Outrage

By Staff
March 17, 2002
The Senate Judiciary Committee worked its partisan will on Thursday against a good and decent man who happens to be conservative and pro-life. U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering of Laurel was the first target in what will now undoubtedly become a rancorous process of confirmation for any conservative judicial nomination made by President Bush. When they wake up this morning and look at themselves in the mirror, the liberal Senate Democrats should hang their heads in the disgrace of a shameful act against an honorable man.
But, of course, they won't. They are glowing about how they kept a conservative from a seat on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They relish the notion that they have the power of rejecting conservative ideas and concepts. Most of them do not much like Mississippi anyway and are happy to show it at every opportunity. After all, they are liberal and when the liberal chairman of the National Democratic Party snapped his fingers, they all came to heel.
For we folks down here in east Mississippi, still conservative, there is an uneasy feeling that our interests are being ill-served by the majority party in the U.S. Senate. For us, and other conservatives in this country, the Pickering vote may well become a real cause for political action. The fact is that the Senate must be returned to conservative control and voters have an opportunity this year to make it happen.
Our guess is that this action by a single Senate committee will give a tremendous boost to the congressional reelection campaign of U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, Judge Pickering's son who watched the Judiciary Committee's proceedings from a front row seat with gentlemanly grace. His comments, released afterward, were stunningly elegant, as good a testament to a son's love for his father and his native state as any words we've ever read.
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, who took to the Senate floor soon after the party line vote of the Senate committee, denounced the decision. He called it a "slap at Mississippi" and he is clearly right.
The outrage felt by conservatives all across this country over the Pickering vote by liberal Democrats in the U.S. Senate should not soon be forgotten.