Politics: Judging Georgie

Despite the Washington Post's non-my-wife-related transgressions, this weekend was otherwise good for one of your truly's pet issues: the absolute ideological wretchedness of President Bush's judicial nominees. Let's read together:

That nice charity-case Salon.com covers the not-so-closeted racism of better-luck-next-time Mississippi judicial nominee Charles Pickering, who Bush renominated to a seat on the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals mere weeks after hanging Trent Lott out to dry on civil rights concerns. Looking back, I guess both the people who were convinced that Bush was sincerely concerned about Lott's misdeeds have now had their eyes opened wide. Lott was punished for letting the truth slip, but that doesn't change the truth itself.

Pickering's a real peach:

In 1990, for instance, when he was successfully nominated as a federal judge for the southern district of Mississippi, Pickering testified that he had had no contact with the commission and knew little about its operations. This was false, as the commission's subsequently released files show. In 2002, Pickering attempted to correct his false testimony, saying that he had contacted the commission in 1972 because he was concerned about possible Ku Klux Klan infiltration of a union in his hometown. This too was false: Commission records show that Pickering actually contacted the commission about union infiltration by a well-known civil rights organization, not the KKK.

Comme-ci, comme-ca, eh Chuck? Got Klan in yer union? Yeah, I'm sure all sorts of white Republicans were stepping up in 1972 to complain that the Ku Klux Klan had infiltrated their union. Right after that, Pickering was going to start a Mississippi chapter of the Black Panthers

Anyhow, the next thing I wanted to mention was a pair of hits from the New York Times. There is something of a discussion going on at Atrios about the New York Times being a target for the right, which is funny because it’s reporting is sometimes reviled on the left, as well. I don’t want to weigh in here, because I think it’s a larger argument, but suffice to say that I don’t think I’ve ever met a newspaper that agreed with everything I thought, and at times when I’m reading something that doesn’t challenge me a little, and take a reasoned dissent from time to time, I get bored.

That said, I thought they hit a pair of homers this Sunday and Monday. First, read the editorial of the paper on President Bush’s so-called judicial crisis. Read this tidbit:

The only "crisis" at hand is that the White House is having trouble getting its most politically extreme nominees confirmed. What kind of nominees are Senate Democrats balking at? One, an Arkansas anti-abortion activist, has written that women should be subordinate to men. Another argued, as a Justice Department lawyer, that Bob Jones University should keep its tax-exempt status even though it discriminated against blacks. Senators who demand that federal judges have a record of standing up for equality for women and minorities are not obstructing — they are doing their jobs.

President Bush backed a proposal by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, to change the Senate rules, effectively ending filibusters for judicial nominees. Filibusters, which prevent Senate action through endless debate, have a long tradition, including use against judicial nominations. Republicans helped lead a filibuster in 1968 that stopped Abe Fortas from becoming chief justice of the United States. And just three years ago, Republicans tried to use a filibuster to block Richard Paez, a Clinton nominee who took four years to be confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Senator Frist, who now questions the constitutionality of the filibuster, was one of only 14 senators to vote in favor of a filibuster at the time. Mr. Frist now says he was only seeking more debate.

Second was Bob Herbert’s column this morning on Bush’s judges, and references the same two who are discussed in the first graph above, Carolyn Kuhl (whose nomination was appropriately skewered by her hometown newspaper last week) and Leon Holmes. Holmes is a real special fellow:

Mr. Holmes has a problem with women. He doesn't see them as equals. "The wife is to subordinate herself to her husband," he has written. The woman, in Mr. Holmes's view, "is to place herself under the authority of the man."

Those who adopt the "feminist principle" of the equality of the sexes, he has said, "are contributing to the culture of death."

Mr. Holmes, a lawyer, is an absolute opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape. He once said that "conception from rape occurs with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami."

Judge Holmes will be offering his caring insights in rape counseling all month long down in his Arkansas courtroom, where hopefully he will be compelled to remain by the Senate (but don’t hold your breath).

Finally, looking southward to one of Bush’s most loathsome nominees, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Alabama Attorney General William Pryor "unfit to judge”.

Then the Tuscaloosa News commented on Pryor’s Supreme Court brief in the Texas sodomy case, wherein he out-Santorumed Santorum by lumping “homosexuality in with abusive crimes such as child pornography, bestiality, incest and pedophilia puts him well within the camp of recent nominees to the federal bench but well outside the mainstream of American life.”

Finally, even the Huntsville Times had to point out that “Churches are supposed to promote faith, and courtrooms, justice. If Pryor is confirmed to the 11th Circuit, he would do well to honor this distinction.”

Now I know that the battle over the federal judiciary seems kind of arcane, but there are rights on the line. I’m glad to see that sometimes, some people are noticing. (Special thanks to How Appealing for some of the links.)