asheris

So our ill-ustrious Senator Coleman *cough hack spit* has been instrumental in extending this inane Republican talk-a-thon blame-fest over judicial nominees. Gee, how independent minded of him. Talk about an empty suit who can't think for himself. Shrub says jump, Nawmy says "yes sir, how high sir? Screw the people of my state, sir? YES sir!"

Democrats brandished posters saying "168-4," to emphasize their confirmation record. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had a T-shirt saying "we confirmed 98 percent of President Bush's judges" on the front, while the back said, "and all we got was this lousy T-shirt."

Who are they opposing? (Four of the following are the ones up this week. I'm blanking on whether Pickering or Pryor is the odd one out this round.)

[Edit, 10am CDT 14 October: My late-night mistake: the three women were the ones up for a vote this morning. This was the fourth time for Owen, and the first time for Brown and Kuhl. Might I add, they all three LOST.

Thanks, Senate Republicans, for wasting over two days on something you knew you were going to lose anyway. I guess you must think you don't have anything else to do, despite all the other things you have to get done before the session ends.

And yes, I did call Senator Coleman's office to register my displeasure (politely). Somehow, I don't think the woman on the phone was writing it down. She was very nice, though, which can't be an easy job.]

Priscilla Owen, currently an Associate Justice on the Texas Supreme Court; nominated to the United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit.
1. Has been criticized as being on the "far right wing" of the Texas court, further to the right than Bush's own appointees to that court when he was governor.
2. Refuses to recuse herself from cases involving companies that have donated money to her election campaigns. Ex: She received $8,600 from Enron for her successful Supreme Court bid in 1994. Two years later, Owen wrote the majority opinion that reversed a lower court order and reduced Enron's school taxes by $15 million. (Since 1993, Enron contributed $134,058 - more than any other corporation - to Owen and other members of the Texas Supreme Court. A study by Texans for Public Justice found that the court ruled in Enron's favor in five out of six cases involving the company since 1993.)
3. As a Texas Supreme Court Justice, Owen went out of her way to ignore legislative intent by attempting to limit minors' access to judicial bypass as an alternative to parental notification for young women who sought abortions. Even Alberto Gonzales (now President Bush's White House Counsel), a fellow Texas Supreme Court Justice, called her position "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." (In re Doe I (II), 2000).
4. Owen has proven to be the most anti-plaintiff justice on the (very conservative) Texas Supreme Court.
5. Owen is notoriously slow at issuing opinions and has reportedly had cases taken away from her because of her backlog.
6. When the Travis County Attorney investigated the practice by Texas Supreme Court justices of allowing their law clerks to accept pre-employment bonuses from law firms with cases before them, Owen continued to condone such awards and dismissed the investigation as a "political issue that is being dressed up as a good-government issue." ("Bribery or Perks for Clerks?" Houston Chronicle, February 11, 2001.)
7. She voted in an egregious case to dismiss charges of malpractice against an attorney who, without informing his client, had rejected an offer on her behalf for full immunity, an offer that was later accepted by another of the same attorney's clients. (Peeler v. Hughes & Luce, Darrell Jordan, 909 S.W.2d 494 (Tex. 1995))
Janice Rogers Brown, currently a California Supreme Court Justice; nominated to the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
1. Justice Brown was twice rated not qualified by the California Judicial Nominations Evaluation (JNE) Commission, first in 1993, when then-Governor Wilson submitted her name as one of six potential nominees to the state supreme court and again in 1996 when Wilson, who had appointed her in the interim to a seat on the state court of appeals, nominated her to the state supreme court. The "not qualified" rating was based primarily on Brown’s judicial inexperience, and her tendency to interject into legal opinions her political and philosophical views. Specifically, the Commission’s report indicated that "nothing in [Brown’s] legal experience [distinguished] her from other average practitioners," and some of Brown’s opinions contained "gratuitous personal opinions." The Commission received specific complaints that Brown was careless of established legal precedent, had difficulty grasping complex litigation, lacked compassion and intolerance for opposing views, misunderstood legal standards, and was slow to produce opinions. (Maura Dolan, 'Court's Nominees Writings Expressed Strong Views," L.A. TIMES, May 1, 1996; Reynolds Holding, "Brown Joins State High Court," THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, May 3, 1996; "Mr. Wilson's Court," THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE (Riverdale, Ca.), May 6, 1996 at Pg. A10.)
2. Ignoring gross attorney errors and the defendant's brutal childhood to uphold a death sentence, Brown's opinion was noted by the dissent as "clinically cold." In re Andrews, 28 Cal. 4th 1234 (2002).
