Bush Judicial Nominees Withdraw

Evidently conceding to the Senate’s new Democratic majority, four of President George W. Bush’s appeals court nominees have requested that their name be withdrawn from the contentious confirmation process.

William Haynes, William Myers, Terence Boyle and Mike Wallace apparently fear what awaits them with a Democratic-controlled Senate and no longer want to be considered for the coveted appeals court judgeships, according to a national news service.

Haynes, nominated to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, has been awaiting a Senate vote for nearly three years. He is an Ivy League graduate who currently serves as General Counsel of the Department of Defense. Myers, nominated to the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit, is a former Solicitor of the Department of the Interior and Boyle, nominated to the Fourth Circuit, is a federal district court judge in North Carolina who was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Wallace, nominated to the Fifth Circuit, is a Mississippi attorney who specializes in commercial litigation.

Democrats have used filibusters to block several of Bush’s federal appellate court nominees and even with a Republican-controlled Senate, one knowledgeable insider said late last year that there was “zero” chance that any of the nominated judges would make it through the Senate “killing fields” in the waning days of 2006. Haynes, Myers and Boyle were all nominated during Bush’s first term, blocked and re nominated in 2004.