ORDINARY IS AS THE GANG DOES:

A Different Timpanist (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, 6/10/05, NY Times)

William H. Pryor Jr., now 43, grew up to become the straight-talking attorney general of Alabama, a man who once called the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." On Thursday, the Senate voted 53 to 45 to confirm Judge Pryor to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, covering Alabama, Florida and Georgia, 16 months after Mr. Bush installed him on the bench temporarily while Congress was in recess.

To his detractors, Judge Pryor, the last of three judges whose confirmations were assured by a bipartisan agreement, is "an ideological warrior," in the words of Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. In a court brief, Judge Pryor once asserted that a right to same-sex relations would also confer a right to bestiality and necrophilia, views that critics say are extreme and make him unfit for a lifetime appointment.

But to his supporters, who include black civil rights leaders in his home state, Judge Pryor is a welcome departure from so many nominees who do the classic Washington two-step, dancing around controversy. When Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, asked Judge Pryor during his confirmation hearing if he regretted the abomination remark, he did not take the bait.

"No," the judge replied evenly, "I stand by that comment."

Senators appeared shocked. Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said the room was so quiet "you could hear a pin drop." At that moment, Judge Pryor broke a barrier, daring to talk about what Mr. Schumer described as "fervent personal beliefs" - and clearing the way for future nominees to do so - while advancing the cause of religious conservatives, as he has done his entire adult life.

Of course, even legal scholars on the Left will usually concede that Roe is itself, at least in jurisprudential terms, pretty much of an abortion and no one ever bothers to try and explain how a free floating "right of privacy" could bar bestiality, incest, and the like.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2005 11:50 AM