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July
17, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
Pryor
Excuse
The
Left works to kill a nomination.
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h,
those scary conservatives — especially the religious ones.
Last Friday, Bill
Moyers introduced viewers of his weekly PBS Now
program to the "radical" 41-year-old Bill Pryor, "darling
of the Right" and attorney general of Alabama, whom President Bush
has nominated to serve on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
You've never heard
Sen. Charlie Schumer (D., N.Y.) quoted so often. Replay after replay of
Schumer's ranting against Pryor — a.k.a. questioning — filled
a good part of the Pryor segment.
You do have to hand
it to Moyers, though — his package was fairly honest (considering
the source). (Here's
the whole Moyers show transcript.) He may not have said it in so many
words, but the message was clear: This is a litmus test. The controversy
over Pryor's nomination is about abortion; it is about him being a Christian.
(See, for instance, Quin Hillyer, here.)
Again and again, Moyers replayed portions of Pryor's Senate Judiciary
Committee hearing pertaining to the abortion issue. Pryor is adamantly
opposed to the "slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children"
that the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision led to, as
he has said — and in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This
nominee's not hiding from the heat.
Of course, federalism
issues kept Pryor's June hearing before the committee contentious, too
(Byron York wrote the book on the hearing, here).
Still, the blatant bias of the Democrats on the religious-conservative
issue was near-impossible to miss.
Moyers actually left
out one of the most outrageous questions asked at the hearing (he has
some of the sense of shame that others on the Left are lacking, evidently).
In trying to frame Pryor as a hater of gay people, Sen. Russell Feingold
(D., Wisc.) asked the nominee about his family's summer vacation to Disney
World. Pryor and his wife decided to reschedule when they learned that
their (expensive) trip was going to coincide with "Gay Day"
there. (For more on the Feingold questioning and Gay Day at Disney, see
here.)
In written follow-up
questions, again, Pryor was asked about his family vacation:
You acknowledged
at your confirmation hearing that you rescheduled a family vacation
to Disney World because it coincided with an annual day-long event at
Disney World that caters to gay and lesbian families. If you are confirmed
for the 11th Circuit, do you believe that gay and lesbian litigants
that came before you would feel that you are open-minded and fair?
The New York Times,
in laying out its anti-Pryor position (which included, amazingly, in black
and gray, the Gay Day decision — as part of its criteria in evaluating
him) wrote: "If a far-right legal group needs a lawyer to argue extreme
positions against abortion, women's rights, gay rights and civil rights,
Mr. Pryor may be a suitable candidate. But he does not belong on the federal
bench."
The Left is looking
for whatever it can find to stop the Pryor nomination and send him back
to Alabama. This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee were poised once
again to delay on voting him out to the Senate floor, trying a new tact
to end the nomination — this time on fundraising
technicalities. If Pryor's nomination dies, whatever excuse Senate
Democrats use in the end, Senator Schumer already explained why: "Your
record screams passionate advocate but doesn't so much as whisper judge."
Schumer has also said, "[Pryor's] beliefs are so deeply held that
it's very difficult to believe those views won't influence how he follows
the law. A person's views matter."
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