President Bush continues to submit the names of federal appeals court nominees to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its advice and consent. Most are judges so conservative that they make moderate Republicans blush and liberals downright sick to their stomachs.
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee began considering the nomination of Bill Pryor, Alabama’s Attorney General. This is a man who has supported a judge’s right to post the Ten Commandments in the courtroom. The New York Times reports that Pryor filed a brief with the Supreme Court against a case challenging Texas’ sodomy law and wrote that granting individuals “a legal right to engage in homosexual relations would imply approval of ‘activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia.” Well! This man and Senator Rick Santorum would certainly get along.
Other ultra-conservative judges nominated by Bush include Dennis Shedd, whose transgressions are too numerous to list, but you can view them here, and Miguel Estrada, who Republicans can’t believe hasn’t won the support of Democrats because he is a Hispanic after all. Apparently, we’re supposed to forget the fact that he is a conservative ideologue who hasn’t left a written record on much of anything. At least the Democrats are able to differentiate a person’s ideas from his skin color.
Bush’s nominees are consistently anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action, anti-states rights, gay-biased and pro-mingling of church and state.
So much for bringing a “new tone” to Washington.
