7.17.00
Circuit Breakers

7.14.00
A Hater in Michigan

7.13.00
VP Day

7.12.00
Clinton's Dreamscape

7.11.00
What Might Have Been

7.10.00
Gagged at the Globe

7.07.00
More on That Gore Plan

7.06.00
Thompson's Turn

7.05.00
Keating on Church and State

7.03.00
The Case for Bill Cohen

7/17/00 6:20 p.m.
Circuit Breakers
Clinton plays racial politics with the courts — and a Republican caves.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

hen you hear about a conservative legal victory these days, there's a good chance it happened in the fourth circuit. That's where the unsuccessful challenge to the Miranda decision originated, as also the successful challenge to parts of the Violence against Women Act for violating restrictions on federal power. The fourth is the only circuit where judicial conservatives have an effective majority that could conceivably survive a Gore administration. Naturally, President Clinton wants to ruin it.

On June 30, Clinton nominated Richard Gregory to the circuit. It took Clinton all of two weeks to start complaining that the Senate was holding up the nomination — which he did at the NAACP convention. Gregory is black, as were three other nominees whom Clinton described as "poised to make history if the Senate would just stop standing in their way." Clinton singled out Sen. Jesse Helms for blocking Gregory.

There is no pressing need for more judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The judgeship to which Gregory was nominated was created in 1990, but it's never been filled. (Note also that Clinton can wait for seven years to nominate anyone, but a Senate that takes no action for two weeks is dragging its feet.) The circuit's chief judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote last December that he opposed "unnecessary judgeship growth." The circuit, he pointed out, disposes of cases quicker than most circuits.

The only reason Democrats have for treating this as an urgent matter is political. Chuck Robb, Democratic senator from Virginia, is fighting a tough race against former Republican governor George Allen. Robb also has bad blood with Doug Wilder, a former Democratic governor. The confirmation of Gregory, a law partner of Wilder, would do a little bit to help Robb. Which makes it somewhat odd that John Warner, Republican senator from Virginia, has come out for Gregory — especially at a time in the election cycle when the confirmation process typically grinds to a halt.

This would not, however, be the first time it has seemed as though Warner were quietly rooting for Robb.

The Twenty-Year Curse
Here's a morbid reason why the veep pick is so important this year: Since 1840, every president elected in a year ending with a zero has died in office — with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who might have fallen if John Hinckley's bullet hadn't missed his heart by an inch or two in 1981. William Henry Harrison died soon after his 1841 inauguration; Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley were assassinated; Warren Harding died of a stroke; Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of cerebral hemorrhage; and John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas.

Reagan, of course, broke the curse — but it was a very close call.

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