Posted on 03/14/2002 4:28:16 AM PST by JimVT
Sweeping the muck
You wonder how Sen. Patrick Leahy cleans off the slime following a round of confirmation hearings as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On any given day, Leahy could be coated with some of the most vile mistruths, slurs and lies polluting American public life.
Another good man's reputation will be ruined today if the Judiciary Committee votes as expected to reject -- along straight party lines -- the nomination of Charles Pickering Sr. to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Pickering was the victim of a well-crafted Washington smear campaign by liberal special interest groups who could not abide the fact that he is a conservative, white Republican and a confidant of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. That resume is enough to disqualify anyone from the federal bench in the eyes of influential players within the Democratic Party.
The Mississippi nominee also served as a convenient means to warn the White House of a momentous struggle should President George W. Bush submit any future U.S. Supreme Court nominee who is unacceptable to the activist constituencies of the Democratic Party.
In the past few years, federal judgeship nominations have become proxies in the legal/cultural war that has wracked American society since the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling. All nominees are vetted through left and right ideological filters that have nothing to do with judicial qualifications -- temperament, scholarship, common sense -- and everything to do with political viewpoints.
Those who fail any litmus test are subjected to withering assaults on their integrity, with virtually any aspect of their life liable to the most negative interpretation. After today, Charles Pickering will probably be added to the bipartisan list, which includes Robert Bork and Ronnie White, of individuals whose characters were cruelly assassinated during the judicial nomination procedure.
Sadly, the Pickering case suggests that the mean-spiritedness and sniping partisanship that typify judicial nominations will become much worse. By blocking Pickering in committee, the Leahy-led Democrats will deny the president's nominee his day before the full Senate. Such action is a calculated, premeditated insult that will no doubt be reciprocated once the political wheel revolves and the Republicans control the Senate and a Democrat is in the White House.
Leahy could do much to break this accelerating cycle of viciousness by surprising everyone and voting today to allow the Pickering nomination to reach the Senate floor. Ironically, a conciliatory gesture by Leahy toward Pickering might not only dampen Republican rage, it could enable the Vermont Democrat to reassert his authority over the judicial nomination system. Right now, legitimate fears can be raised that Leahy and his Democratic colleagues are so beholden to liberal special interests as to render them incapable of a fair and impartial evaluation of judicial candidates. An identical complaint can be made that Judiciary Committee Republicans are at the service of conservative zealots.
Charles Pickering's career will probably be trashed today, becoming merely more flotsam in the sewer that has become the judicial nomination process. Someone needs to begin sweeping the muck out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Leahy is one of the biggest brooms in Congress.
In the last month alone they have front paged each of the Cong. trio every time they managed to squeeze a few bucks out of some Fed. Agency to help the "disadvantaged"
I'm amazed at their stance on the Pickering issue.
Hope Leahy gets to read it before the committee better yet maybe Hatch will read it into the record.
Wish Repubs and Bush could/would tackle the 'terrorists' on Capital Hill. . .
. . .America's future is held captive by the 'Left' there as well. . .
Supreme Court justices, court of appeals judges, and district court judges are nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, as stated in the Constitution.
Note that it does not say they have to be confirmed by the Committee first. Or maybe we ought to throw Leahy's own words from August of 2000 back in his face:
"Despite the Senate's sorry record in acting on these nominations, this administration has made far fewer recess appointments than most, and especially most Republican administrations. The only reason this is necessary is that the Senate is not doing its constitutional duty to vote them up or vote them down....It is part of a pattern dating back four years now, in which dozens of judicial nominees and others – especially women and minorities – have been subjected to anonymous and humiliating delays before they get a vote, if they ever get a vote at all."
This may be his strategy. . .but if so, do not agree with this 'passive leadership' tactic. . .
. . .seems this is the same approach to the 'campaign finance' legislation; pass it and just let the courts decide whether our 'free speech' has been abridged.
Bring back citizen legislators from around America, not professionals that come to Washington to stay for twenty, thirty, fifty years. Leahy, as a member of congress, along with those other dinosaurs, have a deathgrip on power, the good of the country is of no importance.
Another voice of reason on a board bereft of STRATEGERY! Good call, Sam. A midterm landslide could also silence the "no mandate" crowd. Imagine the aftermath!!! What pain the demonrats will feel without power, their only life elixir!!!!
And I'll bet Trent Lott will be led around by Karl Rove on a very short leash should the senate be taken back from the enemy.
Had FDR remained in good health, he would have been president for life. Without term limits, Clinton would be president for years to come. Perhaps the founding Fathers gave too much credit to the people for knowing when to remove a person from office.
If ANYONE HAS LEAHY'S NEW FAX #, PLEASE POST IT HERE!
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