Tom Toles, from this morning's Washington Post.
Washingtonpost.com: Style Comics
Posted by DeLong at January 13, 2003 12:49 PM | Trackback
Thank you thank you thank you thank you.
Posted by: on January 13, 2003 01:24 PMDeep down, I think the problem is that there is a good chunck of the Southern population which simply still does not get that seggregation was and is immoral and profoundly incompatible with the very essence of the United States.
This and the GOP's strategy of appeasement of Southern racists is deeply disturbing to me. It's as if Europeans were ever to tolerate a party to run a large-scale campain that implicitely conveyed the message that the Nazis weren't so wrong after all but you just can't say so in 'polite company'. And this party to nominate judges with a record of thinly veiled sympathy for neo-Nazis. Very disturbingly morally unclear...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 13, 2003 01:29 PMHow does this relate with the fact that Pickering is well liked by the African American communities in his home state? Whats the deal? Only strangers opinions matter?
Posted by: james on January 13, 2003 02:35 PMIt's a mistake for the Democrats to spend so much political capital on Pickering. If anyone was insensitive to racial issues in the cross-burning case, it was the Clinton Justice Department that cut a very sweet deal with the 17 year old leader of the three - a guy who previously had fired a gunshot through the window of the couple's house . . . . . I've missed the moral outrage over that decision. And of course there's not any, because this is a completely fabricated scandal.
Besides wasting political capital that ought to be saved up for more important judicial confirmations down the road, Senator Schumer and crew are making a mistake in assuming that: (1)since Pickering is from Mississippi, and (2) he reduced a harsh sentence in a hate crime; ergo he must be a racist. Whatever one thinks about the whole story, it's a lot more complex than that, and it's offensive to assume that all white Mississippians are racially compromised just because of where they're from.
Posted by: Anarchus on January 13, 2003 03:25 PM>>How does this relate with the fact that Pickering is well liked by the African American communities in his home state? Whats the deal?<<
Is that right?
Eugene Bryant, president of the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP Branches, said: "In light of the hateful and bigoted remarks by Senator Trent Lott, the senate sponsor of Judge Pickering, we had hoped the President would choose to move beyond this difficult time for many Mississippians and indeed, the entire nation. Instead, with the re-nomination of Judge Pickering, President Bush allows old wounds to fester and engenders racial divisiveness for years to come."
Source: NAACP press release.
>>Only strangers opinions matter?<<
Only white opinions matter?
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 13, 2003 03:42 PMOH PLEASE. Since when does the NAACP speak for all black Americans?
This is from the Hattiesburg American:
Pickering looks forward to judgeship
Bush resubmits judge's name for approval
Nikki Davis Maute
Hattiesburg-based U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering said Tuesday he looks forward to being confirmed to a post on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pickering's name and that of 30 other judicial nominees who were not approved last March were resubmitted by President Bush to the Senate Judiciary Committee late Tuesday. . . . . . . . . . . . While Democrats attacked Pickering's record on civil rights issues, a number of prominent Mississippi black leaders flew to Washington during the confirmation hearings to support the judge.
"Yes, I am going to be there to support Judge Pickering again," said Forrest County Justice Court Judge Deborah Gambrell.
Gambrell was among those who appeared at the White House in support of Pickering.
"I knew Judge Pickering before he became a judge," Gambrell said. "He is a decent person and he should be confirmed."
Then there was THIS from the NYT:
The New York Times
Blacks at Home Support a Judge Liberals Assail
February 17, 2002
LAUREL, Miss., Feb. 15 - Back in Washington, his opponents have depicted Judge Charles W. Pickering as the personification of white Mississippi's oppressive past, a man so hostile to civil rights and black progress that he is unfit for promotion to a federal appeals court. But here on the streets of his small and largely black hometown, far from the bitterness of partisan agendas and position papers, Charles Pickering is a widely admired figure of a very different present.
In funeral parlors and pharmacies, used-car lots and the City Council chambers, the city's black establishment overwhelmingly supports his nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is heading toward a contentious vote in the Senate in the first major judicial battle of the Bush administration. Though few black residents here subscribe to Judge Pickering's staunchly Republican politics, many say they admire his efforts at racial reconciliation, which they describe as highly unusual for a white Republican in the
state.
