From: "Mark Hessey" 


"Steve Ewing"  wrote: ... this particular
guy is unusually
> divisive, and the timing (the day after laying a wreath on MLK's grave) is
> unfortunate.

From what I read here: It's not so much that he's divisive, but rather that
the Dem's want him to seem so:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york010903b.asp
 "Pickering, who believed the Civil Rights Division went too easy on the
17-year-old bad guy, worked out what he believed was the best sentence for
Daniel Swan. It was a real-world solution to the kind of real-world problem
that the justice system deals with every day. And it was the end of the
cross-burning case until Pickering was nominated by President Bush to a
place on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals."

but blacks in MI seem not to be so shallow as the Dem's:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040117-121632-3680r.htm
"...Judge Pickering, who is supported by many blacks in Mississippi,
testified against a Ku Klux Klan leader in 1967. "Charles Pickering is
a man who testified against the Klan in Mississippi in the heat of the
1960s," Mr. Miranda said. "He represents the new South, which is
a community of whites and blacks working together."

I read somewhere else that I don't recall now, that he was a prosecutor
when he testified in the above case and lost his reelection bid as a
result. I'm just not seeing this guy as deserving of Teddy's invective from
the above article: "the maneuver "serves only to emphasize again
this administration's shameful opposition to civil rights." "The
president's recess appointment of this anti-civil-rights judge the day
after laying a wreath on the grave of Martin Luther King is an insult to
Doctor King, an insult to every African American and an insult to all
Americans who share Doctor King's great goals,"

Please Senator, put a sock in it.

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