What a crock ! If this had been the GOP pulling this cr**, we all know darn well that Ted Kennedy and gang would have HOWLED and the media would have trumpeted it to high heaven.But since it's the DemocRATS, nuttin' honey ! Sheesh !
"It's beyond my ability to understand why the process seems to be more important here than the content," said Kay Daly, head of Coalition for a Fair Judiciary (search), which has made the full memos available on FairJudiciary.com.
Released to the Wall Street Journal in November, the memos date back to 2001 and reflect an ongoing discussion among Democratic staffers and senators regarding how they planned to stall, derail and ultimately kill the nominations of several of President Bush's judicial nominees, who were referred to in one missive as "Nazis."
The memos also suggest the intimate role special interest groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (search) and People for the American Way (search) had in plotting the nominees' failure, with staffers intimating that the groups' opinions held sway with Judiciary Committee Democrats in determining hearing schedules and strategy.
Worst of all, say critics, is an April 17, 2002, memo from staff to Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsing a personal request by NAACP National Defense League President Elaine Jones to stall the confirmation of conservative Judge Julia Gibbons (search) to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals until that panel ruled on the University of Michigan affirmative action case.
"Elaine [Jones] will ask that no 6th Circuit nominee be scheduled until after the Michigan case is decided," wrote a staff member — whose name was redacted — in a memo to Sen. Kennedy.