Owen gets new chance at bench - Priscilla Owen

Associated Press ^ | March 7, 2003 | Associated Press Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

Owen gets new chance at bench

03/07/2003

From Staff Reports

WASHINGTON – Spurned last year by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen will have a second chance to make her case for a federal appellate judgeship.

The committee's chairman, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, set a hearing for next week with Justice Owen as the lone witness. Democrats, who controlled the panel last year, rejected her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, accusing her of compiling an activist record hostile to workers and abortion rights.

Her defenders called the charges unfair, accusing Democrats of trying to embarrass the White House by rejecting a home-state ally.

President Bush renominated her this year.

"Senator Hatch is having this hearing to accommodate the Democrats who may want to take a fairer look at this highly qualified nominee," said Hatch spokeswoman Margarita Tapia.

The hearing, billed as "Setting the Record Straight," raised eyebrows among Democrats.

"It's unusual," said an aide to a Judiciary Committee Democrat who asked not to be identified. "The whole circumstance is unusual for the president to renominate nominees who were defeated in the committee itself. ... So it follows that having a hearing like this would be unusual as well."

[MeekOneGOP]

Well I wonder if the 'RATS are going to filibuster Priscilla Owen too?

[MeekOneGOP]

http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/Bios/owen.htm

	Justice Priscilla R. Owen
Justice Priscilla Owen was elected to the Supreme Court of Texas in 1994 and reelected in 2000. She is a native Texan and earned her B.A. from Baylor University and her J.D. in 1977 from the Baylor University School of Law, where she ranked in the top of her graduating class. Before her election, Justice Owen was a partner in the Houston firm of Andrews & Kurth, L.L.P where she practiced commercial litigation for seventeen years. She was admitted to practice before the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits. Justice Owen was chosen as Baylor Young Lawyer of the Year and one of Baylor's Outstanding Young Alumna. She is a member of the American Law Institute and serves as the Supreme Court's liaison to the Texas Legal Services for the Poor Special Committee, and the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Court-Annexed Mediations. Her term on the Supreme Court is through the year 2006.

[billclintonwillrotinhell]

I'm happy to see the Republicans pressing forward with these judicial nominees. If the democRATS continue to choose the filibuster option, it will eventually catch up to them and bite them one way or another.

[AFPhys]

I keep wondering just when some of the great detractors of the Republicans are going to notice that they have not all been emasculated.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Bravo Sen. Hatch!

[MeekOneGOP]

I wonder which Senate seats are up for re-election in 2004? Their obstruction is getting sickening.

[MeekOneGOP]

Ditto ! Good morning . . .

[Coop]

"It's unusual," said an aide to a Judiciary Committee Democrat who asked not to be identified. "The whole circumstance is unusual for the president to renominate nominees who were defeated in the committee itself. ... So it follows that having a hearing like this would be unusual as well."

It's much more unusual to filibuster a judicial nominee, especially on the flimsy grounds that he has not answered questions that your committee when in the Majority never even bothered to ask.

[livius]

It's much more unusual to filibuster a judicial nominee

You forget the first rule of liberaldom: Ordinary law and custom does not apply to liberals. All others, however, are bound by it.

[Question_Assumptions]

You forget the first rule of liberaldom: Ordinary law and custom does not apply to liberals. All others, however, are bound by it.

Conservatives are process oriented and judge whether something is "fair" or not by looking for bias in the process. Liberals are results oriented and judge whether something is "fair" or not by look at the results. Consider this with respect to "ends" and "means" and it becomes easy to understand why liberals are so willing to justify any means to an end, including lying and even murder.

[livius]

Very good points. The heroes of the left - Stalin, for example - have always been extremely results oriented. Murder? No biggie.

Being hampered by ethics can be a real handicap if we're talking about efficiency, although I tend to believe that at some point liberal pragmatism comes back to attack its adherents. It doesn't seem to happen fast enough, though...

[TLBSHOW]

Yes they will filibuster her too and why not the republicans caved on Estrada.

[TLBSHOW]

I'm happy to see the Republicans pressing forward with these judicial nominees. If the democRATS continue to choose the filibuster option, it will eventually catch up to them and bite them one way or another.
.......
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/articles/11-18-02/jipping.htm

Democrats Will Try to Filibuster Judicial Nominees


When President Bush took office, Senate Democrats started a campaign to block his judicial appointments. They hoped it would help them keep Senate control and win the next fight over a Supreme Court vacancy.

The campaign started with an unprecedented 42 votes against John Ashcroft’s nomination as attorney general. That vote, as Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.) put it, was designed to send a "shot across the bow" on future judicial appointments, since 41 votes will sustain a nominee filibuster. Then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D.-S.D.) vowed Democrats would "use whatever means necessary" to defeat conservative judicial nominees.

The Democrats’ plan for politicizing judicial selections began when they huddled with leading leftists at their spring 2001 retreat to talk about changing the judicial confirmation rules. After that, Schumer chaired unprecedented hearings on using ideological litmus tests to defeat Bush nominees. Democrats defended, then ignored, nominee ratings by the American Bar Association. They considered, then ignored, support by a nominee’s home-state senators.

For the first time in a dozen years, the Judiciary Committee voted down nominees and denied the full Senate a chance to vote. Only six nominees in the last 60 years have met that fate, five in Democratic Senates. One appeals court nominee this year, Priscilla Owen, became the first female, and the first nominee with a unanimous "well qualified" ABA rating, to be rejected by the Judiciary Committee.

While his three predecessors saw their first appeals court nominees confirmed in an average of 81 days, after 560 days two-thirds of President Bush’s first nominees still languished in the confirmation pipeline.

Democrats put their obstruction campaign on the ballot, and lost. Nonetheless, they will regroup. Majority status allowed them to make a frontal assault on nominees by voting them down in committee. Minority status will mean a guerrilla war to kill nominees by filibuster on the Senate floor.


snip
In a November 10 editorial, the New York Times said that Senate Democrats "should not be afraid to mount a filibuster, which Republicans would need 60 votes to overcome" to stop judicial nominees. When the Times says jump, Democrats ask how high.

Republicans should frame their response to Democratic filibusters as a question of freedom. The issue is whether the people should be able to run their own country through the officials they elect.

America’s founders fought a revolution over this principle. Without the rule of law, we have no freedom. Leftists will not be able to defend letting judges rather than voters run the country.

Second, Bush should re-submit the nominations left unapproved during the 107th Congress. That includes the appeals court nominations of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen, who were rejected by Patrick Leahy’s Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee. The Senate should quickly process and confirm these re-submitted nominees.

Third, Republicans should begin warning Americans of the tactics, including filibusters, to come. Public exposure may cause some Democrats to think twice.

Finally, Republicans must work more closely with activists. In an ideal world, appointing judges would not require massive grassroots campaigns, but it does today because judges have become too powerful and leftists want to capture the courts to short-circuit democracy.

Liberty depends on seizing this opportunity.

........

Yep and the republicans are letting the rats win because they caved on Estrada the rats will do it again and again.
Until Frist hets some guts and forces the rats to a 24 7 and puts an end to the democrats BS!

[TLBSHOW]

hets = gets

[TLBSHOW]

ping

[TLBSHOW]

ping

[deport]

It will be interesting to see what happens on the floor with this one. I don't think they can argue for more records/info on her decisions as she's got a public record.

[TLBSHOW]

here is the rats next victim

[Howlin]

It will be interesting to see what happens on the floor with this one.

Didn't you hear? They ARE going to filibuster her. That's a fact. :-)

[The Wizard]

I must say, Orin has indeed stepped up.....I guess leheay really got him pissed off, and as they say

payback's a bitch