05.09.05
Charles W Pickering Sr.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Charles Pickering is,
formerly a U.S. District Court judge in Mississippi, served on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004, under recess appointment by President bush. He is now senior counsel at Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz
Because Mr. Pickering was recess appointment by President Bush, I believe that he is a reasonable example of the type of judge the Democrats are filibustering.
To be up front, I dislike judicial activism. I dislike when justices decide to change the law in cases like executing retarded or underaged people just because a large amount of people find the practice disgusting. I personally find the death penalty to be a horrific punishment without a good purpose, but that’s not what the law says. In short, I have a traditionally conservative view of how judges should decide cases.
I would like for more judges to have a traditionally conservative view of the law, where they decide things with a strong moderate streak that is not affected by their personal morality or view of how the law should be.
To get to the point, Charles Pickering, seen as qualified and fair-minded enough to be an appeals court appointee, wrote an article titled, “‘Nuclear’ isn’t the only option”. The intended point of the article is to show a compromise of sorts that would solve the judicial appointment problem long-term.
Mr. Pickering talks about the problem:
The confirmation process is broken; it badly needs to be fixed. Each side thinks the other escalated the fight. But the opposition to the Bush nominess is unprecedented.
So, Mr. Pickering is a fair, moderate voice who says that the Democrats are the problem.
This seems like an odd problem to me, given that Democrats have allowed votes on 95% of Bush nominees, and that there are significantly fewer vacancies than there were during Clinton’s years, and during the Clinton years, the nominees never made it out of committee, much less to the floor for an actual up or down vote. Unprecented? Sure, in a limited way. Is that actually a fair viewpoint? Factcheck.org doesn’t appear to think so.
The next point Pickering makes is:
Those opposing Bush nominees lost at the ballot box for the election of senators in 2002, in 2004, and in the presidential election of 2004. Part of the reason was filibustering judges. And they will continue to pay a price as long as they are controlled by narrow, extreme special-interest groups.
I know at least one person who voted for Bush because he wants to make sure that the next Supreme Court justice is a conservative appointment. I’m unconvinced that the moderate voter who’s vote could have been changed in the last election thought about how annoying the Democrats were in filibustering judges. Being that I’ve not previously heard of any data to back up Mr. Pickering’s assertion, I think we can safely ignore his comment. As for “narrow, extreme special-interest groups”, I wonder if the Christian Right is supposed to be considered a broad, moderate special-interest group.
Mr. Pickering goes on to discuss the nuclear option, and while he seems to be in favor of such an option, he proposes Congress implement what he calls, “The Judicial Confirmation Improvements Act”, which would “provide that within a certain period of time after a judicial nomination is received a hearing will be held, within a specified time a nominee will be voted out of committee, with or without a favorable recommendation, and within a certain period of time the full Senate will debate and confirm or reject a nominee by majority vote.”
So, what he’d like would be the nuclear option that also (I think) disallows the tricks the Republicans played during the Clinton administration.
Honestly, his solution sounds vaguely moderate — unlike the entirety of the rest of the article. I think it’d be more moderate if this were a proposal that would go into effect after the next president takes office. Passing it now would just be a form of the nuclear option.
Personally, I like the filibuster. It slows down lawmakers, so that they are unable to screw up our country unless they have 60 senators willing to do so. It’s that whole “minority rights” thing that makes it easier to live in the US, as even if we agree with the majority most of the time, we’re all occasionally in the minority.
Here at Moderate Wacko, I value a good political process far more than I value any individual issue. I’d prefer it if everyone would attempt to view the issues in a long-term sense, thinking about when their viewpoints are in the minority, before jumping on whatever solution will help them now.