Patrick Leahy: “I am sure it was inadvertent that when the distinguished Senator from Utah was talking about the editorials against the…”

“I am sure it was inadvertent that when the distinguished Senator from Utah was talking about the editorials against the nominee, Priscilla Owen, he said there were only three against. I refer, for example, to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and I will quote from it and then put the whole editorial in the Record. I ask unanimous consent that articles in opposition to her be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: [From the New York Times, Sept. 4, 2002] The Wrong Judge Priscilla Owen, President Bush's latest nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has been at times so eager to issue conservative rulings in cases before her on the Texas Supreme Court that she has ignored statutory language and substituted her own views. This criticism comes not from the 'special interest groups' she has charged with misstating her record, but from Alberto Gonzales, President Bush's own White House counsel. Mr. Gonzales, who served with Justice Owen on the Texas high court, once lambasted her dissent in an abortion case for engaging in 'unconscionable . . . judicial activism.' Mr. Gonzales says today that he nonetheless supports the elevation of Justice Owen. We do not. In choosing a nominee for the Fifth Circuit--the powerful federal appeals court for Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana-- President Bush has looked to the extreme right wing of the legal profession.…”