Judicial nominee Bill Pryor set for Senate hearing tomorrow

A couple of months ago, I noted that Bill Pryor, former Alabama Attorney General and a Bush nominee for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, represented the worst of all possible nominees. Pryor is not only the single worst judicial nominee Bush has sent to the Senate for consideration, Pryor is the worst judicial nominee Bush could possibly find.

As you know, the controversy surrounding Senate support for Bush’s judicial nominee has become one of Washington’s most divisive issues. Senate Democrats have wielded the filibuster sword on only two occasions, but Republican leaders are considering rewriting the Senate rules to make it easier for Bush to stack the federal judiciary with conservative ideologues.

But when it comes to judicial nominees who deserve to be filibustered, Bill Pryor takes the prize. Nevertheless, Pyror, who is easily more right-wing that any of the nominees Senate Dems have opposed, will get his chance before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

I really have to wonder what the Bush administration was thinking. What’s the best way to deal with a contentious fight over conservative judicial nominees? Of course, let’s nominate the most right-wing ideologue we can find! We’ll pick a guy who the Dems will have little choice but to filibuster, then whine incessantly about how Democrats are obstructionists!

As a Washington Post editorial noted upon Pryor’s nomination to the 11th Circuit, “Pryor is a parody of what Democrats imagine Mr. Bush to be plotting for the federal courts…. [T]his is not a nomination the White House can sell as above politics. Mr. Bush cannot at once ask for apolitical consideration of his nominees and put forth nominees who, in word and deed, turn federal courts into political battlegrounds.” More succinctly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Pryor a “right-wing zealot…unfit to judge.”

The Washington Times, an ultraconservative newspaper, ran a column today by Nat Hentoff on Pryor’s nomination. Hentoff, who generally takes a libertarian line, urged the Senate to reject Pryor.

“Were I on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I would unhesitatingly vote against Mr. Pryor, because his clear record and public statements reveal that he would be the very definition of a judicial activist, letting his hostility toward key parts of the Bill of Rights determine his votes,” Hentoff argued.

“I would not vote against Mr. Pryor because he is a conservative — in the current battles over nominees, I would have voted for conservatives Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering, because their opponents have distorted their records,” Hentoff added. “But Mr. Pryor is capable of such extremism that a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision written by Antonin Scalia, rejected Mr. Pryor’s definition of federalism, which was included in his amicus brief and claimed municipalities have a ‘state sovereignty’ right to be exempted from federal laws. Not even the 19th-century secessionists advocated such reckless undermining of federal law. And Justice Scalia, dismissing Mr. Pryor’s argument, is hardly one of the court’s liberals.”

I particularly enjoyed the recent comment from Hank Caddell, a longtime civil rights attorney in Mobile, Ala., who told National Public Radio last month, “If you had gone and designed a candidate for a judicial appointment who would be most destructive to the areas of civil rights, environmental protection, separation of church and state, reproductive rights, you would be hard-pressed to come up with any candidate other than Bill Pryor.”

I’ve started to compile a fairly lengthy dossier on Pryor’s record of extreme partisanship, religious fundamentalism, radical adherence to states rights, hostility to civil liberties and privacy rights, close ties to fringe political groups, and offensive bigotry towards gay people.

But instead of detailing the entire right-wing record here, I will instead encourage all of you to check out an excellent report from People for the American Way titled, “William Pryor: Unfit to Judge.” It’s a lengthy but comprehensive report that tells you everything you need to know. I also recommend the fine research legal blogger Sam Heldman has been doing on Pryor’s nomination on an excellent legal/political blog called Ignatz.

The Senate hearing, as I said, is tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes. But just as importantly, I’ll let you know when a vote on Pryor will be coming up so you can call your senators and voice your opposition, if you’re so inclined.