This One Is Easy

It's about time that the Democrats in Congress, especially those on the Senate Judiciary Committee, start using some of that powder they have so assiduously kept dry over the past seven years. They can start with a particularly noxious nominee for the Fifth District, US Court of Appeals. From an editorial in today's NY Times:

President Bush’s latest appeals court nominee, Leslie Southwick, has a disturbing history of insensitivity to blacks and other minority groups. The Senate should reject this nomination and make clear to the White House that it will reject all future nominees who do not meet the high standards of fairness that are essential for such important posts.

A non-negotiable quality for judicial nominees is that they must be committed to equal justice. Judge Southwick, whom President Bush has nominated for a seat on the New Orleans-based United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, repeatedly failed this test as a Mississippi state court judge.

The Times took the trouble to examine Judge Southwick's record as a state judge in Mississippi, and what it found was truly shocking: he sided with a plaintiff who filed suit after she was fired for referring to a colleague as "a good ol' nigger." He took away a child from a mother for the sole reason that she was a bisexual. His opinions on decision (none of which I have taken the trouble to search for) must read like a textbook in Nineteenth Century bigotry, yet President Bush has nominated him for the US Court of Appeals. This certainly is not surprising, unfortunately.

Judge Southwick’s judicial record also shows the usual pattern of President Bush’s judicial nominees: insensitivity toward workers, consumers and people injured by corporations. The federal appeals courts are already overloaded with judges who hold these biases.

This one should be easy. Judge Southwick's nomination should be loudly and unequivocally rejected.