; St. Petersburg Times, 25 February 2003; Wall Street Journal, 17 March 2003; Hispanic Business 26 (2004); Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Power Struggle,” Hispanic 16, no. 7/8 (July/August 2003); “America and the Courts,” press conference, 4 March 2003, C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?175408-1/america-courts; “Estrada Withdrawal Reaction,” press conference, 4 September 2003, C-SPAN, https://www.c-span.org/video/?178038-1/estrada-withdrawal-reaction; Sarah J. Eckman, “Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) and Informal Member Groups: Their Purpose and Activities, History, and Formation,” Report R40683, 21 March, 2023, Congressional Research Service: 14–15.
An Alien Invasion During the Cold War - an Editorial Review of "Earthia: Cold War"
Book Blurb:His name is Yono. He is a brilliant alien from Mars who crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1962 during the height of the Cold War. He is taken to the mysterious Area 51 in Nevada and finds himself in American hands. What do the Americans want from him? And how will it affect history? Find out when you read Earthia Cold War, an alternative history novel that reads and feels like a Hollywood flick from the 1980s and ’90s.Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/EC4pDGAuthor Bio:Hi, my name is Neth