MISSISSIPIAN BURNING (via Glenn Dryfoos):

A Judge Who Did Justice: 'You Have Committed a Despicable Act,' Said Sentencing Judge Pickering (Nat Hentoff, October 24th, 2003, Village Voice)

When George W. Bush renominated Mississippi Federal District Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Democratic attack machine on the Senate Judiciary Committee, People for the American Way, and other liberal watchdogs of the judiciary went after Pickering again--just as the Republican artillery pursued some of Bill Clinton's nominees.

As before, the most insistent charge against Pickering was that, presiding over a cross-burning case in Mississippi as a district judge, he had gone way out of his way to get a lighter sentence than the federal prosecutors demanded for one of the three white defendants. At the October 2 Judiciary Committee hearing on Pickering, Senator Ted Kennedy declared the judge's behavior in that case shameful.

What follow here are the facts of the case as reported by a New York Times specialist in legal issues, Neil Lewis (May 28), and Bryan York in National Review Online (January 9 and 13) and Editor & Publisher (March 3). I am indebted to Lewis and York, and did my own reporting as well. Lewis's factual reporting on this case has been ignored by Times editorial writers as they repeatedly attack Pickering's action.

Except that it's not a question of whether the judge is just but of what Democrats have to do to keep their special interests satisfied.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2003 7:14 PM