"I have never seen Trent Lott open his arms to the black community the way Charles Pickering has," said Larry E. Thomas, owner of Thomas Pharmacy, referring to the Senate minority leader, who is Judge Pickering's friend and patron. "Over the years I've seen him work with black leaders and really try to make an effort to understand and help the community. That's a progressiveness that we need to see more of in this state."
Progressive is not exactly the description used by the national black officials who are making an intense effort to prevent the judge's appointment. "A vote for Pickering is a vote against civil rights," said Julian Bond, the national chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, speaking against the nomination with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "It's hard to imagine a person who is more hostile to civil rights." Judge Pickering has also been condemned by a variety of big-city newspaper editorial boards and columnists.
But such comments carry little weight among those who actually know the man personally here in Laurel, in southeast Mississippi. Judge Pickering, now a federal district judge in the nearby city of Hattiesburg, was praised by black city officials for helping to set up after- school youth programs here, and for directing federal money to medical clinics in low-income areas when he was a state senator. Black business leaders say he was influential in persuading white-owned banks to lend money to black entrepreneurs, helping to strengthen the city's black middle class. "I can't believe the man they're describing in Washington is the same one I've known for years," said Thaddeus Edmonson, a former local president of the N.A.A.C.P. who is now president of the seven-member Laurel City Council and one of its five black members. "If those people who are voting against him because of some press release would just come down here and talk to the people who know him, I think they would have a very different opinion." . . . . .
. . . . Four of the five black council members, in fact, said they enthusiastically supported Judge Pickering's appointment. The fifth, Manuel Jones, said he opposed the nomination, largely because he differed with Judge Pickering's efforts in the late 1980's to integrate the largely black city schools with the largely white county schools. Judge Pickering, then in private practice in Laurel, was one of several white city leaders who argued that the city could not attract economic development with an effectively segregated school system. At the time, Mr. Jones was president of the Laurel-Jones County branch of the N.A.A.C.P., which maintained that consolidation would dilute black administrative power over the city schools . . . .
. . . . "He grew up like a lot of white people here," said the Rev. George L. Barnes, a black minister who is pastor at two Missionary Baptist churches and owns a used-car lot. "But his daddy and my daddy used to swim together down in the creek, and I've never heard him say a racist thing. I would say, of people in his age bracket, he's probably come further than any white man I know of."
Local leaders' support for Judge Pickering has put them at odds with several black state officials and the Mississippi conference of the N.A.A.C.P., which oppose his appointment. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who represents the Delta region on the opposite side of the state in Congress, has called the judge's black supporters "Judases." State N.A.A.C.P. officials say the judge's supporters in Laurel have succumbed to an effort to cover up his feelings with small acts of kindness. This alternately angers and amuses local residents, who say no such masquerade can last for decades. "If he's been putting on a show for us, it's the greatest show on earth," said Mr. Thomas, who runs the city's only black-owned pharmacy and who served with Mr. Pickering on the local economic development board in the 1980's . . . . .
Anyone not aware of this stuff is from another planet, I think. And it's insulting to people who are informed to claim "only white opinions matter." But white opinions do matter, as do all the other opinions out there.
Last, at a prior hearing, Charles Evers, brother of murdered civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, also appeared on Pickering's behalf. Evers said, "I'm not going to sit by and let these Yankees scuttle the nomination."
Posted by: on January 13, 2003 04:04 PM>>and it's offensive to assume that all white Mississippians are racially compromised just because of where they're from.<<
That's undisputable. I have not heard anyone having a problem with Pickering because he is from Mississippi, however. Besides, if the opinions of Judge Pickering only affected Mississippi, few would care.
What puzzles me is why does Bush want to spend political capital on applying these Mississipian "values" at the federal level while this electorate is bought to the GOP anyway. Also, it would seem politically profitable for the GOP to cast a strong image of change with respect to race and civil rights.
Instead, the GOP and Bush gave some lip-service about Lott and they're now back to business as usual. At least, they should quit wining about being labelled The Party That Doesn't Like Black PeopleTM... The same remarks hold to a large extent re: the GOP's electoral tactics vis-a-vis Mexican-Americans.
