In May, Senate Dems struck a deal with Bush — after months of filibusters, Dems cleared the way for floor votes on 25 of the president’s judicial nominees in return for a promise from the White House that there will be no more recess appointments this year.
The compromise did not include many of Bush’s most controversial nominees and allegedly included 25 judges that wouldn’t generate significant opposition. (There’s more about this in my article for The Gadflyer a couple of weeks ago.)
For whatever reason, Dems agreed to add James Leon Holmes to the list of 25. This was the first of two mistakes. The second was yesterday, when Holmes was confirmed.
By any reasonable definition, Holmes is a very conservative ideologue. He’s a member of the Federalist Society and former president of Arkansas Right to Life. He has compared pro-choice advocates to Nazis and written that rape victims get pregnant “with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.” He’s also argued, “The wife is subordinate to herself and to her husband” and that “the woman is to place herself under the authority of the man.”
Just as disturbing are his views on separation of church and state.
In a 2002 address to the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in Ann Arbor, Mich., Holmes questioned the legitimacy of church-state separation, noting that “we are left with some unease about this notion that Christianity and the political order should be assigned to separate spheres.”
Noting that “Christianity transcends the political order and cannot be subordinated to the political order,” he also suggested that eventually religion and government would be one.
“The final reunion of Church and state will take place at the end of time, when Christ will claim definitive political power of all creation, inaugurating an entirely new society based on the supernatural,” Holmes declared at the religious gathering.
With a record like this, even some Republicans were distancing themselves from this nominee. And yet, as of yesterday, Holmes as a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. How’d this happen? A handful of Democratic senators let us down.
The judicial nomination wars, dormant in recent months, re-emerged Tuesday as the Senate narrowly confirmed one of President Bush’s nominees to the bench who has argued that abortion is akin to the Holocaust and that the Bible requires women to be subservient to men.
The Senate voted 51 to 46 to put J. Leon Holmes on the federal bench in Arkansas after a fierce debate in which some Republican women voted against the president while Democrats from Mr. Holmes’s home state, Arkansas, spoke of him in glowing terms.
The final vote on Holmes nomination was 51-46. Thanks to a few Republican women senators, we had the votes to block Holmes’ nomination, but we couldn’t keep the caucus together.
In the end, six Democrats voted in favor of Mr. Bush’s candidate, while five Republicans broke ranks and opposed him. In addition to John W. Warner of Virginia, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the other three Republicans voting against Mr. Holmes were all women, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, both of Maine.
In addition to Senators Lincoln and Pryor, the Democrats who supported the nomination included Zell Miller of Georgia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and John B. Breaux and Mary L. Landrieu, both of Louisiana.
You have to assume when a Republican from Texas is willing to vote against a Bush nominee, the guy has to be pretty bad.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, cast her first vote against a Bush nominee when she opposed Holmes. “He doesn’t have the fundamental commitment to the total equality of women in our society,” she said in explaining her vote.
It’s too late now, of course, because Holmes will soon be wearing his black robe, but, as usual, Pat Leahy put it best.
“This is something you might expect out of a Neanderthal era,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said in a floor speech. “Why in heaven’s name did the president nominate him?”
I can think of five Dem senators whose answer to that question I’d like to hear.