If this is the new strategy, it’s time to go back to the drawing board

The White House wants to ram unacceptable judicial nominees through the Senate, Dems are prepared to filibuster them, and the GOP is weighing the “nuclear option.” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter thinks he can direct the process without all the unpleasantness.

GOP sources said Judiciary Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has told colleagues he would like to select one of the least controversial nominees and try to win enough Democratic support to defeat a filibuster, then push for other victories. Specter’s office said yesterday that the most likely choice would be William G. Myers III, tapped for a seat on the 9th Circuit.

I can appreciate the underpinning idea here. Specter knows there are a lot of these nominees the Dems truly loathe, but if the Senate starts with a nominee or two whom the Dems hate less, the process will at least be underway without intense acrimony or the dreaded “nuclear option.”

But let’s pause for a moment to consider the judicial nominee Specter and other Senate Republicans consider “the least controversial” of Bush’s list of would-be judges.

When Myers last came up for a vote last July, Republicans dared Dems to filibuster him. They did. Dems argued that Myers, a lobbyist for cattle and mining interests before joining the Bush administration as the Interior Department’s solicitor, was an anti-environment activist who had no place serving on the federal court of appeals.

Since then, everything we’ve learned about Myers makes him an even worse candidate for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

Just last week, for example, we learned that Myers — again, the least controversial of Bush’s contentious judicial nominees — knowingly looked the other way when a well-connected Wyoming rancher flagrantly violated federal grazing laws.

The Interior Department’s inspector general has issued a report criticizing the way department lawyers arranged a controversial settlement with a Wyoming rancher accused of violating a host of federal grazing laws while William G. Myers III was the department’s top attorney.

[…]

The latest criticism stems from the intervention of Myers’ office in actions brought by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management against a cattle rancher cited for alleged repeated trespasses of his livestock on federal land, resulting in overgrazing, the government said.

In a letter dated Thursday, Earl Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general, said the solicitor’s office “circumvented” normal negotiation processes, kept the BLM out of the negotiations, ignored concerns about the settlement raised by the Justice Department and engaged “in an inappropriate level of programmatic involvement” in the settlement talks.

Myers’ only professional background that generated his judicial nomination in the first place was his work at the Interior Department. Now there’s ample evidence that his only substantive legal experience was marred by his efforts to do everything possible to allow an irresponsible-but-wealthy rancher to repeatedly break the law.

This is on top of a very controversial record that sparked last year’s filibuster.

As a lobbyist and lawyer for grazing and mining interests, and later as a top official at the Interior Department, William Myers has demonstrated his contempt for environmental protections and trampled on the rights of Native Americans. He has likened federal regulation to the oppressive actions of King George III. In addition, like so many of President Bush’s other nominees to lifetime positions on the federal courts of appeals, his statements appear to embrace a legal philosophy that, if given effect, would undermine or destroy federal protections in such critical areas as civil rights, worker and consumer health and safety, and privacy.

The White House still believes Myers, who has never been a judge and never even participated in a jury trial, deserves a lifetime seat on the 9th Circuit, just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court. More importantly, Senate Republicans believe Myers is the least controversial of Bush’s latest slew of judicial nominees.

And one wonders why this process has become so contentious.