the racial honeymoon is over (did you miss it too?)

...Judge Pickering, of the Federal District Court in Hattiesburg, Miss., seeks a seat on the federal appeals court in New Orleans. Mr. Bush initially nominated him largely at the behest of Mr. Lott, a longtime political supporter from Judge Pickering's home state. But the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the nomination along party lines last March, after heated arguments over his record on civil rights in Mississippi.

Administration officials said at the time that Judge Pickering had been treated unfairly, and they planned to have the president renominate him after the new Senate convened this month under Republican control.

But that plan became uncertain when a firestorm developed over Mr. Lott's praise in December for the 1948 presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond, who ran on a segregationist platform.

Senior Justice Department officials then recommended against Judge Pickering's renomination, fearing that the administration would otherwise be inviting a painful debate on the issue of race and how Southern Republicans like Mr. Lott and Judge Pickering had treated it.

Officials said today that the White House had wavered on whether to renominate the judge. One important reason Mr. Bush decided to go ahead, they said, was a belief that he had accumulated substantial political capital on race by severely criticizing Mr. Lott's comments on the Thurmond candidacy.

"By taking on a member of his own party over race," one official said, "he gained significant moral standing that can be used to argue that Judge Pickering is a good man whose record should not be distorted."

...

His critics have described him as a throwback to the days of segregation, citing among other things an article he wrote as a law student in 1959 that seemed to urge a strengthening of the state's anti-miscegenation laws.

At his committee hearing last February, Judge Pickering said he had never opposed mixed marriages. But detractors have pointed to his extraordinary efforts from the bench, after becoming a federal judge in 1990, to reduce the sentence of a man convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of a mixed-race couple...


Of course, he also renominated Miguel Estrada, so perhaps the Pickering nomination is the outrageous thing he asks for that he doesn't expect to get when he's hoping to get something else dreadful through.

We're clear on the trajectory of the race issue, though, right?

A Mississippian weighs in, via Long Story, Short Pier, who suspects it's about Priscilla Owens instead.

edit: Oh, terrific. More (with a Rumsfeld cameo - gee, wonder how this squares with his whole no-added-value theory about the men who were sent to Vietnam?) from digby

edit again: TalkLeft on the legal implications of judicial choices.

as Ted pointed out

President Bush's call to eliminate taxes on corporate dividends, a centerpiece of his economic plan, is raising alarm among state and local officials who say it could add to the growing budget pressures on states and cities.

Budget experts were still reviewing numbers today, but said the provision on dividends would cost state and local governments tens of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

The states fear they will lose in two ways. Because state income tax laws are tied to the federal law, the states will also stop taxing dividends. In addition, the removal of taxes on dividends makes stocks a more attractive investment vehicle than the traditionally tax-free municipal bonds.

Over all, the officials said the potential losses far exceed the $10 billion in state aid included in Mr. Bush's 10-year plan, much of which is earmarked to help the unemployed.

and... the ethics honeymoon is over too

House Republicans weakened their own ethics rules yesterday, pushing through language that would allow lobbyists to cater meals to members' offices and let charities pay for lawmakers to travel and stay at golf resorts and other locales.

House leaders tucked the changes into a broader rules package that Congress approves at the outset of each term. The move sparked a protest from Democrats, the House ethics committee chairman and officials from public watchdog groups, all of whom argued that the changes would undermine efforts to eliminate influence-peddling on Capitol Hill.

"It's just an erosion of the gift rule that is not justifiable," said Don Simon, acting president of the public interest group Common Cause. "It's a major retreat. It was done in a stealth fashion without any public scrutiny."

Lawmakers approved the rules change on a party-line vote of 221 to 203, after rejecting a Democratic attempt to scuttle it.

"Republicans believe they have such a safe and secure majority they want to undo some of the significant strides," said Rep. Martin Frost (D-Tex.).

Described as the "pizza rule" by both Republicans and Democrats, the measure would allow outside interests to pay for "perishable food or refreshments offered to members of an office." Last year, for example, a lobbying firm representing pharmaceutical interests sent in dinner for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's (R-Ill.) staff while they were working late on a prescription drug bill.

When Republicans took control of the House in 1995 they severely limited what members could accept from lobbyists and other outside groups. Under current rules, members and staff cannot accept a meal or gift exceeding $50, with a limit of $100 each year from any source.

The new rule modified these restrictions by divvying up the value of any given meal by the number of people who eat it. The change contradicts an advisory the ethics committee sent out in November, saying the $50 limit "cannot be evaded by . . . averaging the expense of gifts given to more than one member or staff person."

