For those of you who missed the Wall Street Journal‘s expose of dirty Democratic judge-blocking tricks, based on leaked memos from inside the Senate Judiciary Committee, Byron York provides a nice summary in todays National Review Online.
Here’s a telling excerpt:
The memos, dating from 2001 until April 2003, are mostly from Democratic staffers to Senators Richard Durbin and Edward Kennedy. They show how Democrats granted the demands of groups like People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, NARAL, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in the fight over Bush judges. For example, in one memo to Durbin, dated November 7, 2001, a staffer described a meeting with the groups in which they “identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They [the groups] want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.” Democrats, then in control of the Senate, did not grant Estrada a vote in the Judiciary Committee. When Republicans won the Senate and voted Estrada out of committee, Democrats, following the groups’ wishes, filibustered the nomination. Estrada eventually withdrew his name from consideration.
Another memo, to Kennedy, dated April 17, 2002, details how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund asked that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee delay the confirmation of Bush nominee Julia Scott Gibbons to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats had no objections to Gibbons, but the NAACP Legal Defense Fund did not want her to vote on the University of Michigan affirmative action case then before the circuit court. The Democratic staffers who wrote the memo conceded that they were “a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case.” They also admitted that “the 6th Circuit is in dire need of additional judges.” Still, given the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s demand, they recommended “that Gibbons be scheduled for a later hearing.” Gibbons was not confirmed until after the University of Michigan case was decided.
Taken together, the memos present a devastating picture of Democrats working virtually under the control of the interest groups. Yet the documents have received little coverage outside the conservative press, and much of that has focused not on the substance of the memos but on how they became public.
The good news: recent polling data suggests these tactics may be backfiring.
Did the WSJ ever have a piece on dirty Republican judge-blocking tactics?
That’s a good point. I can’t recall the WSJ ever mentioning similar Republican tactics. In fact, the only outlets which did so were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek, US News, Time, ABC News, CBS News, NBC news, CNN, The Nation, The American Prospect, and The New Republic.
A virtual media blackout.
[…] argued that Estrada was “dangerous” precisely because he was Hispanic, as I discussed here. You probably remember what Dionne prefers to forget, those Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee […]