Split Panel Sends Renominated Candidate to Full Senate

Reposted as history. Originally posted in March of 2005.


Neil A. Lewis - March 18, 2005 - New York Times

WASHINGTON, DC - Voting along strict party lines, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the first of President Bush's appeals court nominees on Thursday, hastening the Senate's march to a large-scale partisan breakdown.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is the committee's chairman, urged the panel's Democrats not to waste time attacking the candidate, William G. Myers III. "We all know the outcome will be on party lines," Mr. Specter said.

And so it was, with all 10 Republicans on the committee voting to send the nomination to the floor and all 8 Democrats voting against that.

As usual the Times expounds on all the reasons that Bush's nominee is bad, and ignores the alternative reasons he is qualified. They also set up the hypothesis that the Republicans are considering compromise on the "nuclear option" fight, with the implication that they really ought to compromise if they are reasonable.

They should not. No judicial candidate has ever before been filibustered until the democrats started filibustering George Bush's nominees. The democrats have now done it to over 10 candidates (it is so many I have lost exact count). This unprecedented attack on the process of selecting judges must be ended. The current makeup of the courts is as biased towards one political agenda (liberal) as it has ever been. If the courts continue as a political entity, justice in our nation is finished. This is a most serious issue that must be won.