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 resident
Bush appointed Cleveland lawyer Peter Kirsanow to the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights yesterday, but commission chairwoman Mary Frances
Berry is expected to refuse to seat him at tomorrow morning's commission
meeting.
That's because
Victoria
Wilson, the commissioner Kirsanow ostensibly replaces, says
she deserves to stick around until 2006. She had been appointed
to complete the term of the late Leon Higginbotham, which expired
last week. Now she insists that she's entitled to her very own six-year
term, rather than merely the remainder of Higginbotham's.
The Associated
Press reports that White House counsel Al Gonzales and Berry engaged
in "a heated phone conversation" on Tuesday, in which
Gonzales insisted that Berry accept the Bush administration's reading
of the law. Berry refused, saying, "If you send somebody to
the meeting, there will be no vacancy."
Kirsanow, who
is affiliated with the Center for New Black Leadership, is an outstanding
choice for the commission — and certainly an improvement on
Wilson, whose claim to fame is not civil-rights work but editing
the vampire novels of Anne Rice at the Knopf publishing company.
So far, the
Bush administration has made a series of excellent appointments
in the area of civil rights — but it has shown no stomach for
fighting the personnel or policy battles that really matter. But
Kirsanow won't get his seat unless the White House backs him vigorously.
Last summer,
the commission issued a scandalously biased report on the presidential
election in Florida. Its sole purpose was to delegitimize the Bush
presidency. The commission's liberal members were able to operate
with impunity — even refusing to publish a dissent by their
GOP-appointed colleagues — because they held a 6-2 majority.
With the recent
appointment of Jennifer Braceras to replace Yvonne Lee, however,
that majority has slipped to 5-3. If Kirsanow now replaces Wilson,
it will shift to 4-4. This would not only make it impossible for
Berry to enact her anti-Bush agenda, but also put her position as
chair at risk.
So tomorrow,
when Berry refuses to recognize Kirsanow, the Bush administration
will face an important gut check.
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