Pryor restraint

[sisyphusshrugged]

The nomination of William Pryor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit should teach liberals once and for all never to underestimate George W. Bush's chutzpah. Just when it seemed the president couldn't possibly find any potential judges more right-wing than those he's already appointed, he outdid himself. "It's an extraordinary public record," Ralph Neas, president of the civil liberties watchdog group People for the American Way, says of Pryor. "Rarely do you see someone so bad on so many issues at a relatively young age."

Pryor, the 40-year-old attorney general of Alabama, holds far-right positions on women's rights, abortion, gay rights, the environment, criminal justice and the separation of church and state. Speaking at Pryor's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "In a way, his views are an unfortunate stitching together of the worst parts of the most troubling judges we've seen thus far."

Because Bush nominated him on April 9, two and a half weeks into the war with Iraq, Pryor initially didn't receive as much scrutiny as judges like Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering, both of whom the president renominated after a Democratic Senate rejected them. (Pickering is still awaiting a second hearing, while Owen is being filibustered by Senate Democrats).

Yet Pryor's rhetoric over the years is at least as extreme as that of former Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who stepped down in December after he was criticized for comments widely deemed racist, and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., whose anti-gay remarks in April created an uproar. And if his nomination succeeds, he'll have a lifetime spot on one of the 12 courts that make up the second-highest judicial authority in America.

Pryor calls Roe vs. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history" -- meaning, Schumer noted, that he considers it worse than such dark moments in U.S. judicial history as Plessy vs. Ferguson, the 1896 decision legitimizing segregation, or Dred Scott, the 1857 decision affirming that slaves were property...


Lisa has information on what you can do to try and stop this little oleaginous turd from deciding - well - anything.

Please go look, and then do something. (Read the whole thing - she's been talking about this for days).