Prometheus 6

Some Democrats say that how Mr. Bush handles judicial nominations will provide an early test of his pledge to compromise and de-emphasize partisanship. It will be significant, they say, whether he chooses to renominate his four most conservative choices in the next Congress, hoping for political reasons to paint Democrats as obstructionist, or instead drops them as hopeless and tries to reach compromises.

New Democratic Majority Throws Bush’s Judicial Nominations Into Uncertainty
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — The impending Democratic takeover of the Senate, lawmakers and administration officials agree, will produce a vast change in an area that has produced some of the sharpest partisan battles in recent years: President Bush’s effort to shape the federal bench with conservative judicial nominees.

There is a strong consensus that the four most conservative of Mr. Bush’s nominations to the federal appeals courts are doomed. Republicans and Democrats say the four have no chance of confirmation in the next several weeks of the lame-duck Congressional session or in the final two years of Mr. Bush’s term.

The nominees are William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s chief lawyer who was responsible for the much-criticized military interrogation policies; William G. Myers III, a longtime lobbyist for the mining and ranching industries and a critic of environmental regulations; Terrence W. Boyle, a district court judge in North Carolina; and Michael B. Wallace of Mississippi, a lawyer who was rated unqualified for the court by the American Bar Association.

For the past six years, the relationship between Senate Democrats and Mr. Bush has been marked by unremitting rancor and suspicion. The Constitution gives the Senate the power to confirm or decline a president’s judicial choices; although Senate Democrats were in the minority for much of Mr. Bush’s term, they took the unusual step of waging filibusters to block several of the president’s nominees who they said were too conservative.

With that foundation of hostility, there is deep uncertainty now as to how Mr. Bush and the Democratic Senate will deal with each other come January.