Dan Froomkin today asked the question of the week: “Is Bush’s claim that he wants to work in a bipartisan manner a genuine change — or a ruse? Watch what he says — but even more so, what he does.” Good idea. And in the week since the election, what he’s done is nominate a number of far-right conservatives whom Dems strongly oppose. The point, of course, is to pick a fight.
I noted John Bolton and Ken Tomlinson earlier, but in case there was any doubt, take a look at the judicial nominees the Bush White House is sending back to the Senate.
After calling for bipartisanship, President Bush surprised Senate Democrats with plans to renominate a controversial list of judges — some of whom may be unacceptable even to a few Republican senators. “It’s an unfortunate signal,” said one senior Democratic Senate aide. […]
The White House action is viewed largely as an effort to appease the party’s conservative base. An administration official says there will be a formal White House announcement on the renominations later today. The president is in Moscow, having left Washington last night.
Lawmakers and others had been waiting to see whether Bush would renominate four particularly controversial appeals court candidates whose nominations had expired without Senate action. He did.
Consider some of the names Bush wants the Senate to approve and then tell me about the president’s commitment to working cooperatively with Dems.
First up is Terrence [tag]Boyle[/tag], a former aide to Sen. Jesse Helms, who was re-nominated to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Boyle has been accurately described as a “right-wing judicial activist who has sought to roll back well-settled precedents and override the express will of Congress.” Boyle is so ideological, even the 4th Circuit, the nation’s most conservative circuit, has admonished Boyle, “repeatedly reversing or criticizing him for subverting basic procedural rules and misconstruing clear legal principles.” Indeed, Boyle has been reversed over 150 times by the 4th Circuit. The man’s record is one of hostility for minorities, the disabled, and women.
The WaPo recently editorialized: “[Boyle] has a high rate of reversal, some of his work is surprisingly sloppy, and some of his civil rights opinions are terrible. Moreover, in recent weeks it has emerged that Judge Boyle has been careless about ethics. The law forbids judges to rule in cases in which they own stock in one of the parties. Judge Boyle has done this repeatedly, even in the years since his nomination to the 4th Circuit. His pattern of disregard for clear legal obligations is exceptional.”
And then there’s William G. [tag]Myers[/tag] III, re-nominated for the 9th Circuit, who is an anti-environmental activist who has lobbied for the same ranching, mining and timber interests that would have cases before him on the 9th Circuit. He’s never been a judge, never even participated in a jury trial, and received a poor rating from the ABA.
To appreciate his ideology, remember that the guy once said environmental regulations were akin to King George’s tyranny over the American colonies. Indeed, Myers has made it clear that he’s already made up his mind on federal protection of the environment — and he’s against it.
[Myers] attacked the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, which set aside land for two national parks and protected millions of acres of wilderness, as “an example of legislative hubris.” In 1996, he also charged that federal management of public lands was comparable with “‘the tyrannical actions of King George in levying taxes’ on American colonists.” He has said there’s “no constitutional basis” to protect wetlands. He also railed that “environmentalists are mountain biking to the courthouse as never before, bent on stopping human activity whenever it may promote health, safety and welfare.” The cases he was talking about “involved logging on national forests, racial discrimination in the placement of waste treatment plants and protection of irrigation canals from toxic chemicals.”
And let’s not overlook my personal favorite, William J. [tag]Haynes[/tag] II, general counsel at the Defense Department, re-nominated to the 4th Circuit. If you’ve forgotten about Haynes, he’s the Pentagon’s general counsel who was directly involved in setting U.S. interrogation policies for suspected terrorist detainees and who, in 2003, oversaw a Pentagon “working group” that embraced the reasoning in a now discredited Justice Department “torture” memo. The administration’s radical legal approach to tribunals, the Geneva Conventions, and even the incarceration of U.S. citizens without counsel or judicial review? Haynes literally helped write the book.
Given the circumstances, over a year ago a senior GOP Senate source told Newsweek that Haynes’ nomination to the 4th Circuit is “DOA.” And yet, here we are, more than a year later. Bush still wants Haynes to get a lifetime position on the appeals court bench.
These nominations are a slap in the face. Bush is making it quite clear that his rhetoric about bipartisanship is entirely meaningless. Given a choice and a fresh start with a new Congress, the president prefers conflict to cooperation. Indeed, with nominations like these, he’s shouting it with a bullhorn.
What other way is there to interpret this nonsense?