President Obama greets Rep. David Scott at joint session of Congress.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has an ally in trying to derail President Obama's nomination of Michael Boggs to a seat on the federal bench in Georgia. Rep. David Scott (D-GA) has
teamed up with NARAL in a blast email to the organization's members asking them to contact their senators to stop the Boggs' nomination.
Boggs, one of Obama's nominees for a Georgia district court, has sparked an all-out revolt among civil rights leaders, abortion rights groups and LGBT groups over votes he took as a former state legislator to keep the confederate insignia on the Georgia state flag, to tighten restrictions on access to abortion and to ban same-sex marriage.
"I'm as surprised and outraged as you are to be fighting an anti-civil rights, anti-choice, anti-marriage equality nominee put forward by Obama's White House to serve on the federal bench in my home state in Georgia," says Scott, who previously served as a state legislator with Boggs. "If we don't stop Michael Boggs, he'll be on the court for his entire lifetime."
The Senate Judiciary Committee hasn't had a hearing yet on this nomination. It came about because of extreme Republican obstruction: in order for Obama to get any of six vacancies filled in Georgia green-lighted by the state's senators, he made a bad deal with them. Four of the six names put forward are the Republicans' picks. Only one nominee is African-American. And one of the nominees—Boggs—is unacceptable to basically all of the groups in the Democratic coalition.
The White House says this is the only way it can get any of its nominees. It's not. Chairman Patrick Leahy and the Judiciary Committee do not have to observe the tradition of deference to home state senators. That's a courtesy that the committee's most recent Republican chair, Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT) did not extend to them.