resident Bush has re-nominated controversial Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi for a post on the federal appeals court.

   Pickering, currently a U.S. District Judge, was blocked last year after heated debate in the Senate, and opposition from a coalition of civil rights and other organizations. Questions were raised about the nominee's legal fitness on the bench, and his position on crucial issues such as voting rights, abortion rights for women, and the separation of church and state.

   Reacting to news that his name was being again submitted for senate confirmation, opponents immediately pledged to block Pickering from winning a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

   White House strategists are counting on President Bush's high standing in popularity polls, and the fact that the Republicans now hold 51 of the Senate's 100 seats. If they stand together, that means that the Pickering nomination could be defeated only by a filibuster which would require 60 votes to stop. But the candidate's record may prove to be too significant a hurdle for even Bush to overcome. Most sensitive could be Pickering's statements concerning racial matters and civil rights, especially in light of his close ties to former GOP Senate Leader and fellow Mississippian Trent Lott.

   Lott was recently dethroned as the Senate's key Republican after he made what critics say were racially insensitive remarks during a 100th birthday celebration for Sen. Strom Thurmond, who made a 1948 segregationist bid for the presidency.

Reacting to the White House move to re-nominate Pickering, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) warned, "Unfortunately, they have not learned from the Trent Lott episode, and I am going to do everything I can to stop this nomination from going forward."

   Schumer described the confirmation fight as a "moral issue," and said that Pickering displayed "glaring racial insensitivity" during his handling of a 1994 cross burning case. Pickering had sought a lighter sentence in a case where a Ku Klux Klan cross was burned on the lawn belonging to an interracial couple.

   And Pickering will again likely take heat for statements and associations dating back to his earl political career. In 1959, for instance, he wrote an article for the Mississippi Law Review ("Criminal Law: Miscegenation and Incest") where he listed ways in which the state's laws against interracial marriage could be strengthened. "Within months of the article being published," wrote journalist Richard Prasad, "the Mississippi Legislature adopted the changes advocated by Pickering."

   There is also the dispute over Pickering's support and possible ties to the notorious Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state-funded intelligence agency that fought integration by infiltrating civil rights and labor groups. Investigative reporter Donna Ladd noted the Commission "provided the White Citizens Council ... with lists of businesses and citizens seen as sympathetic to the 'agitators' so they could run them out of business or town." One file from the Commission archives cited the case of a black man who used the restroom of a service station in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The man later "made apologies for using this facility and said it was an emergency. If you think we should extend this investigation, we will be happy to do so."

   While a Mississippi state senator (1972-80), Pickering voted twice to fund the Sovereignty Commission.

   Judge Pickering's views on abortion rights and the separation of church and state are also troubling to critics who say that he has attempted to weaken the protections in the historic ROE v. WADE case, and would gut the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

   ¶       In 1976, while still a member of the Mississippi senate, Pickering served as chairman of the Human Rights and Responsibilities Subcommittee of the National GOP Platform Committee that approved language in the final platform document describing ROE v. WADE as "an intrusion into the family structure." The Subcommittee also called for passage of a "right to life amendment" to overturn the crucial Supreme Court decision which guaranteed abortion rights for women.

   Pickering also voted for a state senate resolution supporting a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion and abolish what he described as "abortion on call."

   ¶       Eight years later, Pickering was President of the Mississippi Baptist Convention. That body unanimously approved a call for legislation to outlaw abortion except when the life of the mother was in immediate danger. The resolution also affirmed the Baptist's group mission to "continue dealing with the issue of abortion by upholding the Christian views on human life."

   Addressing the Convention's 1984 gathering, Pickering opined that the Bible should be "recognized as the absolute authority by which all conduct of man is judged." (Charles W. Pickering, "God Will Hold Us Accountable," Mississippi Baptist Record, November 29, 1984).

   The Clarion-Ledger newspaper (November 13, 1984) reported that Pickering "called on Baptists to be about 'God's work' in helping to influence morality. 'We as Southern Baptists should lead the way in strengthening traditional moral values,' he said adding that society has been degraded by such things as pornography, homosexuality and divorce."

   Critics have said that these stern, dogmatic religious views clearly affect Pickering's performance and temperament on the bench. The group "Independent Judiciary" noted that lawyers who had argued cases before Judge Pickering noted that he made "unusually blunt statements" about everything from racial matters to the need for defendants to embrace religion.

   "Sometimes his personal views get in the way of the law," observed one attorney quoted in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary. "He can be a little hard to deal with," said another.

   "He is a fine person," observed one lawyer, "but he's also almost so pious that it interferes with his assignment as a judge. If he doesn't like a law, he has some trouble in cases that involve the law." (Vol. 1, "Almanac of the Federal Judiciary," Fifth Circuit, at 46 - 2001)

   ¶       In 1990, while mulling Pickering's appointment to the federal bench by George Bush, Sr., members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him blunt questions regarding his religious beliefs and how they might affect his performance in a court of law. Critics pointed to his "pious" posturing, inability to separate his private religious convictions from judicial proceedings, and his belief that the Bible was the supreme standard in judging human behavior as possible problems for the nominee.

