Once again, the http://www.timeswatch.org/twarticles/2005/20050805.asp [1] " target="_self">Times http://www.timeswatch.org/twarticles/2005/20050805.asp [1] ">uses one of its "soft" features, the Friday "Public Lives" profile, to push a liberal agenda without having to bother with a conservative rebuttal.
Regular "Lives" contributor Robin Finn, who regularly [2]praises liberal [2]activists [2], predictably provided an adoring profile of Ann Beeson, a lawyer-activist with the George Soros Open Society Institute (as in left-wing billionaire Soros) - "A [3] Twangy Thorn in Bush's Side [3]."
"The sharp-shooting human rights litigator and National Security Agency antagonist Ann Beeson (words and a dead-on grasp of the Constitution are her chosen weapons) is evidently not inside her new office at George Soros' Open Society Institute. It is way too quiet in here.
"Ms. Beeson and the sounds of silence are an oil-and-water proposition. She is, after all, a Texan: talks with a twang and tells it like a storyteller even when she's arguing before the United States Supreme Court, which, as a top lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union [4], she has done twice. Successfully. Wearing orange, her signature shade, both times. Even her favorite color is noisy.
"No doubt former Attorney General John Ashcroft and the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, her perennial targets, hated to see her open her mouth. She's persuasive."
[...]
"She is convinced, with the conservative makeup of the Bush-approved Supreme Court, that the time is right for the grass-roots human rights advocacy efforts bankrolled by Mr. Soros. And if the mission of achieving an open, collaborative society brimming with equal rights seems a touch utopian?
"'It is utopian, and it's not a mission that will ever be accomplished, which is not to say it isn't a mission we should strive for,' she says. 'You could call last week's Supreme Court decision on race in school placement a travesty, or you can see it as a perfect opportunity to force, at the local level, a conversation about race, education, and diversity we haven't had in 30 years. Not since I was bused across Dallas.' Not since her mother taught English in an all-black high school."