WaPo: Panel Backs Pickering For Appellate Bench

[CShine]

U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi yesterday won approval of the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee for elevation to a federal court of appeals, but he faces a Democratic filibuster that could doom his nomination on the floor.

On a party-line vote of 10 to 9, the committee in effect overturned a decision that the panel made when it was under Democratic control in March 2002, to reject the nomination of the conservative jurist to the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. President Bush renominated Pickering after the GOP won control of the Senate in 2002.

The Pickering fight is the latest in a series of struggles over Bush's attempts to appoint more conservatives to the judiciary and Democrats' efforts to slow him down. The running controversy has aroused strong passions in both parties.

Democrats have blocked three circuit court nominees through filibusters, which take 60 votes to break, a high hurdle for the 51-member GOP majority in the Senate. One of them, Miguel A. Estrada, nominated to the appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit, withdrew from consideration last month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34401-2003Oct2.html

[bluestateguy]

1. He will be easier to knock out than Estrada

He is a conservative southern white male. Only Zell, and the two Nelsons will join with Republicans to grant cloture.