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[Pages S2847-S2848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nominations
Mr. President, now on judges, during the same week that we mark the
65th anniversary of the historic ``Brown v. Board of Education''
decision, Leader McConnell has scheduled votes on nominees whose views
directly contradict the spirit of equality and justice that Brown
represents.
It is appalling. These new people we are putting on the bench turn
the clock so backward after we have made so much progress, many of it
through the courts.
Consider the nomination of Michael Truncale of Texas. He has peddled
conspiracies of ``widespread voter fraud'' and once called President
Obama an ``un-American imposter'' who ``bows to Arab Sheikhs and other
world leaders.'' This is a man who we are putting on the bench, a man
who is supposed to be judicious, thoughtful, and sees both sides. What
we are putting on the bench is hard-right ideologues who will do damage
to this country for a generation. Mr. Truncale was approved by the
Republican Senate yesterday for a seat on the district court in Texas,
and he is going to sit on that bench for life--a man who says things
like this and who thinks like this.
I have always tried to put on the bench people who are moderate. So
many of us have. Bill Clinton did. Barack Obama did. Here we have a
parade of narrow ideologues, and that is not who should be on the bench
because they will make law rather than interpret the law.
Here is another one, Kenneth Lee of California. His past writings
reveal shocking positions on race and diversity, affirmative action,
educational opportunity, and women's reproductive freedom. He once
wrote that multiculturalism is a ``malodorous sickness'' and that
sexism--sexism, which we have all seen and heard about and a little
more than half of our population experiences--is ``irrelevant
pouting.'' That is a man who should be on the bench? If confirmed
today, Mr. Lee may preside over cases dealing with gender
discrimination.
Consider Wendy Vitter, nominated to the Eastern District of
Louisiana. She once promoted the idea that contraceptives caused cancer
and claimed that Planned Parenthood kills 150,000 women annually. She
also refused to acknowledge that Brown v. Broad was correctly decided.
On this very anniversary, that is who is on the floor to be voted on in
lockstep by all the folks here on the Republican side. She refused to
acknowledge that Brown v.
[[Page S2848]]
Board was correctly decided, saying instead that the decision was
correct with the benefit of hindsight--whatever that means. In the same
district, where 6-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first African-
American child to attend an all-White elementary school in the South,
the Senate will consider confirming someone who claims that hindsight
was needed to understand why the decision that allowed Ruby to go to
the same school as a White child wasn't correct. That is who we are
putting on the bench.
These are not just conservatives. We understand that the President
and Republicans will put in conservatives, but hard-right, narrow
ideologues who show no understanding or sympathy for people who don't
look like them or pray like them or marry like them--what is wrong
here?
It is not hard. If you need the benefit of hindsight to understand
that Brown v. Board of Education, which brought an end to school
segregation and led to the end of American apartheid, was correctly
decided, you shouldn't be a Federal judge. I urge my colleagues, in the
spirit of the Brown anniversary and what it means, to oppose Ms.
Vitter's nomination this afternoon.
