Victoria’s Secret
A civil-rights commissioner defies the law.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
December 4, 2001 11:55 a.m.

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.