Senator Kennedy calls Bush’s Black Female Judicial Nominee an Ape?

Bush’s judicial nominee Judge Janice Brown: Denounced as a “Neanderthal” by Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts…

After months of political warfare, Republicans and Democrats finally brokered a truce over President Bush’s nominee, Judge Janice Brown, for the US Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. And, if their congressional ceasefire holds, the US Senate will finally confirm her nomination this week, in a party-line vote.

Before she retreats to the sublime confines of the federal bench, however, I feel obliged to make a few observations for the record:

The way Democratic senators and liberal activists pilloried Judge Brown – for purely partisan sport – constituted not only unmitigated professional harassment, but also unbridled abuse of the judicial confirmation process. And, it is as disheartening as it is instructive that it was the erstwhile racially enlightened Sen. Edward Kennedy who led this ad hominem and racist attack against Judge Brown.

Sen. Edward Kennedy: The sacred cow of liberal politics!

But it is equally disheartening and instructive that black civil rights activists, notably Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, never uttered a word of condemnation against Sen. Kennedy for his overtly racist denunciation of Judge Brown. Instead, the seemed more concerned about the perfectly reasonable comments Mexican President Vicente Fox made about black labor in America.

Conspiring adversaries Jackson (L) and Sharpton (R): Damn Al, can you believe our boy Kennedy called that sister a nay-ander…um, ah…ape! But here’s how we gonna play this: Did you hear what that crazy Mexican President said the other day…

After all, we all know what would have happened if a conservative white male politician had called a liberal black female judge a Neanderthal. Jackson and Sharpton would have orchestrated a hell-raising condemnation against that politician – preaching their familiar refrain “no justice, no peace” – until he was forced to resign.

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