What happens when your 40-hour filibuster doesn't go the way you wanted? why, just do an end-run around it!
Bush Installs Pickering on Appeals Court By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON - President Bush bypassed Congress and installed Charles Pickering on the federal appeals court Friday in an election-year slap at Democrats who had blocked the nomination for more than two years.
Bush installed Pickering by a recess appointment, which avoids the confirmation process. Such appointments are valid until the next Congress takes office, in this case in January 2005.
[...]
Democrats have accused Pickering of supporting segregation as a young man, and promoting anti-abortion and anti-voting rights views as a state lawmaker.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the recess appointment "a finger in the eye to all those seeking fairness and bipartisanship in the judicial nominations process."
Another Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said, "It is quite unfortunate that the president has chosen to seat Judge Pickering only days before the nation celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
Thompson said that while on the federal bench in Mississippi, Pickering had sought to "limit minority voting strength and to stifle the rights of women — counter to everything Dr. King and the civil rights movement were all about..."
― Kingfishee (Kingfish), Friday, 16 January 2004 22:05 (twenty-two years ago)