They want to stack the courts to defeat the evil photo ID to vote laws.
Via The Hill
Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) plan to publicly rebuke President Obama over a lack of diversity in his federal judicial picks.
The lawmakers are organizing a Capitol Hill press conference as early as this week to decry what Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called “the appalling lack of African American representation” among Obama’s nominees, particularly in the 11th Circuit, which includes Georgia, Florida and Alabama.
The Democrats also contend several of Obama’s nominees have championed policies that either discriminate against minorities, or are just plain racist.
“We have very grave concerns [with certain nominees] given disparities that are particularly common in the South,” Norton said Thursday in a telephone interview.
The outcry is a rare public split between Obama and his staunchest allies.
Yet the president’s relationship with black lawmakers on Capitol Hill is more complicated that it sometimes appears.
While the CBC’s underlying support for Obama has been unwavering, many have also expressed disappointment that he hasn’t fought harder for the liberal policy priorities that propelled him twice into the White House.
Norton, who heads a CBC panel focused on judicial nominations, said the group has met with other CBC members representing the 11th Circuit states to discuss an opposition strategy to Obama’s picks. While “no decisions have been made” about specifics, she said, the exasperation within the CBC is general.
“This is a caucus-wide concern,” she said.
The focus will likely be on Georgia, where most within the Democratic delegation – including Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon – have been up in arms since Obama named a handful of nominees for the federal bench just before Christmas.
One of them, Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs, had voted years ago as a state legislator to keep the Confederate battle emblem a prominent part of Georgia’s state flag – a move to preserve “one of the most vicious symbols of hate and white supremacy” in the country’s history, Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), a CBC member, charged earlier this month.
Another nominee, Atlanta lawyer Mark H. Cohen, helped to defend Georgia’s voter ID law, which the Democrats say is designed to discourage the participation of poor and minority voters at the polls.
“You tell me, how can you have the Justice Department fighting the voter ID, voter suppression law in Texas and at the same time put on the court for life the man who defended that same law in Georgia?” Scott asked, referring to the DOJ’s lawsuit against Texas’s new voter ID law.