Politics: That's the Spirit

Dick Gephardt and another Missouri lawmaker are showing a little creative backbone on the judicial front:

From CQ:

DEMOCRATS ASK BUSH TO PICK RONNIE WHITE FOR APPEALS COURT

Two Democratic lawmakers from Missouri have asked President Bush to renominate Ronnie L. White, whose bid for a seat on the U.S. District Court was rejected in a party-line Senate vote in 1999. Citing Bush's Jan. 7 renomination of two controversial candidates -- Charles W. Pickering Sr. and Priscilla Owen -- Reps. Richard A. Gephardt and William Lacy Clay asked the White House to tap White again, this time for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. "Such action would be entirely consistent with your stated goal of realizing the promise of America for all our citizens, regardless of race," they wrote in a letter to Bush. The battle over White's nomination, made by President Bill Clinton in 1997, had racial overtones. White, the first black on Missouri's Supreme Court, was the first lower court nominee rejected on the Senate floor. Gephardt and Clay's request is not likely to be embraced by Bush. White's main opposition on the Senate floor came from Attorney General John Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri.

It's about time somebody pointed out these inconsistencies.