Wednesday Roundup

PFAW argues that there is a trend in President Bush's nominees to the Fifth Circuit:

President Bush has nominated Leslie Southwick to fill a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Bush previously tried to fill the seat with Charles Pickering and then Michael Wallace, both of whom faced significant opposition due to their disturbing legal records, especially on civil rights.

“Regrettably, Southwick also has a troubling record and appears to be cut from the same cloth as the others,” said Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way. “First Pickering, then Wallace, and now Southwick – Bush has completely struck out on the Fifth Circuit.”

Congressman George Miller (D-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor, pledges to restore protections striped from victims of employment discrimination by yesterday's Supreme Court decision:

The Supreme Court’s ruling makes it more difficult for workers to stand up for their basic civil rights in the workplace. A worker undergoing sex, race, or other discrimination in pay is discriminated against with each and every discriminatory paycheck, not just when the company set the worker’s pay. Yet, according to the Supreme Court, if a worker does not file within 180 days of the employer’s decision to set her pay unlawfully, she has to live with that discrimination paycheck after paycheck. This ruling will force Congress to clarify the law’s intention that the ongoing effects of discriminatory decisions are just as unacceptable as the decisions themselves.

Marty Lederman discusses a recent report by the former Executive Director of the 9/11 commission which describes American interogation techniques as "Cool, Carefully Considered, Methodical, Prolonged and Repeated Subjection of Captives to Physical Torment, and the Accompanying Psychological Terro.r"

Boeing is sued over its alleged role in rendering U.S. detainees to other nations where they would be tortured.

A recent polls shows support for gay rights at a "high water mark," with close to one half of respondents expressing support for marriage equality.