In Memory of Laury Estrada
By Tigercon Posted in User Blogs — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Miguel Estrada is a brilliant conservative lawyer, who is eminently qualified for nomination to the Supreme Court. As Chief Justice Rehnquist and many others have shown, a great lawyer can serve with distinction on the Supreme Court, despite the lack of prior judicial experience.
That gap in Mr. Estrada's resume can be laid at the feet of Democrat obstructionists, who filibustered his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. They insulted his Hispanic heritage as inauthentic, and they distorted and mischaracterized his record with baseless attacks, demonizing him to a degree unprecedented since their attacks on Robert Bork.
They succeeded in putting Miguel Estrada through hell. Decent Democrats should be ashamed of what their representatives did to a good and honorable man, and to his family:
For Rove, the most painful example was Miguel Estrada, who had worked in the Solicitor General's office, and who was Bush's first appellate-court nominee, in 2001. Estrada withdrew his name twenty-eight months after being nominated. During the confirmation struggle, Estrada's wife miscarried; in November, 2004, she died, of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. The death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner. Rove said that Mrs. Estrada had been traumatized by the nastiness of the process. Reid told Rove that he empathized with Estrada, but said that the Republicans' treatment of President Clinton's nominees--more than sixty were never voted on by the Judiciary Committee--had created victims, too. Rove, according to Reid, replied, "We need to sit down and talk about this," adding that the ugliness of the confirmation process had reached a new low.
May her memory be a blessing.
When a man has lost everything, nothing can make him whole. But sometimes justice can be served. Sometimes, such a man can rise from the ashes of his personal loss. God bless Mr. Estrada for having the courage, reportedly, to face his persecutors once again in judicial confirmation hearings.
President Bush could make no better nomination than Miguel Estrada for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Estrada is my #1 pick too for the same reasons and those expressed on confirmthem.com. May I suggest you go to redstate's sister site:
and voice your support in the blog comments? Several recent posts there discuss Estrada. He is 2nd in confirmthem's online poll, behind Luttig for male Justice.
P.S. -- I offer a hat tip to Kos's mouthpiece, acbonin, for bringing Laury Estrada's story to my attention in his post here. I hadn't previously been aware of the tragedy.