Bush resends judicial picks

President Bush officially resubmitted to the Senate yesterday 20 judicial nominees, including seven U.S. Circuit Court nominees whom Democrats filibustered in the last Congress.

“I’m pleased that the president has renominated these excellent women and men to serve on the federal bench,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican.

“I’m hopeful that Democrats will work with me to get up-or-down votes on each nominee,” he said.

Mr. Frist said he hoped to confirm the nominees, or at least give each a final vote on the Senate floor, through diplomacy. But he told The Washington Times for an article printed yesterday that he had the 51 votes needed to change Senate rules to ban filibusters against executive nominees — a threat that colored the Democrats’ reactions yesterday.

Diplomacy is not likely to work, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, who told reporters last month that if Mr. Bush renominates the same judges, the Democrats will block them again.

“To replay this narrow and completed debate demonstrates the Bush administration’s failure to craft a positive agenda for the American people,” Mr. Reid said yesterday after the renominations were announced.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said, “The president looks like he is still more interested in picking fights than in picking judges.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Bush “has again chosen confrontation over cooperation and ideology over moderation.”

“The president’s words about wanting to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats are ringing a little hollow at this point,” he said. “Democratic senators cooperated in confirming 204 of President Bush’s judicial nominees in his first term, and we were able to reach the lowest judicial vacancy rates in 16 years.”

Democrats have filibustered 10 of Mr. Bush’s judicial nominees. Three have withdrawn their names from consideration, and the remaining seven were resubmitted yesterday.

The seven are Priscilla Richman Owen for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; David W. McKeague, Henry W. Saad and Richard A. Griffin for the 6th Circuit; William Gerry Myers III for the 9th Circuit; William H. Pryor for the 11th Circuit; and Janice Rogers Brown for the D.C. Circuit.

Also resubmitted yesterday were five other Circuit Court nominees on whom the Senate Judiciary Committee did not vote or on whom the Senate took no floor action, but had not been filibustered. To break a filibuster requires a “cloture” vote to end debate, which requires 60 votes to pass.

Mr. Bush also resubmitted eight U.S. District Court nominees who were not confirmed during his first term.

Changing Senate rules has been termed the “nuclear option” by Democrats who are warning of a political meltdown in the Senate if such a move is taken.

“The nuclear option is aptly named because it will blow up the Senate,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “We don’t know if Senator Frist has 51 ‘yes’ votes, but it would be a tragedy for the Senate and for the country if he does. It would reverse almost 200 years of history and dramatically change what the Senate has always been.”

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