Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer
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THE LEFT EDGE of the Senate Democratic caucus has taken control of the judicial-nomination process and has forced the entire Senate into what is, at best, an extra-constitutional swamp. With their filibuster of D.C. Circuit Court nominee Miguel Estrada, their threatened filibusters of Fifth Circuit nominees Priscilla Owen and Charles Pickering, and their obstruction of other nominees such as John Roberts, Carolyn Kuhl, and a half-dozen Sixth Circuit nominees, Senate Democrats have decided it is good policy to wreck a judicial nomination and confirmation process that has worked for more than two centuries.
The radical agenda of the Senate Democrats has escaped a great deal of attention, though it surely played a role in their historic defeats in November 2002 and will do so again in the more than half-dozen referendums on incumbent Democratic Senators looming in November 2004. The temptation to let the likes of Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, Patty Murray, Blanche Lincoln, and Chuck Schumer hang themselves on their extremist approach must be huge, but President Bush and his advisers would be better served by aggressively defending the Constitution at every step. There are many ways to do this, including a jam-down of new Senate rules with 51 votes. But a way-station to such a melt-down is found in the president's recess appointment power.
Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 3 provides: "The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their
next Session."
Thus the president can fill every judicial vacancy that presently exists, though these appointments will lapse in the fall of 2004. Nominees have traditionally been reluctant to fill such temporary posts as the Senate guarded its confirmation power jealously and was likely to turn a cold-shoulder to the recess appointees in much the way that the NFL veterans shunned the temporary players who took the field during their strike.
Bill Clinton broke the taboo against recess appointments to the bench, however, with his end-of-term appointment of Roger Gregory to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals--an appointment President Bush made permanent through his nomination and the Senate's consent as a gesture of conciliation. That gesture and many others have been rejected as inadequate by the Leahy-Daschle-Schumer-Kennedy caucus. Kindness didn't--and won't--work. Stronger measures are called for, not only to meet real needs for judges, but also to bring the controversy to the public's attention. The Democrats have crashed the process and shredded the traditions because of the pressure of abortion absolutists. Their record is a sorry one, and attention generated via the recess-appointment power will help shine light on their excess.
At this writing there are 24 vacancies on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The president would be wise not to launch too many recess appointments at first, but it would be a strong opening move to announce that, say, two of the six blocked nominees to the Sixth Circuit will be appointed over the Memorial Day Senate break if there is no movement with those nominees, and that the two vacancies without nominees on the D.C. Circuit (there are a total of four, with Estrada and Roberts having been nominated in May of 2001) will receive nominees in May and will be appointed during the holiday recess unless at least Roberts (and perhaps both Roberts and Estrada) gets a floor vote before then.
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