PORTLAND, Ore. – So far the federal courts have managed to overturn at
least some of the Bush administration’s attempts to undermine the
environmental gains of the past four decades. If the president succeeds in
getting the Senate to appoint William G. Myers to the 9th District Court,
though, the system of checks and balances that normally keeps the
government in a relatively moderate position will be severely tested – at
the very least in Idaho, where Myers will sit on the bench for life if
appointed. The 9th Circuit Court has jurisdiction over 75 percent of all
federal land in the nine western states where oil, coal, mining, grazing
and timber interests refer to green: that means cash.
President Bush tried to get Myers through last year, but the Democrats
filibustered and the slim Republican majority couldn’t push the
controversial nomination through. Since the elections last fall, all that’s
changed and thus Myer’s chances of winning approval have increased
substantially. More, Republican extremists are trying to ban the 200-year
tradition of the filibuster, the venerable tool that prevents narrow
majorities from abusing power.
In 2004, however, when Myers was up before the Senate the first time,
papers across the country were full of condemnation. They fingered Myers
for calling the Clean Water Act “regulatory excess” and branding Diane
Feinstein’s, D-Calif., California Desert Protection Act as “legislative
hubris.” The Arizona Daily Star editorial summed up the feelings by stating
that Myer’s “chief qualification for the job rests not in his legal acumen
but in the fact that his anti-environmental views match those of the
president.” The paper went on to state: “Myers is a particularly bad choice
for this position and should be rejected.”
Myers has never served as a judge of any court, and he has not had a lot of
judicial experience. In 2004, when asked to discuss 10 significant cases in
which he had been involved, he could only list a few. Throughout most of
the 1990s, the 48-year-old attorney was first a lobbyist for the mining
industry and then worked for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association as
executive director of the organization’s so-called Public Lands Council. In
2001, Bush tapped Myers as the chief lawyer for the Interior Department,
where he served until his resignation in 2003. A majority of the American
Bar Association committee that rates Senate appointees withheld the “highly
qualified” ranking from Myers, and a large minority of the 15-member group
did not join in even acquiescing on a “qualified” label.
John Kerry, of course, opposed Myers’ nomination in 2004 along with the
National Congress of American Indians and countless environmental
organizations across the country. But according to Bushgreenwatch.org, the
group that tracks the “Bush administration’s environmental misdeeds,” Bush
is running a number of nominations – that, like Myers, were rejected last
year – through again with the knowledge that this time Republican numbers
in the Senate are powerful enough to get his appointees through.
Key questions asked by those against a Myers nomination revolve around
whether someone who has spent their career on advocacy of the most strident
flavor is suited as a federal judge. In particular, Myers has showed
himself to share the ideology of Western private property activists, a
group dubbed the “sagebrush rebellion” in the 1980s. Moreover, while
solicitor for the Interior Department, Myers was responsible for allowing a
foreign-owned goldmine onto Quechan tribal land in California, a decision
he made unilaterally without undertaking the government-to-government
consultation with the tribe that all federal agencies are bound by. His
decision was later overturned by a federal judge who pointed out that the
regulation Myers cited in support of the activity had been written to
prevent degradation of the land, something a gold mine clearly would not
do.
Even as he’s known for his conservative views, pundits say the man, who
earned his J.D. at the University of Denver in 1981, is sharp and knows the
law, particularly as it applies to natural resources and the American West.
Nonetheless, critics have a field day with Myers rhetoric. He has compared
the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone to the British forcing
colonists to shelter soldiers. He brandies about thinly-veiled threats
about how a revolution of gun-toting ranchers from the West is not out of
the realm of possibility if his constituency continues to suffer what it
thinks is oppression under the elitist environmental agenda. Indeed, Myers
compared federal environmental regulations to King George’s tyrannical rule
over the colonies.
A February 2004 New York Times article published when Myers was up for
nomination the first time quotes from both sides of the aisle in order to
inject balance into the debate. From Senator Larry Craig, R-Idaho, came the
message that “Mr. Myers’s critics ‘purposely confuse the roles of a lawyer
and a judge.’” And from Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the words that
Myers “has dedicated most of his career to advocating for mining and cattle
industry interests that opposed laws protecting the environment.”
Clearly, Myers does not have a mind that appreciates ecological
relationships and values long-term environmental sustainability. His
cavalier record of favoring industry over the environment and the rights of
American Indians is alarming. Nonetheless, under the president’s auspices,
Myers appears to resonate with the current political climate of the nation.
If the Senate approves his nomination, he could sit on the bench for as
long as 20 years, ensuring that his opinions – what a Los Angeles Times
editorial termed “caustic and extremist” – are heard long after the Bush
administration recedes from public view.
