RUTHFULLY YOURS

When the left sputters about the importance of getting a prompt vote on an Obama nominee, let’s just remind them about Judge Priscilla Owen.

Owen was a moderate and she was highly rated. She was also no Alito, Bork or Thomas. But when she was nominated for the Fifth Circuit in the spring of ’01, Senate Democrats denied her a vote for four years until the spring of ’05. When the vote finally came up, Obama voted against her.

That’s the length of an entire presidential term. This wasn’t running out the clock on a lame duck presidency. Senate Democrats refused the “up and down vote” they’re demanding to a nominee for 4 years. They filibustered her and threw tantrums that would have embarrassed a six-year-old.

Both Owen and Estrada were originally nominated by President Bush May 9, 2001.

“They have been waiting almost two years for a vote,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said May 1 before the vote. “Both were rated ‘well-qualified’ by the American Bar Association. That is the highest possible rating that the American Bar Association gives. It is also, according to Democrats, the gold standard that they would use to judge whether nominees were qualified.”

Democrats also are subverting “the spoken will of the people,” Land said, noting that voters gave President Bush “an unprecedented mid-term gain in the Senate and the House” in 2002.

Instead of “bowing to the clearly expressed will of the people,” Land said, the Democrats have “carried their obstructionist tactics to new lows.”

And what crime did Owen commit?

Owen is a 10-year veteran of the Texas Supreme Court who won her last re-election campaign with 84 percent of the vote. When Bush nominated her for the federal bench, the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously gave her its highest rating.

To get that rating, the ABA says, a nominee “must be at the top of the legal profession in his or her legal community, have outstanding legal ability, breadth of experience, the highest reputation for integrity and either have demonstrated, or exhibited the capacity for, judicial temperament.” Owen is the full package.

But you wouldn’t know much of her excellent credentials, or the credentials of most of the judges awaiting Senate action. Democrats accused her of judicial activism, based largely on her vote to deny a 17-year-old high school student permission to get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge, as required under Texas law.

So she… followed the law. Every judicial nomination saw the same gang of “human rights activists” trotted out to claim that Nominee X is a racist, sexist bigot who will be the biggest threat to freedom. Or, as Obama claimed of Judge Southwick, nomination would “threaten the very basis of our freedom and democracy.” These days, Obama seems to have the monopoly on that.

Next time you hear Obama and his media allies making noises about how Republicans should act, remember this is how they behaved and will behave again if a Republican wins the White House.

Consider the case of a talented jurist named Priscilla Owen. In 2001, President Bush nominated her to serve on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Four years later, if the deal announced Monday night holds, she finally will get the up-or-down vote she deserves.

Four years. Maybe Obama or his successor can get their “up-or-down” vote in four years.

And Owen wasn’t the only victim. Or even the worst example of this type of behavior. As I write in an upcoming article,

Bush had nominated Judge Pickering in ’01 and he was blocked in committee, falsely smeared as a racist and then filibustered by Senate Democrats to deny him the “up and down vote” that they are now busy clamoring for. After three years, Pickering gave up and was replaced by Wallace, who was also blocked by Senate Democrats for a year and denied a vote. Six years later, Bush was still trying with Judge Southwick who had served in Iraq. He was also denied an “up and down” vote until the end of 2007.

Six years.

How did this begin?

Somewhat implausibly, Pickering was attacked by liberal interest groups for supposed racial insensitivity, despite the fact that in 1964 he had left the Democratic Party over its racism to help found the Mississippi Republican Party and in his early career as a prosecutor worked with the FBI to attack the Ku Klux Klan.

Pickering was also defended by the Evers family. Obama was the first to fight Judge Southwick, who had served in Iraq, to prove his lefty credentials. It took six years to get this done.

When Democrats and their media allies talk about promptness and the right to an “up and down” vote. This is what their version of it looked like. This is what it will look like again if a Republican wins.