Bush Installs Another Anti-ADA Judge
An Action Alert from the People for the American Way <www.pfaw.org>:
[A New York Times article about the appointment follows.]
For Second Time in Five Weeks, Bush Installs Right-Wing Judge Without
Senate Approval
In another late Friday announcement timed to avoid public attention, President
Bush today installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor on the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 11th Circuit without Senate approval. It is the second time
in five weeks that Bush has used a recess appointment to place a widely
opposed, far-right ideologue on our federal courts.
Apparently Bush is betting that contempt for Americans' fundamental rights and
liberties, and for the checks and balances that ensure fair and independent
courts, will rally his political base but not turn off more moderate voters or
get much public criticism. Our action today can help make sure that strategy
doesn't work.
Write your local newspaper, t.v. and radio editors to cast a spotlight on
Bush's contempt for the public and their elected representatives in the
Senate. To contact your local media visit http://capwiz.com/pfaw/issues/alert/?alertid=5155811
Then, give Bush and Karl Rove a message: "We will not forget this blatant
abuse of power."
White House Comments Line: (202) 456-1111
White House Switchboard: (202) 456-1414
TTY/TDD Comments Line: (202) 456-6213
president@whitehouse.gov
Web form: https://sawho14.eop.gov/PERSdata/intro.htm
Like Judge Charles Pickering, who Bush recess appointed in January, Pryor has
amassed a troubling civil rights record and has used the power of his office
to advance his extreme right-wing views.
* Pryor has called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in
our history."
* Pryor urged the Supreme Court to hold that, under the Americans with
Disabilities Act, state employees cannot sue for damages to protect their
rights against discrimination.
* Pryor urged the Supreme Court to uphold laws that would imprison gay men and
lesbians for having sex in the privacy of their own homes.
* Pryor has defended a state judge who has officially sponsored sectarian
prayers in the courtroom before juries and who has installed unconstitutional
religious displays of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and in the state
judicial building.
President Bush's actions to pack our courts with right-wing judges and to
politicize the judicial confirmation process should be on every citizen's
mind. Help make that the case by telling those in your community that it's on
your mind right now.
Write a letter to the editor, and contact the White House to let them know
you're working this weekend to ensure that all Americans remember this blatant
abuse of power.
================
>From the New York Times:
February 21, 2004
Bypassing Senate for 2nd Time, Bush Seats Judge
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - President Bush on Friday used a weeklong Congressional
recess to install William H. Pryor Jr., the Alabama attorney general, in a
federal appeals court seat to get around a Democratic filibuster that had
blocked the nomination.
It was the second time in the last five weeks that Mr. Bush used a president's
power to make appointments when Congress is not in session to name judges
directly to the bench and thus skirt the Senate confirmation process. In
January, Mr. Bush named Charles W. Pickering Sr., whose nomination had also
been blocked by Senate Democrats, to another appeals court seat.
There was little dispute that Mr. Bush's actions in both cases were a
calculated act of defiance of the Democrats with whom he has been engaged in
an increasingly hostile battle over his judicial choices. Republican Senate
officials suggested Friday that there may be more such recess appointments as
a response to the Democrats' tactic of using filibusters or the threat of
extended debates to block confirmation of the president's judicial nominees.
"A minority of Democratic senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist
tactics to prevent him and other qualified nominees from receiving up-or-down
votes," Mr. Bush said in a statement. "Their tactics are inconsistent with the
Senate's constitutional responsibility and are hurting our judicial system."
Unless he is confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Pryor will have to leave the bench
sometime late next year.
As a state official in Alabama, Mr. Pryor, 41, gained prominence as an
outspoken opponent of legalized abortion and as an advocate for a greater
Christian influence in government. Democrats said that his fervent advocacy on
those and other issues demonstrated that he could not be trusted to separate
his personal views from the law if he were confirmed. But the president and
other Republicans disputed Mr. Pryor's critics. The Senate majority leader,
Bill Frist of Tennessee, said Friday that Mr. Pryor "is a man of integrity
committed to the rule of law, not making law from the bench. I am confident he
will impartially interpret the law and uphold justice."
Democrats countered that it was Mr. Bush and the Republicans who were using
the appointments process to advance a political agenda.
"The president is on shaky ground with the hard right and is using this
questionably legal and politically shabby technique to bolster himself,"
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Judiciary Committee member, said on
Friday. "Regularly circumventing the advise-and-consent process is not the way
to change the tone in Washington. It's shabby and the motivation is political
more than anything else."
Under the Constitution, Mr. Pryor will be able to serve on the United States
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, until the end of the
next session of Congress - meaning sometime in the fall of 2005. Judge
Pickering, who was given a recess appointment before the current session of
Congress, must give up his seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, in the fall of this year.
The debate in the Judiciary Committee last year over the Pryor nomination was
perhaps the most contentious and abrasive in years. Democrats complained that
their Republican counterparts were complicit in efforts to paint their
opposition as anti-Catholic.
The Democrats assailed a television campaign by a group supporting the Pryor
nomination that showed a locked courthouse door with a sign reading,
"Catholics need not apply." The advertisements were run by the Committee for
Justice, a group led by C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel to the first
President Bush.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking committee Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee, said the commercials were a despicable smear. But Senator
Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and Mr. Pryor's principal supporter,
called him "this solid Catholic individual" and said that his opposition to
abortion, for example, in cases of rape and incest, was good Catholic
doctrine. Therefore, he said, if someone is opposed for holding that position,
"Are we not saying that good Catholics need not apply?"
Mr. Pryor is also known for defending the right of high school athletes to
pray "spontaneously." And, in a brief before the Supreme Court, he argued that
if a law in Texas outlawing sex between homosexuals was overturned, it would
open the way for legalized "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality,
possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia."
Democrats also raised the issue of Mr. Pryor's role as a founder in 1999 of
the Republican Attorneys General Association, a fund-raising arm of the
Republican National Committee. In testimony before the Judiciary Committee,
Mr. Pryor said he was unaware that any companies he solicited for donations
did business in Alabama and would therefore come under his jurisdiction as the
state's chief law enforcement official.
But the Democrats cited documents that appeared to show that Mr. Pryor had
solicited donations from companies that do business in Alabama, including the
International Paper Corporation and the United States Steel Corporation.
Republicans said the documents were stolen from the attorneys general group by
a disgruntled employee and should not be used by the committee.
The 11th Circuit has 12 active judges, five of whom were appointed by
Democratic presidents and now, with Mr. Pryor's appointment, seven by
Republican presidents.
There have been more than 300 judicial recess appointments in the nation's
history, though the Congressional Research Service says few have occurred in
recent years. In the final days of his term, President Bill Clinton used the
process to name Roger Gregory, a black lawyer, to the appeals court in
Richmond, Va., saying that Republicans had blocked his efforts to give that
court its first African- American judge. Three Supreme Court justices were
also initially put on the court in modern times as recess appointments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/politics/21JUDG.html
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