3. In free speech cases, she overwhemlingly finds in favor of special interests.
4. Her controversial dissents go beyond legal reasoning and straight into political diatribe. In American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren, 16 Cal. 4th 307 (1997), Brown wrote a lengthy dissent calling the court's decision to strike down parental consent "an excellent example of the folly of courts in the role of philosopher kings."
5. Has said the courts may not bar racial slurs in the workplace and questioned whether women subjected to verbal sexual harassment can legally challenge it at all.
6. She distorted the law in a ruling striking down an affirmative action program aimed at opening opportunities for women-owned businesses as well as minority owned businesses, drawing a rebuke from the Chief Justice of her court (another appointee of Republican Gov. Wilson), who called her opinion "a serious distortion of history" that is "likely to be viewed as less than evenhanded," that used "misleading and unflattering slogans" and that "will be widely and correctly viewed as presenting an unfair and inaccurate caricature" of affirmative action programs. (Hi-Voltage Wire Works, Inc. v. City of San Jose, 12 P.3d 1068, 1093-1095 (Cal. 2000))
7. She has called the New Deal - the era of FDR that brought us the Social Security system and worker protections like minimum wage and child labor laws - a "socialist revolution." ("Whiter Shade of Pale", speech to the Federalist Society, April 20, 2000)
8. She has repeatedly construed civil rights protections narrowly and in favor of defendants, often as the lone dissenter and sometimes in plain disregard of precedent. In one of these cases, she would have held that the federal and state laws prohibiting discrimination did not apply to the banking industry - a position the court’s majority said was demonstrably incorrect and the support for which was "between minimal and non-existent." (Peatros v. Bank of America, 22 Cal 4th 147 (2000))
9. In a 1993, Sacramento Bar Journal article, Brown complained that government was too big, and expressed dismay about lawyers who can advocate civil liberties for topless dancers and the homeless, but not for public prayer. Brown went on to say, "Rights cannot be regulated and they often collide in ways that defeat rational public policy. Thus, lawyers have secured the right of topless dancers to perform, but have banished prayer from public life. They have won the right for indigents to take over public spaces, even our children’s libraries, and for the mentally ill to live on streets and shout obscenities at passersby." (Maura Dolan, "Court's Nominees Writings Expressed Strong Views," L.A. TIMES, May 1, 1996)
Carolyn Kuhl, currently a Los Angeles Superior Court judge; nominated to the United States Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit.
1. Wrote a brief in 1990 on behalf of the American Academy of Medical Ethics in which she argued that prohibiting doctors who receive federal funds from discussing abortion did not violate First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
2. On the L.A. Superior Court, she dismissed the breach of privacy claim of a breast cancer patient whose oncologist allowed a male drug salesman to sit in on her medical exam without her permission. According to the plaintiff, Ms. Sanchez-Scott, the unidentified man who came in with her doctor was "introduced as 'a person' who was looking at Dr. Polonsky's work." The doctor took Ms. Sanchez's fan from her hand during the exam and asked the man to fan her, after which they both laughed and refused when she asked to have it back. After the examination ended, the patient asked who the other man was and, when the receptionist told her that he was a "drug salesman," she "began to cry from shame and anger." According to Judge Kuhl, it was not reasonable for the woman to expect privacy in her own doctor’s office - a ruling that was immediately overturned by a unanimous appellate court. (Sanchez-Scott v. Alza Pharmaceuticals, 86 Cal. App. 4th 365 (2001))
3. She refused to hear a case filed by a whistleblower about falsification of documents and destruction of medical records in Moore v. Hong Liu, ignoring California's free-speech laws.
4. Fought for the gag rule and parental notification for young women. She has also fought for detailed intrusive reporting requirements which forced women to disclose personal information such as the date of their last menstrual cycle, their race, marital status and where they lived.
5. As a member of the Reagan administration, Judge Kuhl was one of two Justice Department officials who persuaded the Attorney General to reverse an 11-year Internal Revenue Service policy and reinstate the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and other racially discriminatory schools. More than two hundred lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights division signed a letter at the time expressing their concerns about the decision. Also opposed were head of the IRS and the Department of the Treasury's General Counsel. Indeed, current Solicitor General Ted Olson, who was then head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, was among those who opposed Kuhl's position. The Supreme Court disagreed with the position advocated by Kuhl and, by an 8-1 vote, denied Bob Jones and other racially segregated schools tax-exempt status.
