Image courtesy of Kim Love under CC BY-SA 2.0.
In the debate over President Bush’s appeals court nominees, Democrats are kicking and screaming over the possibility that Republicans may seriously use their congressional majority to their advantage, and in so doing force Democrats to play by the rules and actually vote on the nominees.
This Republican threat to eliminate the ability to filibuster judicial nominees (a move known as the “nuclear option”), is of course, in reaction to the Democrats’ feverish efforts to filibuster every single one of President Bush’s 52 appeals court nominees on the basis that they are unqualified right-wing extremists who have “deeply held beliefs.”
As indicated by recent history, Democrats’ definition of an “extremist” must denote any religious person who doesn’t happen to favor redefining marriage, sanctioning fetal genocide and starving retarded hospital patients to death.
Or, to really understand what all the fuss is about, let’s take a brief look at some of the “unqualified” nominees whom Democrats have thus far blocked with the filibuster.
There is Judge Priscilla Owen, who is so unqualified that she graduated in the top of her class from Baylor Law School, earned the highest score on the Texas Bar Exam, received the highest rating from the liberal American Bar Association and was re-elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 2000 with 84 percent of the vote
These credentials didn’t suffice for Senate Democrats, including Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein, who dismissed Owen as a “conservative extremist.”
Hmm. Being a “conservative extremist” didn’t seem to prevent Owen from acquiring the support of three former Democratic judges on the Texas Supreme Court as well as a bipartisan group of 15 past presidents of the State Bar of Texas and being lauded by Former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John L. Hill, a Democrat, who gushed: “I can assert with confidence that [Owen’s] approach to judicial decision-making is restrained, that her opinions are fair and well-reasoned, and that her integrity is beyond reproach.” Indeed, the only trace of apparent “extremism” as it would be defined by liberals is the fact that Owen is a Sunday school teacher.
Then there is “right-wing extremist” Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is such a right-wing extremist that she received endorsements from such liberal publications as the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle as well as a bipartisan group of 16 California law professors, and was described by her judicial colleagues (Democrats and Republicans alike) as “a jurist who applies the law without favor, without bias and without an even hand.”
On April 28, the New York Times lambasted Brown as “an extreme right-wing ideologue” and “a consistent enemy of minorities.” (Let’s just set aside for a moment the distracting paradox inherent in the concept of an “enemy of minorities” who is also an African-American.)
Then, of course, there’s Alabama Chief Justice William H. Pryor, a devout Catholic whose chief defect according to Sen. Chuck Shumer is that Pryor (gasp!) has “deeply held beliefs.”
Yes, you read it right. Not cocaine. Not adultery. Not Chappaquiddick. Judge Pryor’s principal unforgivable scandal is his unlawful possession of illicit “deeply held beliefs.”
Nevermind that Pryor has shown obedience to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade precedent. Nevermind that he opposed a bill passed by the Alabama legislature which negated the precedent and ordered state prosecutors to comply with it. The mere fact that he personally opposes abortion in accordance to his Catholic beliefs deems him unfit.
Proponents of the fight to preserve the filibuster include Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Klansman particularly familiar with using the filibuster (he used it against the Civil Rights Act of 1964), who took the issue to the Senate floor on Feb. 28, comparing in his speech Republican tactics on nominees to Hitler’s use of power in Nazi Germany.
Also included is Sen. Ted Kennedy, who has vowed “to resist any Neanderthal that is nominated by this president of the United States for any court – federal court in the United States.” Yes, the same Ted Kennedy who said on Jan. 28, 1998: “Nominees deserve a vote…The president and the Senate do not always agree. But we should resolve these disagreements by voting on these nominees—yes or no.”
They also include Sen. Barack Obama, who on April 28, said: “It is ironic for me to have to speak out on behalf of a filibuster that for many years hampered the passage of civil rights law, often times by the way defended by some of the same folks who are now arguing that the filibuster is awful when it comes to judicial nominations.”
(Sigh.)
If nothing else, at least this issue has provided liberals another opportunity to resort to their brilliant method of pouring gas on the fire by turning any argument they can’t win into a racial dispute. But perhaps Obama has a point. After all, it’s not as if they have Robert Byrd on their side. Oh, wait…
Democrats can whine all they want about the “rights of the minority.” But as long as they are the minority, it is up to Republicans whether or not the minority gets to have its way. If they are going to act like babies, let them. They do not, however, need to be allowed to interfere with the Senate’s responsibility to give the nominees a fair up-or-down vote. Yes, even if, God forbid, the nomineesdo have “deeply held beliefs.”
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”