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 ictoria Wilson of
the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights apparently wants to be a commissioner
for life. She recently announced her intention not to resign, even
though her six-year term formally expired last week. She was appointed
in 2000 to complete the term of the late Leon Higginbotham, but
now she argues that she's entitled to a full six-year term rather
than the remainder of Higginbotham's. This would keep her in office
until 2006. The White House says her time is up; commission chair
Mary Frances Berry accepts Wilson's self-serving interpretation
of the law.
Berry and Wilson
made clear their disdain for the rule of law this summer, when they
(and four other liberal commissioners) released a controversial
report on the 2000 presidential election in Florida. They suggested
that George W. Bush carried the state because of a racist conspiracy
to suppress black votes. The only suppression anyone could point
to, however, was their own: They defied established practice by
refusing to publish a dissent authored by the commission's two GOP-appointed
members.
Wilson's argument
makes no sense. It means that presidential appointees in time-limited
positions could be "re-appointed" en masse right before
the White House changes hands — and therefore prevent the next
president from shaping the government the way he deserves.
Berry's support
of Wilson has a personal dimension. Although she's been on the commission
since the 1980s, Berry's current term began when she succeeded Connie
Horner, whom the first President Bush had picked for the commission
in the final hours of his presidency. Horner's term expired on December
5, 1998 — but President Clinton didn't get around to putting
Berry in that slot until January 26, 1999. The White House clerk's
office, staffed by career bureaucrats, insists that Berry's term
ends in December 2004. Berry, however, says it concludes on January
26, 2005 — just a few days after the end of President George
W. Bush's term.
If the Bush
administration wants to exercise complete control over the federal
government — control to which it is fully entitled — it
will want to make sure Wilson loses her obnoxious challenge.
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