New Year, Same old reactionary nominees

President Bush ushered in the new year by resubmitting 20 old judicial nominees who failed to be confirmed in the last Congress. The group of extremist, activist nominees is part of the right-wing's broader plan to use the federal courts to undermine laws that protect public health, civil liberties and women's rights. The White House continues to carp about obstructionism, but Senate Minority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) noted "last Congress...approve[d] 204 judicial nominees...reduced the vacancy rate on our courts to the lowest level in 15 years, and outpaced the confirmation rate of Reagan, Clinton and former President Bush." Half of those Bush renominated never made it out of the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee. Even Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, expressed disappointment about the President's actions, saying, "I would have preferred to have had some time in the 109th Congress to try to cool the climate." The central problem, however, was not the timing of the nominations but the nominees themselves. Here is a look at some of the lowlights:
HAYNES'S WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS: President Bush has nominated Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes IV for a second time. Haynes led the group of attorneys responsible for the memos contending "the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department." Haynes's nomination was derailed when "he was asked by the Judiciary Committee to provide material about his role in the [torture] issue and failed to do so." Haynes also developed and defended the administration's policy of incarcerating "U.S. citizens without counsel or judicial review" which was rejected as illegal by the Supreme Court. Another Haynes product: the rules for military tribunals planned for Guantanamo Bay that was described as "unjust, unwise, un-American" by the Economist magazine.
BROWN'S WAR ON MAINSTREAM VALUES: Bush is determined to install California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rodgers Brown to the federal courts. The New York Times described her record as a "war on mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear." It's not hard to see why. Brown on seniors: "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much "free" stuff as the political system will permit them to extract." Brown on New Deal programs, such as Social Security: "The New Deal...inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality. The Constitution itself was transmuted into a significantly different document...1937...marks the triumph of our own socialist revolution." Brown, ignoring Supreme Court precedent, has argued that racially discriminatory speech in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment. She has also denounced the Supreme Courts landmark ruling U.S. v. Carolene Products; a view which, if adopted "would signal the death-knell for a vast range of health labor, and environmental standards it enacted during the last century." Learn more about Janice Rodgers Brown.
PRYOR'S WAR ON WOMEN: Bush also renominated Alabama Attorney General William Pryor. His confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench would be a huge blow for women's rights. Pryor considers Roe v. Wade to be "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our nation's history." Further, he has defended restrictions on abortion in Alabama even when they lacked "the constitutionally required exception to protect the health of the pregnant woman." Pryor supported legislation in Alabama which would have required Alabama to appoint "a lawyer representing the state whenever a female under age 18 sought to have an abortion without her parents' consent." Pryor argued that the government attorney "should be involved to protect the state's interest in preserving life." The AP reported that Pryor "envisioned attorneys with networks like the Alabama Lawyers for Life, of which he used to be a member, agreeing to represent the state for free and 'potentially' taking an adversarial stand against abortions." Learn more about William Pryor.
OWEN'S "UNCONSCIONABLE" JUDICIAL ACTIVISM: During their time together on the Texas Supreme Court, Attorney General-nominee Alberto Gonzalez repeatedly criticized Pricilla Owen – another judge that Bush re-nominated – for ignoring the law. In one case, relating to requirements for minors to "judicially bypass" parental consent requirements for abortion, Gonzalez characterized Owen's narrow view of the statute as "directly contradicted" by the legislative history and "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." In another case, where Owen would have effectively rewritten the law to protect manufactures of products that cause injury, Gonzales called Owen's opinion an attempt to "judicially amend the statute." Gonzales also joined an opinion that described an Owen's dissent, which would have allowed certain private land owners to exempt themselves from environmental regulations, as "nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric."