Through e-mail I’ve been corresponding with a fellow by the name of Jason Miller from Overland Park, Kansas. I think he found me through my column at The Oregon Herald. From time to time he sends me some pretty good op-eds, and it’s nice to know there’s another Blueberry in the Tomato Soup out there. Here’s his latest opinion on Bush resubmitting 12 previously-rejected judicial nominees. (If Jason agrees, I may add him as a contributor to the Writ. It would be nice to have some heartland flavor here. Stay tuned.)

“Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.” — Jean Jacques Rousseau

George Bush and the Senate are preparing to strip away more of our liberties, and, as Rousseau suggested, the losses could be permanent. Where is the public outcry? The Senate previously rejected twelve unfit judicial nominees, and George Bush has thrown them back “into America’s face” by re-nominating them. Adding insult to injury, Bush and Bill Frist,the Republican leader in the Senate, want to eliminate a 200 year old Senate rule, the filibuster. When a filibuster is employed, a judicial nominee needs 60 out of 100 Senate votes to win approval. This is not an unreasonable threshold for a lifetime appointment to a position of significant power. Bush and Frist want to lower the requirement to 51 votes, a simple majority.

Jason continues:

As the Senate reexamines “recycled” judicial nominees and contemplates jettisoning the filibuster, I hope that Americans consider the following:

• The Senate can conduct other business while a filibuster is taking place, so the filibuster is not a “waste of time” and does not halt activity in the Senate. This is a popular misconception.
• The Constitution charges the Senate with the responsibility of advice and consent on Presidential appointees. They are not there to act as a “rubber stamp”.
• Since he took office, President Bush has already had 204 out of 214 of his choices confirmed, and Democrats have only filibustered 10 of his nominees. The popular Republican assertion that Democrats have acted as obstructionists to Bush nominees is a myth.
• Terence Boyle, the judicial “re-nominee” whom the Senate is currently “reconsidering” owes his position as Chief Judge in the US District Court Eastern District of NC to Jesse Helms, who was hardly a strong proponent of justice for all Americans. In his current judicial capacity, Boyle twice ruled to block the re-districting of a congressional district in the state of North Carolina that accommodated the high African-American population in that area. None other than Justice Clarence Thomas, a Bush favorite on the US Supreme Court, declared Boyle’s ruling “clearly erroneous”, and the Supreme Court twice reversed Boyle’s ruling. On multiple occasions Boyle has sided with employers in cases concerning workplace discrimination involving both race and gender. Shockingly, he has also rendered decisions that attempted to exempt states from adhering to the Americans With Disabilities Act, and in the process, ruled that working was “not a major life activity”. Apparently Boyle’s vision of equality does not include minorities, women, working people, or people with disabilities.
• The elimination of the filibuster and the inclusion of virtually all of Bush’s appointments in the judicial branch would seriously threaten the American system of checks and balances. It is this system that our forefathers carefully crafted to prevent our government from becoming a tyranny.

Each of Bush’s twelve “re-nominations” holds viewpoints that are hostile to minorities, to women, to the environment, to worker’s rights, and/or the disabled in some way. Are Americans prepared to allow George Bush and his Republican allies in the Senate fill the judiciary with people who will trample our Constitutionally guaranteed rights and virtually crush the system of checks and balances? This is not about Democrat against Republican or Left against Right. Partisanship is irrelevant here. Our basic civil liberties and our system of checks and balances are hanging in the balance. It is my sincere belief that most Americans favor keeping both intact. However, I am deeply concerned and mystified that this majority has remained virtually mute. Silence is not always golden.