Charles Pickering, Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi; nominated to the United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit.
1. Assumes claims of race or sex discrimination on the job have no merit and throws them out of his court. Pickering has been hostile to lawsuits involving civil rights issues. He called the one person/one vote doctrine "obtrusive" and has complained that strengthening African-American voting power through the redistricting process could be harmful. He has rarely ruled in favor of an employment discrimination plaintiff. When asked about his unbalanced record on employment discrimination cases at his 2002 confirmation hearing, Pickering made the outrageous assertion that meritorious claims are resolved by the EEOC and generally only those lacking in merit are brought to the federal courts.
2. Before becoming a judge, he wrote a law review article recommending to the Mississippi legislature ways to strengthen the state’s ban on interracial marriage.
3. In 1994, Judge Pickering presided over a case in which the government brought criminal charges against three individuals for burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple. Two of the defendants pled guilty, but Daniel Swan went to trial and was convicted of charges resulting in a mandatory seven years in prison. Although Pickering has a reputation for being a law-and-order judge, he claimed to have been troubled by the disparities between Swan's sentence and those of his two co-defendants. He repeatedly used off-the-record threats and other methods to force prosecutors to drop the most serious charge against Swan. Pickering then sentenced Swan to 27 months in prison-almost five fewer years than the law required-for an act that he called a "drunken prank."
4. At his 1990 hearing for a district court seat, Pickering stated under oath: "I never had any contact with [the Sovereignty Commission] and I had disagreement with the purposes and the methods and some of the approaches that they took." Not only had Pickering voted to fund the Sovereignty Commission, recently released documents include a memo to the Commission's files indicating that Pickering was "very interested" in a Sovereignty Commission investigation into union activity in his hometown and "requested to be apprised of developments" regarding the investigation.
William H. Pryor, Jr., Alabama Attorney General; nominated to the United States Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit.
1. Under Pryor's leadership, Alabama was the only state to challenge the constitutionality of a provision of the Violence Against Women Act (United States v. Morrison). (Bill Pryor, "The Supreme Court as Guardian of Federalism," Remarks at event entitled "Federalism: The Quiet Revolution," sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation and held in Washington, D.C. on July 11, 2000.)
2. Pryor also argued that the Supreme Court should cut back on the protections of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Clean Water Act. (See Brief for the State of Alabama, et al. in Support of Petitioners, Nevada Dep't. of Human Resources v. Hibbs ,2001 U.S. Briefs 1368. Not only did Pryor participate in the drafting of the states' brief, he also unsuccessfully petitioned the court for leave to participate in oral argument. See LEXSEE 2002 U.S. LEXIS 9254.)
3. Pryor has said: "I will never forget January 22, 1973, the day seven members of our highest court ripped the Constitution and ripped out the life of millions of unborn children." He refers to Roe v. Wade as "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." (Kelly Greene, "Bill Pryor Hopes to Ride Court Crusade to the Top," WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 21, 1997; Bill Pryor, "Federalism and the Court: Do Not Uncork the Champagne Yet," Remarks before the National Federalist Society, Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 1997.)
4. In 2002, Pryor filed an anti-gay brief in Lawrence v. Texas on behalf of Alabama urging the Supreme Court to uphold Texas' law banning same-sex sodomy. Pryor argued that a "constitutional right that protects "the choice of one's partner" and "whether and how to connect sexually" must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia." (Brief of States of States as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent, 2002 U.S. Briefs 102. According to Nathan Forrester, Alabama's Solicitor General, Pryor had "two...concerns that he wanted emphasized...prominently in the brief: one, the problem of judges making up constitutional rules that have no basis in the text of the Constitution [, and] two, the problem of judges usurping legislative prerogative to monitor and respond to changing social mores."
  See Jonathan Ringel, "Incendiary High Court Brief Began in Georgia," FULTON COUNTY DAILY REPORT, May 19, 2003.)
5. In 1997, Pryor, along with the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, attended a "Save the Commandments" rally in Montgomery, Alabama where he stated: "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians...to save our country and save our courts." (See Ellen Goodman, "The Divine Right of Political Kings," PITTSBURGH-POST GAZETTE, April 30, 2003; see also Buster Kantrow, "Business Groups Worrying Over Alabama Court Race," WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 8, 2000 at Pg. S1.)