Abstract

More Bad Judges

The author claims that U.S. President George W. Bush and his supporters are abusing the power of appointment and ignoring the Constitution's "advise and consent" clause in trying to gain confirmation by the Senate of several controversial judicial nominees. Karl Rove's White House laboratory has litmus-tested and shipped another batch of extremist nominees to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its members' consent, after not asking for their advice. These nominees will get the deepest possible scrutiny because of a curiously underreported scandal. In a new excess of zealotry, Republican staffers have stooped to snooping--hacking into the computers of Judiciary Committee Democrats Ted Kennedy and Richard Durbin, stealing fifteen confidential memos and disseminating them to "friendly" media outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Washington Times. The combination of more noxious nominations and these dirty tricks has upped the ante in the current judicial filibuster fight, in which the Democrats have so far blocked six Bush nominees. Some evangelical Christian and "family values" pressure groups, plus Senator Trent Lott, are urging Frist to use the "nuclear option" to abolish judicial filibusters. One such option involves having whichever GOP senator is presiding over the Senate at the time rule a filibuster against a nominee out of Order and then rule that his position needs only fifty-one votes to be sustained, not the sixty needed to end debate.