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President Set to
Renominate Five
for Appeals
Courts
By SHERYL GAY
STOLBERG, NYTimes on the Web, August 31, 2006
WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 — The
White House announced Wednesday that President Bush would revive the expired
nominations of five controversial appeals court candidates. The move sets
the stage for yet another election-year battle over the federal judiciary.
The White House action was in one sense a formality. Under Senate rules,
nominations automatically expire and are sent back to the White House if the
lawmakers are out of session for more than 30 days, as they will have been when
they return after Labor Day. Such nominations are ordinarily kept alive by
unanimous consent of the Senate, but this time Democrats objected, forcing Mr.
Bush to renew them.
With just a few weeks to go before lawmakers break for their fall campaigns, and
with Democrats and even some Republicans objecting to the nominees, their
confirmation is in doubt.
Even so, the White House move cheered conservatives, who make up an important
part of Mr. Bush’s political base and are passionate about putting conservatives
on the bench. The battle over the judiciary was a big feature of the 2004
Congressional campaigns, and conservatives are eager to replay that fight.
“We think all five of these nominees have been delayed unfairly and certainly
deserve hearings and final votes on the Senate floor,” said Sean Rushton,
executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group.
“This is an important step towards putting them back in play in September,” just
in time for the election season.
Liberals said Mr. Bush was picking a fight.
“This is nothing more than a ploy to gin up the base in this critical election
year,” Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said in a statement.
“Rather than playing politics with our nation’s courts, the president should
send up nominees who are fair, just and qualified.”
The candidates are Terrence W. Boyle, a federal district judge in North
Carolina, and William James Haynes II of Virginia, general counsel at the
Defense Department, both nominated for the United States Court of Appeals for
the Fourth Circuit; William Gerry Myers III and Norman Randy Smith, both of
Idaho, for the Ninth Circuit; and Michael Brunson Wallace of Mississippi, for
the Fifth Circuit.
Of the five, Judge Boyle has come closest to a Senate vote. But his
nomination is complicated by conflict-of-interest accusations, and Democrats,
who also object to his record on civil rights, have been threatening to block it
by filibuster. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, has
said that if Democrats try a filibuster, he will invoke a rule change known as
“the nuclear option,” which would bar the filibustering of judicial nominations.
The two sides agree that this step would lead to a virtual shutdown of Senate
business, and so the chamber has been locked in a kind of holding pattern, with
leaders of each party reluctant to push the issue. With the Senate in
recess until next week, it is unclear whether the White House move will now lead
to confrontation.
A Senate Republican aide, granted anonymity because the leaders had not given
permission to speak about their plans, said that once Congress reconvened next
week, only three weeks would remain before the fall break, “and we have security
issues on the forefront.”
“It’s very possible we could spend a couple of days on judges,” the aide said,
“but we’ll just have to see how things go.”
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