Word: benchings
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...million-dollar question: Why did Ashcroft lead the charge to defeat Justice Ronnie White's nomination to the federal bench? Because White was soft on the death penalty? Because he was black? Or because, as a state legislator, White killed an Ashcroft-backed abortion...
...call Kenny Jones, the Moniteau County, Mo., sheriff whose wife and three deputies were killed in 1991 by James Johnson, the convicted killer whom White wanted to be granted a retrial. Even beyond that case, the Republicans are prepared to argue that White was unfit for the federal bench; they are threatening to dredge up his law-school grades, his bar exam, his record as a lawyer and even details of his family life to prove Ashcroft was right about White. "People who knew about Ronnie White were willing to leave a lot of this alone," says an Ashcroft ally...
...lesson about fair play and equal justice. White was by no means the only judge Ashcroft tripped up; Ashcroft was notorious for blocking all kinds of appointments, from the openly gay ambassadorial nominee James Hormel to Susan Oki Mollway, the first Asian-American woman to serve on the federal bench in Hawaii. In Hormel's case, Ashcroft's objections had nothing to do with his qualifications and everything to do with his lifestyle. Ashcroft would refuse even to meet with judicial nominees he opposed to hear their side of the story. "I have found him on a personal basis...
What may frighten Ashcroft's detractors most is the role he will have in appointing judges to the federal bench. Although the President has the final word, the Attorney General has a big hand in selecting candidates. With the recent Supreme Court decision fresh in the nation's mind, the importance of lifetime appointees to the bench is clear to both sides...
...Many familiar themes resurfaced as the senators tore into Ashcroft's handling of Justice Ronnie White's nomination for the federal bench, his refusal to meet with James Hormel when he was nominated as ambassador to Luxembourg and his unapologetic interest in finding loopholes in Roe v. Wade...