Ethics committee chairman Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) said he had objected to the change, but was overruled by GOP leaders...

Robert Ehrlich, the moderate governor of Maryland

Maryland prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty for black suspects charged with killing white victims, a racial disparity that mirrors national trends and raises questions about whether capital punishment is being administered fairly, University of Maryland researchers said yesterday.

An analysis of nearly 6,000 Maryland homicide cases over two decades, the most comprehensive examination of how the state applies capital punishment, also found a marked geographic disparity among the state's 24 jurisdictions.

Concerned about possible bias, outgoing Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) last May halted all executions pending the study's completion. Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has pledged to lift the moratorium regardless of the findings and to review cases on an individual basis.

The study's conclusions that race and location appear to greatly influence application of the death penalty are likely to renew the intense debate. Principal investigator Raymond Paternoster, a criminal justice professor, said yesterday that it would be premature to end the ban without first addressing the issues raised.

"The kind of disparities we're finding are systemic. They cannot be identified on a case-by-case analysis," Paternoster said...


Any of you who were around before the election may remember that Mr. Ehrlich ran on a promise to carefully study the effectiveness of Maryland's gun control laws in stopping crime with an eye toward unilaterally repealing them. Apparently there are some issues which don't merit the same scrutiny.

Go figure his minority outreach consisted of suppressing - how to put this moderately - certain votes.

A bit of history on the estimable Mr. Ehrlich and his brilliant career here.

owwwwwch

Ari Fleischer and Helen (Thomas, I assume) (at the end of a long exchange in which Ari claims that it's OK to bomb innocent Iraqi people because of who their leaders are *and* that the Iraqi people don't get to choose who their leaders are):

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don't think that has been what history has shown.

Q I think many countries don't have -- people don't have the decision -- including us.

via Buzzflash, by way of the Hamster

for the buffisti

(I coined that word, you know)

The Onion Joss Whedon interview

axis grinding

At the White House and among Republicans on Capitol Hill there is increasingly serious talk of pulling out the 37,000 troops which the US has garrisoned along the DMZ for about a half century. (Henry Hyde's International Relations Committee is apparently preparing hearings about a possible unilateral withdrawal of American troops.)

In other words, in order to take a tough line against North Korea's nuclear jawboning, the Bush White House is now prepared to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and contemplate the unilateral withdrawal of all American forces from the Korean Peninsula.

If that's the hardline approach, I'd hate to see what appeasement might look like.

...

The next wrinkle in the story, or the next question, may be when exactly the Bush administration found out about the NK's uranium enrichment program. According to today's always invaluable Nelson Report, former Clinton administration officials are now prepared to testify before Congress that they got intelligence about the NK's clandestine uranium enrichment program back in 2000 and briefed the incoming Bush administration folks on that intelligence at the beginning of 2001.

If that's true, says Nelson ...

Democrats are prepared to ask what the Bush people did with this intelligence, all through 2001, and why negotiations with N. Korea weren't begun on this vital topic. Democrats, and perhaps more objective observers, note that, instead, it was only in October, 2002, after months of international pressure to Pyongyang, that the subject came up...

double taxation is OK for seniors

Atrios points out that the dividend tax cut will not apply to money withdrawn from your 401K.

I need a good recipe for hamentaschen

please remit.

religious fanatic terrorist arrested for planning death of US official

Why, that man's not swarthy

The leader of a white supremacist group was arrested Wednesday on charges he tried to have a federal judge murdered.

Matt Hale, 31, was taken into custody by agents of an FBI-led terrorism task force as he arrived at Chicago's federal courthouse for a contempt of court hearing in a trademark infringement lawsuit.

The East Peoria man is head of the World Church of the Creator. A former member of the racist organization, Benjamin Smith, went on a deadly shooting rampage against minorities in Illinois and Indiana in 1999. Smith killed two people and wounded several others before killing himself.

Hale was indicted on charges he tried between Nov. 29 and Dec. 17 to get someone to kill U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow.

Lefkow has been presiding over the trademark case involving Hale's use of the name World Church of the Creator. She had recently ordered the organization to stop using the name and turn over all printed materials reading "World Church of the Creator" because the name infringed on the rights of an Oregon group, the TE-TA-MA Truth Foundation. But Hale refused to comply.

On Dec. 13, the judge ordered Hale to show why he should not be held in contempt.

Bonus: the COTC was started by a Democrat from a northeastern industrial state!

No, just kidding. It was a southern Republican elected official, after he became disenchanted by the Republicans and the John Birch Society for talking the talk about race but not walking the walk and decided they were really jewish.

Felt right at home for years, though, until he started talking about his racial theories outside the group.

via Atrios