An Unqualified
Judicial Nominee
EDTORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, May 3, 2006
Senate Republicans have announced
plans to push for a quick vote on Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination for a
powerful appeals court judgeship has languished since 2003. There are good
reasons the nomination has been kept on hold. Mr. Kavanaugh was
unqualified then, and he is unqualified now. Moreover, since his Senate
hearing in 2004, new issues have been raised that he should be questioned about,
including what role, if any, he played in Bush administration policies like the
National Security Agency's domestic spying program.
Mr. Kavanaugh has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit, often called the nation's second most important
court. A young lawyer with paltry courtroom experience, Mr. Kavanaugh does
not have the legal background appropriate for such a lofty appointment.
What he does have is a résumé that screams political partisanship.
He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor, and helped draft
possible grounds of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He became
a partisan in the impeachment battles that followed, co-writing an op-ed article
in 1999 that presented Mr. Starr as an "American hero," while railing against a
"presidentially approved smear campaign against him." Mr. Kavanaugh has
spent much of his legal career since then in the Bush White House, where he
helped select many of the administration's far-right judicial nominees.
Since Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination was first considered, information has come to
light about a number of troubling policies that he could have had a hand in,
including domestic spying, torture and rendition of detainees to other
countries. Senate Democrats would like to question Mr. Kavanaugh about
these programs, and about what connection he had, if any, to the Jack Abramoff
scandal.
It is not clear, however, that they will get the chance. Arlen Specter, the
Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has
so far resisted calls for another hearing before Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination is
brought to a vote. The Republicans have long used judicial nominations as
a way of placating the far right of their party, and it appears that with
President Bush sinking in the polls, they now want to offer up some new appeals
court judges to their conservative base. But a lifetime appointment to the
D.C. Circuit is too important to be treated as a political reward.
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