   There were also questions about Pickering's unusual record of unpublished opinions, which might have shed further light on his judicial thinking.

   Of the approximately 1,100 opinions Charles Pickering has rendered in his 11 years on the federal bench, fewer than 100 have been published.

   "In contrast," noted an investigative file on Pickering published by People for the American Way, another judge who was confirmed to the Fifth Circuit in 2001 had nearly 14 times the number of published opinions during a comparable period. The Senate Judiciary Committee had to specifically request that Pickering provide verifiable copies of these unpublished rulings. He produced approximately 600 summaries, and indicated that the remainder -- nearly 40% of the rulings he rendered as a federal judge -- were "not available."

   What could have been the content of those lost rulings?

   ¶       But even the known and published decisions rendered by Pickering indicate a jurist blinded by religious righteousness, and unable to confine those sentiments from his courtroom deliberations.

   In the case of UNITED STATES v. HALAT (No. 2:96cr3OPG), Pickering decided to sentence a criminal defendant to a term of 18 years in prison for his involvement in a murder conspiracy. The judge admonished the defendant:

"It's too late for you not to pay a price for what you've done. However, it is not too late for you to form a new beginning. For yourself and others. I hope you will do that. You have a lot to offer. You can become involved in Chuck Colson's prison fellowship or some other such ministry, and be a benefit to your fellow inmates and to others and their families..."

   In a similar murder conspiracy case, Pickering excoriated the defendant saying that his life "has indeed epitomized the work of the devil." (UNITED STATES v. GILLICH, No. 1:90cr77PR - September 23, 1997). The judge's homily was described in one news article as a "move true to his religious convictions." Pickering also ordered that when the man had completed his jail sentence, he would be placed in a period of supervised release and/or probation with a program "through your church or some other agency or organizations approved in advance by the probation service."

   ¶       Do "jailhouse Christians" and others who suddenly and conveniently "find Jesus" behind prison walls receive special treatment from Judge Pickering? In 2001, during a "Motion for Reduction of Sentence" in the case of UNITED STATES v. EDMOND C. BROWN (No. 1:96cr57PG), Pickering slashed the penalty for a man originally given a life sentence in a drug-related crime. The defendant maintained that he had spent the last five years of his sentence "seeking God, reading and studying God's word." He also provided information to the government which was also used to support the plea for a reduced sentence.

   In imposing a ten year sentence, Pickering said that the defendant possessed "considerable talent" in sports, "You're nice looking. You're neat..."

   "What a waste when there's such a great need for role models, for Christian examples" Pickering rambled on.

   ¶       In another case, BARNES v. MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS (907 F. Supp. 972), Pickering denied a petition for habeas corpus filed by attorneys on behalf of a defendant who had received a life sentence. The PAW report notes that Pickering "criticized the availability and extent of habeas corpus relief," and complained that jurists with law clerks were "second-guessing law enforcement officers."

   Pickering noted: "Judges and legal scholars throughout the ages have warned against what we are doing now. One of the oldest recorded codes of law provides: 'The innocent and the just you shall not put to death, nor shall you acquit the guilty (Exodus 23:7).' "

   Pickering then went on to quote from a decision rendered by the Supreme Court to bolster his argument, and also cited Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), a noted English jurist and solicitor general. Coke authored a compendium of cases and law, "Reports," between 1600 and 1615. Critics pointed out that Pickering was explicitly trying to equate the Bible with English common law and even the Supreme Court in terms of jurisprudence authority.

   Supporters of Charles Pickering point out that he has allegedly changed many of his opinions concerning race and civil rights since, when as a young man, he authored the legal review article on interracial marriage. He also has never heard an abortion case during his tenure as a U.S. District Court judge. And there are cases which suggest that Pickering did, indeed, appear to rule on the merits, arguments and law, not his personal biases. In 1994, for instance, a group of local citizens in Ovett, Mississippi went to court in an attempt to stop construction of Camp Sister Spirit, a lesbian community. Pickering dismissed the case. And in 1991, he vigorously rebuked an attorney attempting to introduce a plaintiff's homosexuality during a fraud trial. Pickering declared, "Homosexuals are as much entitled to be protected from fraud as are any other human beings, but not any more so." He then instructed jurors that "The fact that the alleged victims in this case are homosexuals shall not affect your verdict in any way."

   But his own writings and statement still haunt Pickering, even today, and may prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to his ascension to the Circuit Court system. Critics point out that he has made disparaging remarks about even basic constitutional doctrines such as one person-one vote, and the Voting Rights Act. Civil Libertarians worry that he has criticized the Miranda ruling, and has appealed to Biblical authority and "natural law" in his pronouncements. For Atheists and state-church separationists, Pickering's stern, Old Testament-style lecturing of defendants, his authoritarian adherence to the supremacy of the Bible as an arbiter in human affairs, and his hostility to the strict enforcement of the Establishment Clause render him a poor choice for such an important federal judicial post.

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