Ka-BOOM!! The Bush Judicial March Continues!

[dude1394]

That dubya'...he just keeps doing what he said he was going to do.

This one one must have hurt. Heh!!

Glum Democrats Can't See Halting Bush on Courts

Republicans say that Mr. Bush, in making conservative judicial choices, has been doing precisely what he said he would do in both of his presidential campaigns. Indeed, they say, his re-election, and the election of a Republican Congress, meant that the choices reflected the views of much of the American public.

Republicans rejected Democratic assertions that Judge Alito was out of the mainstream. "The American people see Judge Alito and say, that's exactly the sort of person we want to see on the Supreme Court," said Steve Schmidt, the White House official who managed the nomination.
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Mr. Bush has now appointed one-quarter of the federal appeals court judges, and, assuming that Judge Alito is confirmed - the Judiciary Committee vote is expected to occur in the next 10 days - will have put two self-described conservatives on a Supreme Court that has only two members appointed by a Democratic president.
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Several Democrats expressed frustration over what they saw as the Republicans outmaneuvering them by drawing attention to an episode Wednesday when Judge Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, began crying as her husband was being questioned. That evening, senior Democratic senate aides convened at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, stunned at the realization that the pictures of a weeping Mrs. Alito were being broadcast across the nation - as opposed to, for example, images of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, pressing Judge Alito about his membership in an alumni club that resisted affirmative action efforts.
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The panel also advised them, participants said, that Democratic senators could oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction, a strategy that now seems to have failed the party.
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By the end of last year, about 60 percent of the 165 judges on the federal appeals courts were appointed by Republican presidents, with 40 percent from Democratic presidents. Of the 13 circuit courts of appeal, 9 have majorities of judges named by Republicans presidents.

The extent to which Republicans are intent on remaking the judiciary was demonstrated by one of President Bush's greatest setbacks, when he was forced to abandon the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, in no small part because conservatives were distrustful of her position on abortion rights.

Asked how they might stop the shift, Stephanie Cutter, a senior Democratic Senate aide, sighed and responded: "Win. Win in 2006."

Indeed, many Democrats said that what took place with both the Roberts and Alito nominations simply underlined what Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democratic who ran for president in 2004, said would happen to the court if Mr. Bush was returned to the White House.

"George Bush won the election," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat. "If you don't like it, you better win elections."