In the wake of withdrawing (the oddly poorly rated) nomination of Michael Wallace to the very conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the president has chosen not to resubmit the nominations of 3 of his most controversial nominees to the federal bench - William Myers (nominated to the 9th Circuit) and Terrence Boyle and William Haynes (who were both nominated to the 4th Circuit, and who would have therefore have had jurisdiction over West Virginia). I'm particularly pleased that the nomination of Haynes has finally been withdrawn. The idea that the counsel to Donald Rumsfeld's DOD should serve on a federal appeals court chills me to the bone.
Posted by armand at January 10, 2007 10:19 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Law and the CourtsIt's a good thing that the Democrats (and Lindsey Graham) held firm in their opposition to William Haynes. Consider the kind of person Team Bush wouldn't to put on our own federal Circuit Court. This is from the LA Times op-ed by the Gitmo prosecutor we resigned:
Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.
I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes' place in my chain of command."
... AND SUPPORTED DIFFERENT AGENDAS. Sounds like the one supported by Mr. Haynes, and the Bush administration, is one that has no place in the US court system.