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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (333995)	12/27/2002 12:52:08 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769667

GOP Looks to Re-Nominate Some Bush Judicial Picks URL: foxnews.com Thursday, December 26, 2002 WASHINGTON — Fallout from the Trent Lott controversy may cost President Bush a prized judicial nominee. After Republicans won the Senate in November, then-incoming Senate Majority Leader Lott vowed to move quickly to confirm Bush's picks for the judiciary. He planned to move especially rapidly on his long-time friend Charles Pickering, the Fifth Circuit Court nominee whom Democrats had rejected earlier in the year after accusing several of his rulings of being racially motivated. "I'm not going to let go of this. This is going to stick in my mind for a long time," Lott, of Mississippi, said after Pickering's rejection. Senate Democrats argued that Pickering was too lenient in a case involving racist criminals and seemed to sympathize with segregationists during the Civil Rights movement. The charges were lobbed and Pickering's nomination was defeated, despite a letter from the brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers praising Pickering as one of the few white prosecutors who stood up to the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s. Many had expected the White House to re-nominate Pickering, but with Lott forced to resign his majority leader position after making seemingly racist comments, and the race issue much more in the spotlight as a result, Senate GOP sources tell Fox News that Pickering is unlikely to get another shot. Incoming Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, implied as much last weekend when asked if Bush would re-nominate Pickering. "It's up to the president who's going to be re-nominated. I'm quite sure that Priscilla Owen will be re-nominated. I'm not sure whether Judge Pickering will be re-nominated," he said. Owen, another nominee to the Fifth Circuit, was also rejected by Democrats despite impeccable credentials as a Texas Supreme Court judge. "We are not going to simply say that someone has an excellent legal mind and unblemished character and then just approve them pro forma," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who acknowledged shortly after Owen's rejection in September that lawmakers often reject judicial court nominees merely for political backstabbing. But Democrats, who have lost their Senate majority, can no longer wield such power and Owen, unlike Pickering, is expected to be re-nominated and swiftly elevated to the federal bench. That's also true of Miguel Estrada, the first Hispanic nominated to serve on the D.C. Court of Appeals. The D.C. Court of Appeals is the second highest court in land and a launching pad for the Supreme Court. Democrats gave Estrada a hearing but never voted on his nomination. Republicans are eager to move on the Owen and Estrada nominations for the same reason. They are leery about the image that Pickering will reflect onto the party and hope that Owen and Estrada will highlight the party's commitment to moving women and Hispanics onto the federal bench. Fox News' Major Garrett contributed to this report.