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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (856)	1/12/2003 2:11:07 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Frist Says Dems Are 'Playing Politics' With Pickering Renomination Sunday, January 12, 2003 WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday he supports President Bush's renomination to a federal appeals court of a Mississippi judge whom Democrats rejected last year when they controlled the Senate. One of U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering's patrons is Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who lost his job as Senate GOP leader after making what critics said were racially insensitive remarks. Frist, Lott's successor, said Democrats who are threatening to filibuster Pickering's nomination are "playing politics" with racial issues. "Judge Pickering is a well-qualified judge. The American Bar Association used those words, 'is well qualified,"' Frist, R-Tenn., told Fox News Sunday. "There are many people who think he did not get a fair hearing before. So I receive his nomination gladly. ... I plan on supporting Pickering." Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., renewed Democrats' pledge to try to block Pickering's nomination. "I think this really lays bare the administration's real position on civil rights. This exposes the Southern strategy clearly," Daschle said on ABC's This Week. "We're going to do everything we can, everything we can, to stop that nomination, on the floor and in the committee." Pickering was defeated 10-9 in the Senate Judiciary Committee last March, when Democrats held a Senate majority. Civil rights groups said he supported segregation as a young man in Mississippi. Pickering's opponents also pointed to his conservative voting record as a Mississippi state lawmaker and decisions as a judge. Bush's announcement last week that he will again nominate Pickering for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals drew immediate filibuster threats from Senate Democrats, including some on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to send the nomination to the full Senate. While Republicans have an edge in the Senate, they lack the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster without Democratic help. "It'd be hard to get 60 votes," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said in a television interview. He thinks the full Senate should have the chance to vote on the nomination. One Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has said Pickering showed "glaring racial insensitivity" in his handling of a 1994 cross-burning case. Pickering sought a lighter sentence for a defendant in a case in which a cross was burned on the lawn of an interracial couple. Frist rejected Democrats' criticism. "I think this unfortunately is trying to use race and racial issues to play politics," Frist. Frist also said that Democrats were ignoring other actions by Pickering, including his 1967 testimony against the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.