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on January 13, 2003 04:12 PMUm, Anarchus, before you assume that opposition to Pickering is premissed entirely on the Swan case you might want to look at:
Pickering's contact with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commissions;
his uttering of false statements about same at his first confirmation hearings;
his judicial record;
his law partner, Thomas Gartin;
and anyway, you might want to look at the Swan case some more. Atrios has lots of stuff up about this.
Matt: I was aware of the other stuff, but since Senator Schumer is the leader of the filibuster brigade, I used his website as the primary source of Democratic complaints against Pickering.
His website clearly identifies the cross burning case as the major complaint - it takes up half of the press release announcing Schumer's opposition to Pickering - and as scandals go, the cross burning is a total canard. You're absolutely correct that there are a number of other issues, including the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, but those haven't been the focus of the opposition to Pickering (yet).
Maybe the problem then is: given that there are other legitimate issues to clobber Pickering with, why did the Democrats choose to make the cross burning case the centerpiece of their argument against him, where there is no scandal with that particular case?
But the idea that Pickering is a bad judge because he reduced the sentence of one defendant to be more in line with what the Clinton Justice Department plea-bargained two other defendants down to is just silly - if it was a real travesty of justice, everybody would be hunting down Clinton's prosecutors who cut the first deal with the other two defendants and pummeling them.
Posted by: Anarchus on January 14, 2003 06:26 AMAnarchus,
but does judicial temperament not demand that Pickering follow the law? However craven the plea deal offered to the other two might have been, once the third defendant refused whatever plea deal offered, he was up for mandatory sentence if convicted. and i cannot believe he was not offered a deal that would have given him less than the mandatory sentence.
so, the real (and in my mind legitimate question) is, why did pickering feel so strongly about the third defendant that he was willing to overlook minimum sentencing guidelines?
even granting that the third defendant had poor counsel, it was not pickering's place to override mandatory sentencing guidelines, was it?
i think that is the basic objection here: he showed enough judicial activism in favor of a defendant...
i agree with the interesting spin that a filibuster on this may not necessarily spend political capital (see atrios for more detail on this) and in fact may strengthen the hand of democrats in the senate.
Posted by: Suresh on January 14, 2003 06:38 AMSuresh:
My understanding is that race is the primary issue in the cross-burning case, not whether Pickering followed legal norms . . . . .
. . . . this excerpt is from NRO:
"On March 14, 2002, at the Judiciary Committee meeting in which Democrats killed the Pickering nomination, Sen. Edward Kennedy suggested that Pickering practiced a selective form of leniency — that he went easy on a racist cross burner and tough on everybody else, including blacks convicted of crimes in his court. One week later, on March 21, Pickering sent Hatch a letter in which he said, "I have consistently sought to keep from imposing unduly harsh penalties on young people whom I did not feel were hardened criminals." (Swan was a first-time offender.) Pickering went on to describe several cases in which "departed downward," that is, reduced the sentences of first-time offenders from the mandatory minimums required by law.
"One case involved a 20 year-old African American male who faced a mandatory minimum five year sentence," Pickering wrote. "I departed downward to 30 months. I also recommended that he be allowed to participate in the intensive confinement program which further reduced his sentence." Pickering also described the case of a 58-year-old black man who faced a five-year mandatory sentence, plus a minimum of 46 months for a separate drug charge. Pickering again sentenced the man to 30 months. In two other cases, he threw out any jail time for men who faced prison terms of 18 and 40 months, respectively. Both defendants were black. "I have departed downward in far more cases involving African Americans than I have in cases involving white defendants," Pickering wrote."
If there is anything to the Swan case beyond a clumsy effort to smear Pickering with an ugly race charge, I'm not aware of it.
It is also ironic that another thread on this blog decries "character assassination". But the character is an economist in that one.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on January 14, 2003 08:44 AMSo, Anarchus, let us take his statement at face value - why do the Republican President who is so opposed to 'judicial activism' so keen to nominate a confessed judicial activist who constantly ignores mandatory sentencing guidelines? does this not make for a classic 'soft on crime' federal judje?
of course, that does not justify caling him a 'racist' - for the swan case.
why does this administration come across as doing an old friend a favor everytime it does something, anything?
