Carefully chosen to represent the highest thinking of the Bush administration, the following two judges are under consideration in the Senate. It is in defense of these appointments that the Republican forces in the Senate wish to use the so-called nuclear option to wipe out the time-honoured balance of powers afforded by filibuster rules.

"The Senate is currently debating the nominations of two judges — Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. Here is a summary of how bad they are and why it is important that they don't become federal judges.

Janice Rogers Brown, a Justice on the California Supreme Court, would threaten the most basic protections for workers and the environment that have kept our country strong since the Great Depression. She follows a radical judicial philosophy, (often called "Constitution in Exile") that says courts have a duty to block Congress from interfering with a corporation's "right" to profitably pollute, or an employer's "right" to demand unlimited hours at any wage from their employees. On the state Supreme Court she has attacked California's anti-discrimination statute, affordable housing laws, fees levied against major urban polluters, and laws that protects whistleblowers from retaliation by their employers and consumers from corporate fraud.

Pricilla Owen, a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court, has been repeatedly admonished by her own conservative colleagues for what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described as her "unconscionable judicial activism." As a candidate for the Supreme Court job Owen defied ethics standards by accepting substantial campaign contributions from giant corporations including Enron and Halliburton and then later issuing rulings in their favor. In case after case where individual rights came into conflict with corporate profit, Owen has sided with the latter — including cases where a liquor vendors' negligence left a nine-year-old with permanent brain damage and where major companies have argued their right to unfettered profit should exempt them from all local environmental laws.
"

(Descritpions from MoveOn.org).


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