Some of William Pryor's history and why he shouldn't be seated.

William Pryor: Ideology Over All
By Ralph G. Neas
The case against Alabama Attorney General William Pryor’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit is a simple one. Despite the denials of his friends and admirers, Pryor has consistently used the power of his office to try to change the law to suit his ideology. In doing so, he has jeopardized the rights of Alabamans and all Americans. Giving him a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court would further jeopardize those rights. Pryor’s devotion to a states’ rights philosophy has already contributed to a weakening of federal protections for those most in need. In reviewing his record in the office of the attorney general and his extensive speeches and writings, even a casual observer must conclude that, for William Pryor, his states’ rights ideology conquers all. Over the past half-dozen years, Pryor has urged the Supreme Court — often in cases where Alabama’s interests were not at stake — to advance the states’ rights interpretation of the Constitution. In the process, he has helped to weaken civil rights protections for millions of Americans. Alabama’s argument before the court in Garrett v. Alabama was that key remedies provided in the Americans With Disabilities Act do not apply to state employees, because the Constitution shields states from such suits. Although it was based on the once discredited states’ rights interpretation of the Constitution, Alabama won the case, effectively ending protections against age discrimination for millions of state employees across the country. In another case, Pryor successfully argued that congressional efforts to end age discrimination — and provide a remedy for victims of such discrimination — were not appropriate with respect to state employees. Pushing this same states’ rights philosophy, Pryor has filed a brief before the Supreme Court supporting the state of Nevada in a case that would leave state employees with no real recourse for violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act. The outcome of this case is pending. Although Pryor has praised the Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of states’ rights, he has been critical when his interpretation of the Constitution has been rebuked. For instance, the Court rejected as “cruel and unusual punishment” Alabama prison guards’ practice of handcuffing a prisoner to a hitching post and denying him clothing, water, and even bathroom breaks. Pryor had defended these barbarous actions and complained that the high court was using “its own subjective views on appropriate methods of prison discipline.” Yet interpreting the Constitution and enforcing its protections is exactly what the Supreme Court is supposed to do. As a veteran observer of judicial nomination hearings, I can recall more than one of President Bush’s nominees grudgingly asserting to a panel of senators that he or she would follow the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, as it was “the law of the land.” But Pryor has called the ruling “the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history.” During an April 1997 rally, Pryor decried the decades-old precedent of Roe. He said, “I will never forget January 22, 1973, the day seven members of our highest court ripped the Constitution…” In a survey of state attorneys general on the issue, Pryor said, “Abortion is murder and Roe v. Wade is an abominable decision.” Pryor opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.One of Pryor’s most memorable efforts to move the law closer to his ideology is seen through Alabama Justice Roy Moore’s crusade to defy a federal court order and display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and on other state property. Moore parlayed his refusal to remove such a display, even after a court ordered him to do so, into a successful campaign for the state’s top judgeship. There, he again displayed his Ten Commandments, this time on a granite monument in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery. William Pryor has backed Judge Moore, even though the judge’s actions plainly violate the Constitution’s requirement of the separation of church and state. Pryor, like Moore, fails to understand the purpose of the Establishment clause. It is not hostility to people of faith but respect for the beliefs of every person that underpins the separation of church and state, which Pryor seems to hold in such low regard. Out of respect for freedom of conscience, government officials are prevented from using their power to promote specific religious beliefs. Pryor flouts the spirit of the Establishment Clause. Speaking at a rally in support of Judge Moore in 1997, Pryor said, “God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians…to save our country and save our courts.”Pryor’s efforts to push the law in the direction of his own ideology have also damaged the interests of the people of Alabama. In fact, Pryor’s ideology may have cost the people of Alabama millions in the settlement from the suit by state attorneys general against tobacco companies. According to Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, Pryor fought against his fellow state negotiators in talks with tobacco companies. “But tobacco lobbyists saw him as a friend. He was their friend,” Moore later told the Decatur (Ala.) Daily News. “He defended them at all costs.”In the end, Alabama did not receive as generous a settlement from the litigation as other states, even though it had lost just as much revenue in health costs for tobacco-related disease and death. Moore says that this is because Pryor “did a better job of defending the tobacco companies than their own defense attorneys.”Pryor also believes it is acceptable to imprison gay men and lesbians for expressing their own human sexuality in the privacy of their own homes. He filed a brief in the Supreme Court asking the Court to uphold the Texas “Homosexual Conduct Law,” under which two gay men were arrested and jailed for engaging in private consensual sex. In his brief, Pryor presaged the recent comments of Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, equating for legal analysis the consensual acts between two people of the same gender — criminalized by the Texas statute — to “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia.” As the Tuscaloosa News explained recently, “It is a long step from sanctioning, or even tolerating, consensual private activity between two adults to permitting abusive crimes such as pedophilia. The law is perfectly capable of drawing such distinctions in theory and in practice.” It is disturbing that Pryor apparently cannot draw those distinctions. These are just some of the reasons why Pryor’s confirmation would pose a threat to the rights of the Americans who seek justice every year in the 11th Circuit. The federal appeals court is almost always the last best chance for justice for these citizens of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, considering that the Supreme Court hears fewer than ninety cases each year. Pryor is far from being, as one supporter stated, “utterly fair… and demonstrably nonpartisan.” Pryor instead has demonstrated that he uses his position to remake the law in order to suit his extreme ideological beliefs. For these reasons, he is, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote recently, “unfit to judge.”

And now with the compromise that the senate made to day this individual who isn't fit to be a federal judge will be seated. I'm crying for my country that is slowly, but now picking up speed becoming a theocrasy and that is not what our "Founding Fathers" wanted. The Main part of the Europeans to land on these shores was to get away from this same type of behavior. They were tired of GOVERNMENT CONTROLED RELIGION and we don't need it now and we don't need it here.