Posted by: Suresh on January 14, 2003 11:48 AMSuresh: I don't there's any evidence that Pickering "constantly" ignored mandatory sentencing guidelines. There is evidence that on occasions where Judge Pickering thought that the sentencing outcomes were unusually unfair he try to make them more fair.
That said, I personally don't have an opinion on whether or not the changes Pickering made were justifiable - and that's most certainly NOT the issue here, and it's poor logic to change the subject . . . . the point remains: the Swan case does not suggest racial bias.
Regarding the old friend favors accusation, it's absolutely true. Unhappily, that's how Washington works. And it's never more true than with judgeships, and both Republicans and Democrats play the game shamelessly.
The nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, was in part a favor to Senator Moynihan, who was her largest backer in the Senate . . . . . and when the time came for Moynihan to scratch a Clinton's back, he dutifully supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate candidacy.
BTW, I can't locate the judiciary hearing transcript on line, but my recollection is that prior to her appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Ginsberg had NEVER hired a black law clerk in her 12 years as a federal judge.
Posted by: Anarchus on January 14, 2003 12:13 PMAnarchus,
I base the 'cosntantly' comment on pickering's own defense to Hatch: 'I have consistently sought to...'
from what i can see the case against pickering in the swan case is as follows:
1: he was aware of the plea deals offered to all three defendants, approved two (the juvenile and 'low IQ')
2: swan refused the plea deal (1 1/2 yrs in prison) and was convicted
3: mandatory sentencing meant he got 5 yrs
4: pickering reduced it to 'time served' (apx 1 yr i think)
5: at his hearings he denied that he knew about the other plea deals he MUST have known - he signed them
6: Democrats jumped on this as proof he was soft on a white cross-burner
the last point may be a reach, but IMO 5 disqualifies him.
as for ginsburg not hiring ANY black clerks - if dems had brought that up, would the republicans have defended her against a 'racial quotas' charge? i think not.
Posted by: Suresh on January 14, 2003 12:52 PMSorry, 5 should read:
he denied he knew about the gun possession / firing confession that was in the plea deal
Posted by: Suresh on January 14, 2003 12:55 PMof course they wouldn't have defended Ginsburg.
but under federal law, simple statistical proportions are legal proof of discrimination. and I do not think Ginsburg has racial issues, the point is only that looked at darkly, everyone on the planet has something in their past that can be interpreted in an ugly fashion, even if it's meaningless.
Posted by: Anarchus on January 14, 2003 01:09 PMMy problem with Pickering:
Out of a country of 300 million people, this defender of bigots, and segregation, is the BEST that the Republican party can come up with?
I know George W. Bush was the best they could come up with for President, but c'mon.
Posted by: Ras_Nesta on January 14, 2003 02:26 PM“My problem with Pickering:
Out of a country of 300 million people, this defender of bigots, and segregation, is the BEST that the Republican party can come up with?”
Your "problem" with Pickering is that you haven’t the foggiest idea what you are talking about. This man is merely a victim of a smear campaign. The irony is that Judge Pickering is very popular with the blacks in his hometown. Also, a number of them are fed up with the condescending attitude of the Liberal media hinting that they are too stupid to understand the alleged danger of the Judge. There is little doubt but that he will be confirmed. The Liberal slanderers have thrown their best shot and it left much to be desired.
Posted by: David Thomson on January 14, 2003 10:08 PMSuresh, it was the Republicans (Orrin Hatch)who brought up the "statistical evidence of discrimination" against Ginsburg. Not to defeat her, but to illustrate TO HER, the problem with her reliance on such evidence. Hatch pointedly told her he knew she wasn't a racist, and couldn't she see the problem of concluding others were?
It was a highly amusing moment, watching Ginsburg dancing around the question. And it was also very instructive about the differences in the two parties (compared to the treatment Bork and Thomas got).
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on January 15, 2003 09:51 AMWhat the hell does Ginsburg not hiring any black law clerks have to do with Pickering's, shall we say, curious decision in this case?
(compared to the treatment Bork and Thomas got).
Baird, Hormel, Elders.
Posted by: Jason McCullough on January 15, 2003 11:10 AM