...and just in time for Christmas.
Bush renominating 20 judicial candidates
President Bush plans to renominate 20 candidates who were neither accepted nor rejected by the U-S Senate during the last term.
Republicans are hoping their electoral gains will discourage new filibusters. But Democrats have enough votes in the Senate -- 44 -- to resume them.
The list of nominees includes Priscilla Richman Owen who was nominated to the New Orleans-based Fifth U-S Circuit Court of Appeals.
http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=2731193
"The president nominated highly qualified individuals to the federal courts during his first term, but the Senate failed to vote on many nominations," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said. "Unfortunately, this only exacerbates the issue of judicial vacancies, compounds the backlog of cases and delays timely justice for the American people."
After the November election, Republicans added to their majority in the Senate. They now control the chamber by a 10-vote margin, 55 to 45.
According to the Web site of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy, Bush has nominated 34 people for appeals courts, and 18 of them have been confirmed. Of his 97 nominations for district courts, 88 were confirmed.
Republicans were angered during Bush's first term when Democrats used filibusters to block several of Bush's nominees to federal appellate courts.
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Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of being divisive.
"The Bush Administration is ending the year as they began it, choosing confrontation over compromise, ideology over moderation, and defiance over cooperation," he said in a written statement.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/23/bush.judiciary/
Nominees Being Filibustered
http://www.independentjudiciary.com/nominees/index.cfm?CategoryID=8
Bush knows the Dems will want to save their filibuster for when he nominates some extremist to the SCOTUS. He's pushing the issue early to see if he can load the lower courts with judges who will be bad for America and Americans.
Bush is a ruthless politician, out to destroy our way of life and impose the will of, as has been ably pointed out, 20-some percent of America on the rest of us.
We're at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and here at home.