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Sunday, January 18, 2004

Enjoy the holiday

Washington, D.C., January 19 (Pox News)—Sidestepping a two-year congressional battle, President Bush is planning to name former Confederate President Jefferson Davis to a federal appeals court, in a slap at filibustering Senate Democrats who have questioned the civil rights records of the President’s judicial nominees.

Bush will appoint Davis to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under authority granted him during periods when Congress is in recess. Such appointments, which need no Senate confirmation, are valid until the next Congress takes office, in this case in January 2005.

Following by only a few days Bush’s controversial appointment of U.S. District Court judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit, the installation of Davis sends a signal to Democrats that the President is willing and ready to make the judiciary a key issue for voters in 2004. Pushing for Davis’s confirmation last year, Bush said, “He was a good, fair-minded man while he was alive, and the treatment he has recently received from a handful of senators is a disgrace. He has wide bipartisan support from those who know him best.” Senior White House officials added that Davis was a longtime Democrat, and that the President originally nominated him in an attempt to “change the tone” of partisan political debate in Washington.

Nevertheless, Senate Democrats and civil rights groups reacted with outrage to the announcement, noting that it is highly unusual for the President to appoint someone who was not only an elected official of the Confederate States of America, but who has been dead for 115 years as well.

“The president’s recess appointment of this long-dead secessionist and Confederate leader on the very day of the federal observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday is an insult to Dr. King, an insult to every African-American, and an insult to all Americans who share Dr. King’s great goals,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. “It serves only to emphasize again this administration’s shameful opposition to civil rights.”

Republicans in turn have accused Democrats of being biased against Bush’s states-rights nominees. They also have accused the Democrats of being biased against Southerners.

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, fired back by saying that Kennedy’s reply “would be disgraceful if it were not so sad.” DeLay called the President’s critics “racists,” claiming that if Jefferson Davis had been black and an abolitionist, the “loony left would no doubt be calling for a holiday in his name instead of impugning the honor of one of the finest sons of the South.” Senate majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, concurred in more measured language, saying in a prepared statement that “Davis served his country honorably and well, even if it wasn’t the United States but rather some other country that seceded from and then went to war against the United States.  In the spirit of Dr. King, I truly believe we need to come together as Americans and put these petty ‘who-fought-who’ quarrels behind us.  Former Confederate President Davis will help us do just that.  He is a good man and an excellent nominee.”

Jefferson Davis could not be reached for comment.

Ed.:  Won’t news junkies realize how much of this post is cribbed from actual wire reports on Pickering? MB:  Yep.  Amazing, isn’t it? 

Posted by Michael on 01/18 at 07:28 PM
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