The Short Lived Bipartisan Pledge

Bush claimed he was going to act in a bipartisan way after the election. He said he wanted to heal rifts, but instead, he is only trying to grow them. Bush is insisting on renominating 20 extremist judges that were turned down during his first term. Instead of working with Democrats to find perfectly qualified moderate conservative judges that would easily pass Senate approval, he is throwing it in the Democrats face. There was a very valid reason the founding fathers made senate approval mandatory for federal judges, but Bush, who thinks himself King instead of the president of a democracy doesn't care about checks and balances. The truth is, if you don't agree with Bush, he could care less about you either.

Bush to Renominate 20 for Judgeships (Link to Full Story)

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Refusing to be brushed off by Democratic opposition in the Senate, President Bush plans to nominate for a second time 20 people who did not receive up or down votes on their nominations for federal judgeships.

The Democrats' ability to stall certain White House picks for the federal bench was one of the most contentious issues of Bush's first term. During the past two years, despite the GOP majority in the Senate, Democrats used filibusters to prevent final votes from occurring on 10 of 34 of Bush's nominees to federal appeals courts.

"I was extremely disappointed to learn today that the president intends to begin the new Congress by resubmitting extremist judicial nominees," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said in a statement. "Last Congress, Senate Democrats worked with the president to approve 204 judicial nominees, rejecting only 10 of the most extreme."

Ralph Neas, head of People for the American Way, which worked to block several of Bush's appointments to the courts, said Bush's decision signaled his renewal of partisan warfare. "The president and his team want to pack the federal courts with right-wing ideologues, and roll back decades of progress in social justice," he said.