Pickering

What, like he really believes in them (his politics)?

Welcome to the future Theocratic States of Amerika…

I don’t have much of a problem with Bush appointing judges he believes in to recess appointments. Presidents should appoint the best people possible to the federal judiciary.

In this case the nominee in question had a unanimous “well qualified rating” from the ABA and a lower-than-average (both nationally and within his circuit) rate of reversal – which is considered the “gold standard” for judicial nominees.

Thanks, Thorley, for parroting the Republican talking points. Yet another example of how this administration thinks that “advise and consent” means “rubber-stamp.” They see governing the way that Microsoft sees market share: 90% is not enough. When Republicans say they are not democrats, well, they’re finally telling the truth.

As I explained at more length on my site, Pickering was probably chosen for this recess appointment mostly because he had such strong support in the Senate. That makes Bush’s infringing on Senate prerogatives less of an issue.

The vote to end the filibuster drew 53 votes, so Pickering would almost certainly have been confirmed had he gotten a vote.

The slander about Pickering’s career during the fight was particularly nasty, but something we have come to expect, particularly from the left.

Jam’s point that Pickering’s age had something to do with his recess appointment is probably correct, too.

Doug Merrill wrote:

Thanks, Thorley, for parroting the Republican talking points.

In this case the definition of “Republican talking points” appears to be “discussing the nominee’s actual qualifications” rather than engaging in petty character assassination.

Yet another example of how this administration thinks that “advise and consent” means “rubber-stamp.”

In this case, it means “actually let the nominee come to the floor for an up or down vote.”

Out of all the questionable, worrying or troublesome cases to come before Pickering’s court, out of all the possibly unjust outcomes of mandatory sentencing guidelines, the people he made his strongest push to help were cross burners.

Actually, a better question in the Swan case is why did the Clinton Justice Department cut a deal to let the ringleader plead to a misdemeanor after he had already fired a gun into the home of the couple in question?

I am pretty much agnostic on mandatory minimum sentences (although I am generally opposed to the creation of a federal criminal code) but Doug Merrill is (unfortunately as usual) misrepresenting the facts when suggests that Judge Pickering had singled out cross-burners. According to the Village Voice (click on my name for the link to the article):

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, realizing that Pickering’s “judicial reputation hangs almost entirely on one explosive case”—the cross-burning case—decided to extensively review that case and the rest of Pickering’s judicial record.

As reporter Bill Rankin wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on March 9, that paper concluded that

“Pickering—like many other federal judges who face rigid U.S. sentencing rules—has gone out of his way many times [as he did in the cross-burning case] to reduce prison sentences in cases where he thought the result would be unreasonable. And many of the defendants who benefited are black.”

The March 9 article by Rankin also noted that before being nominated to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by the president:

Pickering, “in a 1999 essay on race relations in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, addressed racial bias in the courts, empathizing with black, not white, concerns. He counseled whites who were angry about the recent acquittal of a black murder suspect to look at the justice system from a black perspective.

“While Mississippians may not realize that African-Americans are treated differently by the system,” Pickering wrote, “it is the truth and a most disturbing one if you are black.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution added that “as a judge, Pickering has thrown out only two jury verdicts, both times because he felt the verdicts were biased against minority plaintiffs.”

Based on this it would appear that Judge Pickering seems to be have questions about mandatory minimum sentences (as do many federal justices across the political spectrum) in general.