Santorum Makes The Case For Bush Judges

Senator Rick Santorum, who would be a hero of mine even if we had not graduated five years apart from the same high school (and had many of the same teachers), makes a great argument for ending the filibuster of Bush appeals court judges backed by a majority of the Senate.

Frankly, the records of two of these judges is sufficient to show that the "extremist judges outside the mainstream" argument fails miserably.

It has been almost four years since President Bush nominated Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Since then the Senate has held two hearings, conducted many days of floor debate, analyzed Owen's judicial opinions down to the last comma and attempted four times to invoke cloture so that debate could finally be concluded and the Senate could take an up-or-down vote on her nomination.

Not only has Owen withstood this intensive examination, she has shown time and again that the American Bar Association got it right when it unanimously awarded her its highest possible rating. She was also reelected with 84 percent of the vote in 2000 and had the endorsement of every newspaper in Texas. Owen has earned the support of a clear majority of senators.

She is not alone. This July will mark almost two years since the president nominated Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Brown started life as the daughter of a sharecropper in the segregated South and through hard work and determination became the first African American woman to serve on California's highest court. In 2002 she was called upon by her colleagues to write the majority opinion more often than any other member of the California Supreme Court. She was retained with 76 percent of the vote in her last election. In short, Brown has shown herself to be unquestionably trustworthy, highly intelligent and well within the mainstream, and she has earned the enthusiastic support of a majority of the U.S. Senate.

There is no legitimate basis for calling either of these women unfit for the federal bench. Allowing a minority to block their confirmation is nothing short of tyranny. As the support they have received shows, neither one of them is unqualified or outside the mainstream -- unless the overwhelming majority of voters in both California and Texas are outside of that mainstream as well.