Senator Kennedy made an incredible speech about the nuclear option on the floor of the Senate this morning. I already posted
this diary which gives his remarks on how Republicans are breaking Senate Rules by going forward with this plan. He also spoke about the individual nominees, and why they are not qualified to sit on the federal bench - you can read these comments after the jump.
Please recommend this diary so that others will see what the Senator had to say, and CONTACT YOUR SENATOR to let him/ her know you oppose this assault on Senate Rules and tradition.
To read the speech in its entirety, click here.
Floor Statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (partial):
"Who are the nominees the Republican leadership wants confirmed so desperately that they are willing to break the rules to change the rules?
President Bush has said he wants judges who will follow the law, not try to re-write it. But his actions tell a different story. The contested nominees have records that make clear they would push the agenda of a narrow far-right fringe, rather than protect rights important to all Americans.
Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown, William Myers, Terrence Boyle, and William Pryor would erase much of the country's hard-fought progress toward equality and opportunity. Their values - favoring big business over the needs of families, destroying environmental protections, and turning back the clock on civil rights - are not mainstream values.
As a Texas Supreme Court Justice, Priscilla Owen has shown clear hostility to fundamental rights, particularly on issues of major importance to workers, consumers, victims of discrimination, and women. Neither the facts, nor the law, nor established legal precedents, stop her from reaching her desired result.
Even many newspapers that endorsed her campaign for the Texas Supreme Court now oppose her confirmation after seeing how poorly she served as a judge. The Houston Chronicle wrote that Justice Owen "too often contorts rulings to conform to her particular conservative outlook." The paper also noted that "It's saying something that Owen is a regular dissenter on a Texas Supreme Court made up mostly of other conservative Republicans."
Her own colleagues on the conservative Texas Supreme Court have repeatedly accused her of the same thing. They clearly state that Justice Owen puts her own views above the law, even when the law is crystal clear. Justice Owens former colleague on the Texas Supreme Court, our new Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, has said she was guilty of "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."
In another case, Justice Gonzales joined a majority opinion that criticized Justice Owen for "disregarding the procedural limitations in the statute," and "taking a position even more extreme" than was argued by the defendant in the case.
For the very important D.C. Circuit, the President has nominated another extreme right-wing candidate. Janice Rogers Brown's record on the California Supreme Court makes clear that - like Priscilla Owen - she's a judicial activist who will roll back basic rights. When she joined the California Supreme Court, the California State Bar Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission had rated her "not qualified," and insensitive to established legal precedent" when she served on the state court of appeals.
All Americans, wherever they live, should be concerned about such a nomination to this vital court, which interprets federal laws that protect our civil liberties, workers' safety, and our ability to breathe clean air and drink clean water in their communities. Only the D.C. Circuit can review the national air quality standards under the Clean Air Act and national drinking water standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
This court also hears the lions share of cases involving rights of employees under the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the National Labor Relations Act.
Yet Janice Rogers Browns record shows a deep hostility to civil rights, to workers' rights, to consumer protection, and to a wide variety of governmental actions in many other areas - the very issues that predominate in the D.C. Circuit.
Perhaps most disturbing is the contempt she has repeatedly expressed for the very idea of democratic self-government. She has stated that, "where government moves in, community retreats [and] civil society disintegrates." She has said that government leads to "families under siege, war in the streets." In her view, when government advances . . . freedom is imperiled [and] civilization itself jeopardized."
Janice Rogers Brown has also written opinions that would undermine civil rights. She has held, for example, that the First Amendment prevents courts from granting injunctions against racial slurs in the workplace, even when those slurs are so pervasive that they create a hostile work environment in violation of federal job discrimination laws.
President Bush has selected William Myers for the important Ninth Circuit court of appeals. Mr. Myers is a long-time mining and cattle industry lobbyist. He has compared federal laws protecting the environment to "the tyrannical actions of King George" over the American colonies. He has denounced our environmental laws as "regulatory excesses." In the Interior Department, he served his corporate clients instead of the public interest. As Solicitor of Interior, he tried to give public land worth millions of dollars to corporate interests. He issued an opinion clearing the way for mining on land sacred to Native Americans, without consulting the tribes affected by his decision - although he took the time to meet personally with the mining company that stood to profit from his opinion.
William Myers is a particularly inappropriate choice for the Ninth Circuit, which contains many of America's most precious natural resources and national parks, including the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park, and which is home to many Native American tribes.
The nomination of Terrence Boyle is still pending in the Judiciary Committee. By all appearances, he was chosen for his radical views, not his qualifications. His decisions as a trial judge have been reversed or criticized on appeal more than 150 times, far more than any other district judge nominated to a circuit court by President Bush. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed him in a voting rights case, in which Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he had ignored established legal standards.
In fact, he has made serious mistakes in cases that matter most to Americans' daily lives. Time and again, the conservative Fourth Circuit has ruled that Judge Boyle improperly dismissed cases asking protection for individual rights, such as the right to free speech, or the right of free association, or the right to be free from discrimination, or the right to a fair and lawful sentence in a criminal case.
It's no wonder that his nomination is opposed by a broad coalition of organizations nationally and in his home state of North Carolina representing law enforcement officers, workers, and victims of discrimination.
Last, but by no means least disturbing, the President has re-nominated William Pryor to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Mr. Pryor is no true "conservative." He has pushed a radical agenda contrary to much of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence over the last forty years, and at odds with important precedents that have made our country a fairer nation.
Mr. Pryor has fought aggressively to undermine the power of Congress to protect civil rights and individual rights. He's tried to cut back on the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Clean Water Act. He's been contemptuously dismissive of claims of racial bias in the application of the death penalty. He's relentlessly advocated its use, even for persons with mental retardation. He's even ridiculed the current Supreme Court justices, calling them "nine octogenarian lawyers who happen to sit on the Supreme Court." He can't even get his facts right. Only two of the nine justices are 80 years old or older.
Mr. Pryor has criticized Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which helps ensure that all Americans can vote, regardless of their race or ethnic background. He's even called the Voting Rights Act, which has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court, "an affront to federalism." His hostility to voting rights belongs in another era - not on a federal court. As Alabama's Attorney General, in a case involving a disabled man forced to crawl up the courthouse stairs to reach the courtroom, Mr. Pryor argued that the disabled have no fundamental right to attend their own public court proceedings. His nomination was rushed through the Committee despite serious questions about his ethics and even his candor before the Committee.
History will judge us harshly in the Senate if we don't stand tall against the brazen abuses of power demonstrated by these nominees.
Many well-qualified, fair-minded nominees could be quickly confirmed if the Bush Administration would give up its right-wing litmus test. Why, when there are so many qualified Republican attorneys, would the President choose nominees whose records raise so much doubt about whether they will follow the law? Why force an all-out battle over a few right-wing nominees, when the nation has so many more pressing problems, such as national security, the economy, education, and health care?"