Nat Hentoff: Pickering's Reputation Restored

Jewish World Review ^ | 4/26/04 | Nat Hentoff

[blitzgig]

For two years, Federal District Court Judge Charles Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, has suffered continuous character assassination by Senate Democrats who have filibustered his nomination by President Bush to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. He is on that bench now only because of a temporary recess appointment.

The assaults on the judge have been led by Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who has accused him of "glaring racial insensitivity." And NAACP National Chairman Julian Bond proclaimed that "a vote for Pickering is a vote against civil rights."

Most damaging has been the charge — carelessly circulated nationwide by many in the media — that Pickering went to extraordinary lengths 10 years ago to lessen the sentence for one of three white men who burned a cross at the home of an interracial couple in Mississippi. But, at last, in a March 28 "60 Minutes" segment, Mike Wallace restored Pickering's reputation in a report from Mississippi showing 16 million CBS viewers the actual facts of Pickering's record — on and off the bench.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

If you can't beat em, smear em.

[RonF]

Mike Wallace, CBS, and 60 Minutes usually don't get good reviews here. But it seems to me they did their job on this one.

[Howlin]

I, for one, won't ever forget the DREADFUL way John Edwards treated this man during those hearings.

[Timocrat]

At long last, Sen. Schumer, have you no sense of decency?

Oh that one's easy. NO.

[litany_of_lies]

This is major-league CYA by CBS and 60 Minutes for the Dems.

Now that Pick is a judge, CBS is telling Chuckie and the Dems "don't try to remove him, or you'll embarrass yourselves."

One side-effect of this may that Pick gets selected to fill a Supremes vacancy late in Bush's second term. CBS has cleared the field for him. Any attempt to smear him will be negated by the 60 Minutes report.

[foreshadowed at waco]

That would be great...some of those Supreme Court judges seem more than ready to retire.

[jackbill]

The last two paragraphs are the best:

As for Charles Schumer, the Democrats' hitman on Pickering — he told Wallace that "the bottom line is if Judge Pickering were so sensitive to the long and sad racial history in Mississippi, he would never have done what he did with the case of cross-burning."


Paraphrasing what a defense attorney said to Joe McCarthy in the Army-McCarthy hearings on alleged communists in our land: At long last, Sen. Schumer, have you no sense of decency?

[ontos-on]

I like your insight as to what this 60 minutes piece may be setting up--possible Supreme Court appointment. However, that only sets my suspicious mind working and wondering is there soemthing Souter-like about Pickering?

I am not ready to concede that 60 minutes did their restoration piece on Pickering for solely good motives. How does Pickering stand on judicial issues as far that would be importnat to conservatives?

[litany_of_lies]

I don't know the details of Pickering's positions. Someone will have to help me with that one.

I'm suggesting that what 60 Minutes did was to tell the Democrats "don't try to undo his recess appointment; it won't work." The SIDE-EFFECT of that effort (which is not altruistic, it's just meant to prevent Democrats, who are very good at imploding in situations like these, from doing so) is to perhaps give Pick an all-clear to a later Supreme nomination.