-- the Clinton appointees who were held up were not held up by the whims of the judiciary committee -- some were missing background checks or paperwork, some did not have their "blue paper" (a required endorsement from their state Senator), others were either double-counted (nominated too late in the first term to be reviewed, but reviewed and accepted in the second term)or they were nominated and then withdrawn.
--- the main complaint I heard was about 3 Clinton appointees who were not voted on by the committee after 15-21 months -- that does seem like a long delay, but remember, the committee was voting on many appointees throughout the entire 8 year term -- and they NEVER refused to allow a reviewed appointee to go thru' the full Senate vote -- even tho' the conservative committee mambers had some reservations about the more liberal appointees
---If this judiciary committee is to equal the number of appointees reviewed and sent to the Senate in Clinton's first year, they will have to review & send down a minimum of 6 appointees each week from now until the end of his term...I don't think that's goinna happen....do you ??
Senator Leahy is lying through his teeth. On the subject of hold-ups of presidential nominees, the record of the Democrats is worse in the first year under Bush than the record of the Republicans in the first year under Clinton. More judges total are held up, a greater percentage of all nominees are held up.
More important than the raw numbers is the nature of the nominees sent up by Clinton as opposed to Bush. Clinton sent up nominees who would never apply the death penalty, even to multiple murderers and assassins of police officers. Clinton sent up nominees like the D.C. judge who protected the Democrats (contrary to law) from revelation of the FEC documents showing that the unions controlling the Democratic nominees and platforms.
As for Laehy's charges against Judge Pickering contained in his response to the newspaper editorial, they are character assassination, pure and simple. Both Morton Kondracke and George Will published detailed columns showing the Judge's true record of justice and fairness. On his reversal rate, Judge Pickering fared much better than the average of all federal judges, for instance.
Leahy is taking his marching orders from People for the American Way, the NAACP, and others who don't give a damn about Judge Pickering's true record as a judge. They just wanted to defeat him precisely because he would enforce the law as written -- and that is anathema to Democrats.
Pickering was "borked" (a sad word, because I have worked for Judge Bork and respect him highly) not for Pickering's sake but to lay down a marker against Bush concerning his evential nomination of new Justices for the Supreme Court.
The only way to get Lying Leahy and his colleagues out of their stranglehold on judges who will obey the law as written, is to defeat Democratic Senators one by one in the races this fall. The only cure is to knock Li'l Tommy Daschle off his horse as Majority Leader, which will also knock Leahy off his horse as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Congressman Billybob
Their view of activist judges are judges who don't view the constitution as a "living document". When the rat bastard talks about "established case law" he is concerned that Pickering (or ANY conservative judge) would challenge unconstitutional decisions by activist socialist judges.
Leahy is as bad as the Bubba the Rapist. Nothing that lying scum says should be taken seriously.
He correctly parrots the lies prepared by the intelligent ones amongst Pickering's assasins.
But factually correct: NEVER!
After all, he has his reputation to consider...
(You can do a little research through the archives of e.g. the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Times for the truth about the issues Leahy mentioned)