Back to business

And just one day after visiting Martin Luther King's grave. It's like they really just don't care - or really think the public is just that flaming stupid. Sadly, it's possible they're right.

Washington, Jan. 16 - President Bush on Friday used the Congressional recess to install Charles W. Pickering Sr. in a federal appeals court seat from which he had been blocked twice by the Senate because of Democratic opposition.

Pickering had been successfully filibustered by Senate Democrats disturbed by his history of racism, extending up to a 1997 decision in which he went to "extraordinary lengths" to reduce the sentence of a man convicted of cross-burning.

Under the Constitution, his new appointment to the Fifth Circuit court, based in New Orleans, lasts until the end of the next Senate session, which is expected to conclude around October, unless he is confirmed by the Senate in the meantime. That prospect is unlikely.

Thank goodness for (very) small favors.

Footnote: I've seen this picture captioned "Bush doing to the MLK gravesite what he's been doing to MLK's legacy." Coretta, meanwhile, does her best Sgt. Schultz impression.