Pond Scum

Brown Gets Borked: Her problem is that she's too qualified--and black.

Meet Janice Rogers Brown, the latest judicial nominee headed for a filibuster. Senate Democrats would have you believe this black seven-year veteran of California's Supreme Court is somehow not qualified to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The truth is that Judge Brown is all too qualified, and what scares the left is her chances for promotion. More U.S. Supreme Court Justices--including Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas--have come from the D.C. Circuit than from any other federal court. Democrats don't want President Bush to get credit for putting a black woman on the High Court any more than they wanted him to appoint the first Hispanic Justice, which explains their earlier filibuster of Miguel Estrada.
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As Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Justice Thomas and others can attest, liberals reserve their harshest and most personal attacks for minorities with the audacity to wander off the ideological plantation. Judge Brown, the first black woman to sit on the California Supreme Court, is precisely the type of judge President Bush vowed to appoint, "a person who clearly understands the role of a judge is to interpret the law, not legislate from the bench." Her judicial record reflects this principle, no matter the topic at hand or her personal views. Hardly an "extremist," Judge Brown won 76% of the vote in her last election and wrote the majority opinion for the court more times that any other Justice in the 2001-02 term.

But the truth is that the merits are irrelevant to the willful liberal Senate minority that has already filibustered four nominees and is headed for seven. This is about political power, and overturning the results of the 2000 and 2002 elections. The White House and GOP Senators should be embarrassed to let Judge Brown get pounded the way she did last week while barely fighting back.

These stealth filibusters with doilies really get my goat. When will the Senate Republican leaders get some backbone? I want to see the usual suspects on the front page of every paper making marathon speeches to keep a black woman off the Supreme Court. As it is, no one knows about it except the unfortunate nominee who gets used as a punching bag.