Newsday
February 21, 2004
By Tom Brune
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Washington - For the second time this year, President George W. Bush sidestepped Congress Friday to give a recess appointment to a controversial appeals-court nominee blocked by Democrats.
In a move criticized by Democrats, Bush used the Senate's short Presidents Day recess to give a nearly two-year temporary appointment to Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Bush blasted Senate Democrats for filibustering a confirmation vote for Pryor, a move he called "unprecedented obstructionist tactics." He praised Pryor as a "leading American lawyer."
Democrats appeared to be caught off guard by the appointment - and its term, which lasts until the end of 2005 - and had not yet figured out how to respond.
Like many Democrats and their supporters, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) described the president's action as an outrageous move driven by political expediency.
"The president is on shaky ground with the hard right and is using this questionably legal and politically shabby technique to bolster himself," he said.
Some Christian conservatives, for example, have faulted Bush for failing to strongly condemn "illegal homosexual marriages" in San Francisco. Bush has said he was troubled by gay marriages but has not moved to stop them.
Pryor, 41, has a record as a frankly outspoken and activist conservative on many hot-button issues on the cultural divide, including abortion, rights for gays and lesbians, and states' rights.
He has written that Roe v. Wade is "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history," and in a legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court compared homosexuality with necrophilia and bestiality.
"There is something in his record to offend everybody," said Nan Aron, executive director of the liberal umbrella group Alliance for Justice. Ralph Neas of People for the American Way called Pryor "one of the most dangerous judicial nominees."
Former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, who founded the Committee for Justice to boost Bush's judicial nominees, praised the president for standing up to Senate Democrats.
On Jan. 16, Bush used a recess appointment to elevate U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The constitution gives a president a right to temporarily fill vacancies while the Senate is in recess until it begins its next session.
In Pickering's case, that will come at the end of 2004. But because Pryor was appointed during this session, his term will not end until the end of 2005.
Judges who are confirmed have lifetime terms.