President Bush deserves praise for overriding the obstructionists in the U.S. Senate and appointing Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Bush issued a recess appointment Friday, allowing him to bypass the Senate that has blocked Pickerings nomination since 2002 and even filibustered him last year. The appointment will allow Pickering to sit on the bench until January 2005, when the new Congress convenes. Hopefully, next year the Republicans will have enough votes to break the filibuster on Pickering and allow for a true vote on him and other nominees. This is a victory not only for Pickering, but for the judicial process. This country deserves to have a man of Pickerings stature serving on our courts. Democrats such as Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., should be ashamed of their actions and their obstructionists tactics. Their playing the race card in this case was totally baseless. The Democrats tried to paint Pickering as a racist, although he testified against the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1960s, something that cost him political office soon after. Have they forgotten the senior senator from West Virginia who was a former Klan member?Pickering was also supported for nomination by Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights worker Medgar Evers, and received the highest mark from the American Bar Association hardly a right-wing group. For 25 years, I have strongly advocated that African-Americans and whites should sit down and talk in a positive and constructive manner to try to promote better understanding. This Ive done, Pickering said recently after a meeting with the Mississippi Black Caucus. This is the true Charles Pickering. So why would the Democrats want to smear him?He is a white Christian and hes a pro-life Mississippian. He is an easy target because he stands for everything that the Democrats want to destroy. They claim to be the party for minorities and inclusion, but their actions in this case contradict their stated beliefs. Their vision for the ideal judicial bench, for instance, is reflected in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit all Clinton appointees which is the most overturned court in the country. If you dont remember that circuit, its the one in California that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it contained the words under God. Now it is time that others such as Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor and Texas judge Priscilla Owen be given their chance at up-or-down votes. If this doesnt happen, Bush should make additional recess appointments. It all comes down to one thing the Democrats truly believe that if one of the nominees becomes a Supreme Court justice, then Roe v. Wade will be overturned. This is absolutely ridiculous, since each of the nominees has testified before a Senate panel that they would rule by law and not personal philosophies. Its a shame that we have a few in the Senate who feel our federal courts should sit empty, just to smear someones name to advance their own extreme ideology. Its also a shame that Bush had to use this privilege to do a job that should have been done in the Senate. Schumer characterized the recess appointment as lacking in fairness and bipartisanship. Our question: What is fair or bipartisan about not allowing Pickerings appointment to be decided by an up-or-down vote of the Senate?Presidential aspirant Howard Dean took note of Pickerings appointment by calling him a racist. This is about what you would expect from a candidate suffering from a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. The comment will likely come back to haunt Democrats in the November election, where five U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs in the South, Pickerings backyard. People In Iowa rendered a verdict on Dean Monday. But we wish Judge Pickering all the best on the federal bench.