During the Bush Administration, conservatives have become accustomed to seeing conservative judicial nominees filibustered, abused, and soiled at the hand of shrill, vitriolic liberals, particularly Senate Democrats led by Senators Leahy (D.-Vt.), Kennedy (D.-Mass.), Durbin (D.-Ill.), and other Leftists.
In fact, mistreatment from the Left seems to indicate that a nominee is the right person for the job.
One of President Bush's most recent nominees to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Janice Rogers Brown, is undergoing such treatment from liberals. Judging by the following far-from-exhaustive-list of comments from a few Leftists, she ought to be perfect for the D.C. Circuit.
The reason we are here today is because President Bush continues to nominate individuals who are not qualified for these positions of trust and who are out of the mainstream of America for these lifetime appointments on our federal courts.
The Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are here today to announce our opposition to California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown.
. . . We firmly believe that she is unfit to serve on the second most powerful court in the country. Because her appointment to the D.C. Circuit could deny millions of Americans the promise of justice enshrined in the United States Constitution. . .
President Bush's nomination of California State Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown ensures only that he remains faithful to his campaign promise to nominate men and women in the mold of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. We are appalled. . . .
Justice Brown is a notoriously conservative lawyer and jurist. . .
. . . Justice Brown appears to be a jurist on a right-wing mission. . . . Justice Brown's entire career shows that she has no respect for the federal regulatory process or for the role of the federal government whose laws she would administer, particularly laws that address the long-standing problems encountered by racial and ethnic minorities, women, workers, seniors, and others. . . .
This Bush nominee has such an atrocious civil rights record she makes Clarence Thomas look like Thurgood Marshall
[T]he President must not be allowed to place another judge cut from the same mold as Justice Clarence Thomas, on the same circuit from which Justice Thomas was groomed for the United States Supreme Court.
[H]er judicial philosophy puts her even further to the right than the most far-right justices now sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. . . .
. . . she would use the power of an appeals court seat to try to erect significant barriers for victims of discrimination to seek justice in the courts, and to push an agenda that would undermine privacy, equal protection under the law, environmental protection, and much more. . . .
Brown has embraced the extreme states' rights and anti-federal-government positions of the Federalist Society . . . .
Justice Brown has a lengthy record both on the bench and off, and her record raises a variety of concerns about her judicial philosophy and fitness for a lifetime appointment to the D.C. Circuit. . . .
Justice Brown's outspoken judicial philosophy is unique. It raises many concerns.
Janice Rogers Brown is merely the latest in a string of Bush court nominees who seek to undermine religious freedom by knocking down the wall of separation between church and state. She is unqualified for this important public trust. . . .
President Bush is at it again. This time, he is looking to promote Janice Rogers Brown, a radically conservative justice on the California Supreme Court. Her record makes her the perfect Bush pick: she's anti-choice and anti-privacy, and she routinely injects her extreme right-wing views into her judicial opinions.
Brown, a radical right-wing justice on the California Supreme Court, has shown that she will not fully protect the right to choose and the right to privacy. . . . Further proving that she is hostile to constitutional rights like the right to privacy, she has bemoaned legislators for "handing out rights like lollipops in a dentist office."
Judge Brown is a passionate and articulate activist for an arch-conservative reading of the law and has interpreted the state and federal constitution in ways that would make it extremely difficult to enact environmental, community and worker protections. In particular, she holds extreme views about takings and property rights. . . .
Judge Brown is far from the mainstream in judicial temperament. Her strongly worded dissents cross the line from judicial disagreement to arch-conservative rhetoric.
