Posted on 02/10/2003 6:12:52 AM PST by sfwarrior
A cabal of the usual suspects -- abortion rights advocates, enviro-activists, civil rights groups and organized labor -- is attacking President Bush's nomination choices for the federal bench. Do these groups all share the same board of directors? They all march in lockstep. What they have in common is that they don't like independent judges who won't toe the Democratic Party line.
Last year, the Democrat-dominated Congress stalled 64 of Bush's district-court nominees and all 27 of his appeals-court appointments. Now that the Republicans have taken back the Senate, the president has renominated most of these justices with the hope that they'll fare better with the GOP-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. The tortuous and partisan confirmation process hit its peak in 2002, with the 107th Congress, which left some 91 judgeships unfilled, and the constitutional integrity of the Senate's "advise and consent" function was lost in partisan bickering. Even now, months after the GOP took back control, most of those positions remain vacant.
Prior to November, for example, Judge Miguel Estrada, the nominee for U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was sent through a Demo-orchestrated wringer. The Judiciary Committee deemed him unsatisfactory because he had wandered off from the liberal reservation, where all good minorities are supposed to graze. One of the charges against him is that he is a strong supporter of capital punishment. (Unfortunately for the Judiciary Committee, so are a majority of Americans.)
The committee complained when it couldn't find enough briefs he had written to determine his ideology. In other words, committee members were trying to prove he's a conservative so they could reject him. Two weeks ago, however, the committee finally allowed Estrada's confirmation to proceed to the full Senate for a vote.
The Democrats are using several litmus-test issues to determine who will get the nod. Republicans, by contrast, gave Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union and disagrees with nearly every issue Republicans believe in, unanimous approval during her confirmation hearing. The GOP gave the Democratic president his due respect, but the opposition party's senators are simply not playing by the same courteous rules. It's dirty partisan politics for them.
For example, following in the footsteps of the coordinated character assassination that reached a crescendo with Judge Robert Bork, whose nomination was torpedoed by...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
They are deeply constipated since they realize that Bush will only nominate decent, honest, competent human beings to the Courts.
Time for an enema to deposit these liberal neo-fascist fecal masses into the proper place.
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