By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
January 10, 2003
We are watching a media blitz right now designed to reverse the wishes of the majority of the voters in the November election. President Bush announced on Tuesday that he was again appointing 31 judges that were either totally ignored by the Democrat controlled Senate or were rejected by one vote in the Judiciary Committee. Although the Constitution of the United States declares, in Article II, Section II, that the president of the United States “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States,” that didn’t happen in the 107th Congress with Tom Daschle as Senate Majority Leader.
Judge Charles Pickering and Judge Priscilla Owen were turned down by one vote in the highly partisan Judiciary Committee after well organized attack on them by a cabal of civil rights, gay rights and feminist groups.
The same group responded almost within minutes of the President’s announcement and before most people in America even knew that the President had renominated 31 judges, the left-wing opponents had grabbed the headlines. This is the same group that orchestrated the vicious attack on Trent Lott and 100 Year old Strom Thurmond last month and are out in force to destroy other judges Bush has nominated.. The full Senate, under Daschle’s control, NEVER was allowed to vote on these two appointments.
Why? According to Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women, her crime was “Owen supports 'stricter interpretation' of the Texas law requiring girls younger than 18 to inform their parents before obtaining an abortion. In every case that came before the Texas Supreme Court last spring in which a young woman sought a bypass of the parental notification law, Judge Owen voted against granting the bypass."
In other words, any judicial candidate who believes in parental rights will be smeared by the left-wing cabal.
Another view of Judge Owen was offered by Texas’ Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson: “It is just stunning that someone who never had one smirch on her record of integrity, who was totally well qualified and unanimously certified by the American Bar Association, and who was reelected to the Texas Supreme Court by over 80 percent of the vote would be turned down by the Judiciary Committee. I think this is a sad day.
“But I will say this: I talked to Justice Owen today. I said: You lost the battle today, but you could win the war because I am absolutely certain that President Bush will renominate her if there is Republican control of the Senate. If that happens, she will be confirmed, because she deserves to be confirmed.”
The homosexual and lesbian lobby, represented by the Human Rights Campaign, objected to Pickering’s nomination based on a news report of his statement before a Baptist Convention: “We as Southern Baptists should lead the way in strengthening traditional moral values," he said, adding that society has been degraded by such things as pornography, homosexuality and divorce.”
So, if you are a judge who upholds morality and worries about divorce, pornography and homosexuality, all of which lead to shorter life spans and misery, you can’t expect to be approved by the U.S. Senate?
And, less than 24 hours after the President renominated the 31 judges whose confirmation had been bottled up in the Senate, Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, issued a press release attacking the president for nominating “individuals like Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen (who) do not have the civil rights qualifications for appointment to the federal bench.”
Henderson’s view of having the correct civil rights qualifications for appointment to the federal bench appears to be any judge that would rule in favor of the U.S. Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment which states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.”
Henderson ended his attack with: “President Bush has now made his position on civil rights clear: As long as he talks the talk of commitment to equal opportunity, he does not need to walk the walk."
President Bush made his commitment to equal opportunity in action, not in talk, when he chose black people as his top advisors – Colin Powell as his Secretary of State, Rod Paige as his Secretary of Education and Condoleeze Rice as his National Security advisor. They were not chosen because they were black, but because they are all highly qualified, intelligent and competent people, none of whom would agree with Wade Henderson.
I think the time has come for rational people in this country to rise up and contact their Senators and insist that they not be cowed by a small, but very vocal and very anti-democratic minority that is actually attempting another palace coup to reverse the November election. These are the same people who had hoped they could again seize control of the Senate by forcing Trent Lott to resign as Senator, allowing the Democrat Governor of Mississippi to choose a Democrat to replace him, while convincing liberal Republican John Chafee to bolt the GOP as did liberal Republican Jim Jeffords.
Call, e-mail or write your Senators and urge them to stand firm for the Constitution. President Bush asked the voters to send him a Congress who would pass his legislation and vote on his appointments and that’s what the voters did. It may come as a surprise to Henderson and Gandy, but the majority also have civil rights and its time that they insist on their votes not be negated by a vocal minority who oppose morals.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
Links:
- National Organization for Women -NOW Opposes Nomination of Priscilla Owen To Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
- U.S. Senate – Kay Bailey Hutchinson on Judge -Priscilla Owen
- Contact members of Congress