Correcting Coleman:
What Norm didn't say about the Estrada filibuster

Minnesota Republican Senator Norm Coleman wrote a commentary in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune in which he asserted that "In their zeal to inflict political damage on the president, not only do Democrats damage the reputation and character of an outstanding potential jurist. They also want to create a new constitutional standard for assessing judicial nominees." The continuing filibuster of Estrada, Coleman says, is about partisanship, plain and simple. Tossing Bush catchphrases like "litmus test," Coleman writes that (cue the National Anthem) Estrada "represents the American Dream. He is the American dream." God forbid the Democrats get a chance to ask the guy a few probing questions--whether he's privileged, ultra-conservative, and Hispanic or not.

My letter to the editor:

Sen. Norm Coleman is being a bit disingenuous, if not deceptive--and certainly downright partisan himself--in his opinion on the "deadly cloud of partisan gridlock" surrounding the filibuster of US Appeals Court nominee Miguel Estrada.

While I don’t have Senate staffers to help with research, I’d like to correct (and enhance) Coleman’s facts: Miguel Estrada may represent the "American Dream" for folks like Coleman, but Estrada’s background--his father was a successful commercial lawyer and his mother an accountant and bank executive--is conveniently left out of his humble rags-to-riches story. As an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Estrada worked on the historic Bush vs. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidency--a fact, omitted by Estrada when filling out his questionnaires for the Judiciary Committee, that might give Democrats pause about whether qualifications or political favors guide his nomination. Furthermore, Estrada has no judicial experience; while it’s true he is considered "well qualified" by the American Bar Association, he has never served as a sitting judge.

None of which should disqualify Estrada. Several current federal Appeals Court judges have no prior experience, and many come from well-to-do backgrounds. And contrary to what Coleman and other Republicans would like you to believe, many Latinos have served and continue to serve as federal judges, including Reynaldo Garcia of Texas (the first ever Latino federal judge, appointed by Democratic president John F. Kennedy), Valdemar Cordova of Arizona (appointed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter), the six district court judges and 8 of the 10 current appellate judges appointed by Democratic president Bill Clinton, to name a few. To make this about race, Mr. Coleman, is unfair and wrong.

What should disqualify Estrada--or at least keep his nomination on hold until he coughs up some vital information--is his inability to be forthcoming about his judicial philosophy. While he may have answered more than 100 questions, as Coleman states, many of the answers were evasive, like, when asked about his judicial philosophy, he elliptically answered: "My view of the judicial function, Senator, does not allow me to answer that question." (Is he pleading the Fifth or being interviewed for the second highest court in the land?) Had Estrada previous judicial experience, the Senate could draw from published decisions, law review articles, or peer opinions; but, since he doesn’t, Democrats have asked to see internal memorandums written by Estrada during his years working for the Solicitor General’s Office. There is precedent for this: during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in 1987, Robert Bork gave the Judiciary Committee access to the same kind of documents from his employment with the Solicitor General during the Nixon administration. Estrada refuses to comply. Without these memos, we only have documents from the handful of cases he argued, as well as his organizational affiliations--including membership in the arch-conservative groups The Federalist Society and the Center for the Community Interest--to go on. If this is all we’ve got, it’s easy to see why Sen. Charles Schumer fears Estrada might be an activist judge and a "far-right stealth nominee," isn’t it?

Coleman’s claim that the filibuster is Democratic "political gamesmanship" ignores the fact that the nomination is opposed by organizations across the political spectrum, from Latino groups (Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Willie C. Velasquez Institute, United Farmworkers of America, the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute) to religious groups (National Council of Jewish Women, The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and the Interfaith Alliance--which expresses "grave concerns" about the nomination) to civil rights, minority, legal, environmental, and labor groups (NAACP, AFL-CIO, Congressional Black Caucus, Sierra Club, National Employment Lawyers Association, the Alliance for Justice), to name but a few. It's not only liberal Democrats who oppose Estrada. Even the country's newspaper of record, The New York Times, thinks the Senate should vote to reject Estrada’s nomination, citing his "scant paper trail" and "a reputation for extreme positions on important legal questions."

So, Coleman can mount his soapbox to decry the Democrats’ supposed politicking--what he dubs their "zeal to inflict political damage on the president"--but we all know he’s ignoring the fact that, with dividend tax-cuts for the rich, unbudgeted-for preemptive war in Iraq, an exploding deficit, and an imploding economy, the president is doing just fine inflicting damage on himself.