White House picks former Lott aide for federal appeals court (5th Circuit)

I never said he was a good majority leader.
I said he has one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate.
And, he does.

Had you not been so rude as to insult me, I would have been happy to find
his ratings for you.
I will, however, leave you to do that on your own.

Here's a hint, though...his lifetime conservative voting record is one of the highest.
It's in the 90 - 100 percentile.

Reid has expressed a desire to filibuster the Kavanaugh nomination, too.

The democRATs have to put out the word "filibuster" just to keep their angry, liberal, extremist, base quiet. The whacked out DUmmie base is pushing the dems off a cliff. Woo! Hoo!

Yes, Kerry even called in from Switzerland to announce he will filibuster Alito!

I'd be satisfied with Roberts, although I'd prefer Senator Kyl take that post.

"Hornery" = horny + ornery? Sounds like my ancestors too. Maybe we're related. :-)

lol..yep..I woke up thinking I spelled that wrong...yesterday..or was it the day before yesterday?..
OH YESTERDAY..all my troubles seemed so far away...

ok..i was a bit off the ole rocker the other night..cold medicine..wine..u know the score...(just kidding)
I still don't like Lott folks..Here is a Mississippi saying..."My momma says you don't ever say somethin' drunk..that you wouldn't LIKE to say sober...."

Cheers!

Appeals Court Nominee Has History With 9th Circuit
Justin Scheck - The Recorder
02-13-2006
... But the list of people who do know her is significant. Among them, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher (who put in a good word with Sen. Dianne Feinstein), 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (she clerked for both) and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (her current boss).
Despite friends like those, the former O'Melveny & Myers partner -- who has been general counsel to the California Resources Agency since 2004 -- has managed to remain under the mainstream's radar for years.
That's due more to her demeanor than her capabilities, say those who know her.
Kozinski on Thursday said he had expected Ikuta to be nominated for some time. "It's been in the works for six months or a year," he said. As a clerk, Kozinski said Ikuta -- known in Sacramento as a moderate conservative -- was thoughtful, careful and subdued.
Her mind, according to those who know her, is as fast as lightning, tackling subjects from environmental law to kung fu writing. Before going to law school Ikuta got a master's in journalism from Columbia University and was an editor of martial arts magazines.
"It is a great juxtaposition for someone who is as brilliant as she is, as studious and as academic as she can be," said Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., an O'Melveny partner.
Blumenfeld met Ikuta in law school and worked with her on the UCLA law review -- where her experience at magazines like Inside Kung Fu came in handy.
After getting their J.D.s from UCLA School of Law, Blumenfeld and Ikuta both clerked for the 9th Circuit and later spent years working together as co-chairs of O'Melveny's environmental practice, where Ikuta became best known for transactional and regulatory work.
"Sandra knows the substance of environmental law, both California and federal environmental law, in probably all of its manifestations," Blumenfeld said.
Those who know her say Ikuta is a deliberative decision-maker.
"I was far more likely to get excited about a case or to take an extreme view," Kozinski said. "She always wanted to rein me in."
"She would always think in shades of gray, while I tend to be more of a black-and-white kind of guy," he added.
Ninth Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw -- a President Clinton appointee and former O'Melveny partner who worked with Ikuta -- agreed. "She wouldn't take an ideological position," she said.
"I support her nomination," Wardlaw added, "and I look forward to working with her."
Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt said he knows little about Ikuta, but pointed out that in the past, it's been rare for a former Ninth Circuit clerk to become a judge.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1139565914268

Feb. 14, 2006, 10:25PM
W taps another throwback for important appeals seat
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
WHERE does he find these people? No sooner had President Bush returned last week from Coretta Scott King's funeral than he nominated to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a lawyer with a terrible record on civil rights.
Bush, speaking at the service in Atlanta, rejoiced that because King and her murdered husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had refused to be intimidated, "millions of children they would never meet are now living in a better, more welcoming country."
The next day, the White House announced Bush's nomination to the appeals court that hears federal cases from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi of a man who for much of his legal career has been on the opposite side of the civil rights fight from the Kings' ideals.
Bush sent to the Senate the name of Michael B. Wallace, a Jackson, Miss., attorney. He is a well-connected Republican and will almost certainly be confirmed. But it should not be without a hearings process that examines Wallace's history of antipathy toward making America the more welcoming society Bush spoke about.
Some highlights: Wallace, as an aide to then-House Republican Whip Trent Lott, D-Miss., in the early 1980s fought to protect the tax-exempt status of even the most notoriously segregationist institutions. That included Bob Jones University in South Carolina, where interracial dating was banned until 2000 and even then required written consent of parents. Also with Lott, Wallace worked to require discriminatory intent not effect be proved in voting rights cases.
Later in the 1980s, as a member of the board of the Legal Services Corp., Wallace attempted to gut the agency. He voted to hire outside attorneys to lobby Congress to reduce its appropriation, an action prohibited by the law creating the LSC, as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pointed out.
As an attorney for the Mississippi Republican Party, Wallace fought so strongly for a white-friendly redistricting plan that a U.S. district court accused him of going beyond spirited representation to "needless multiplication of proceedings at great waste of both the court's and the parties' time and resources."
Great record, huh, for a man whom the president would give a lifetime post on a court that is an important fulcrum in civil rights litigation? As Elliot Mincberg, general counsel of People for the American Way, said after Wallace's nomination: "He's been around for quite awhile doing a lot of things that are bad for civil rights."
The Mississippi Conference of the NAACP moved quickly to voice "outrage" at Wallace's nomination. Like some of Bush's other 5th Circuit nominees, Wallace's extremism is cloaked in a solid educational background: B.A. from Harvard, J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School, where he was already displaying his strong ideological predilection.
When a constitutional law professor would ask what his class thought about various cases, it's said, he would exempt Wallace, noting that the class already knew what Wallace thought.
"He is one of those individuals who can intellectualize discrimination, which is the most dangerous sort of individual to this country," said Derrick Johnson, president of Mississippi's NAACP chapter.
Nominating Wallace was at least fittingly re-trograde, as he would take the 5th Circuit seat vacated by the retirement of Charles W. Pickering Sr., another Lott crony whose legal and political career was marked by playing footsie with ardent segregationists and their loathsome policies. Bush took the rare step of elevating Pickering from a U.S. district court judgeship to the 5th Circuit with a recess appointment after Senate Democrats twice blocked a formal nomination.
Wallace has been in the Republican pipeline a long time. Bush's father considered him for a 5th Circuit job in 1992. That prospect prompted a number of groups, including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to review Wallace's record.
In March 1992, Frank Parker, then director of the Lawyers' Committee's voting rights project, said that Wallace's conduct in the Mississippi redistricting case showed Wallace "lacks the integrity, judicial temperament and respect for legal proceedings necessary for appointment to the judicial bench."
The White House knows who Wallace is and what he represents.
Hoping to counter opposition such as the NAACP's, when the White House announced Wallace's nomination, it issued a list of people to vouch for him. The top two were Reuben Anderson and Fred Banks, African-Americans who are former justices on the Mississippi Supreme Court. What the White House did not say was that they both are currently members of the same law firm as Wallace.
Neither returned my calls.
The White House seems confident that Senate Democrats are so cowed that Bush can nominate virtually anyone to these important courts, no matter how egregious the record.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/hines/3660230.html

Hat tip ...
http://www.acsblog.org/