Posted July 10, 2007 – The House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chairman John Conyers, (D-Mich.), has been busy.   This week, Conyers put the White House on notice that he’s going to look into why the president decided to commute the sentence of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide, I. “Scooter” Libby. 

Adding to the blue mood in the White House  is the widespread consternation over Bush’s nomination of Mississippi Judge Leslie H. Southwick to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which handles cases from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

I’ve learned that this isn’t sitting too  well with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who are planning to work hard to derail this appointment. Southwick, 53, is now teaching at the University of Mississippi Law School but served as a member of the Mississippi Court of Appeals from 1995 to 2006.   A Texas native, he’s also a member of the Mississippi National Guard and used his legal skills while on active duty from 2004 to 2005. 

 So what don’t they like about him?

Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, already has written a letter to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee saying, “[Southwick’s] record, to the extent that he has disclosed it, raises too many questions about his commitment to civil and human rights for him to be entrusted, for life, with such an important position in our judiciary.

They site several decisions of concern, but the Richmond v. Mississippi Department of Human Services,  decision stands out.  Southwick, in a 5-4 ruling, allowed a White state social worker to get his job back after being fired for calling an African-American co-worker “a good ole nigger.”

Southwick reasoned that the statement had been taken out of context, and the slur wasn’t enough to cost someone his job. The Leadership Conference letter quotes the decision, which said the comment wasn’t “motivated out of racial hatred or racial animosity directed toward a particular co-worker or toward Blacks in general.”

Black leaders and members of the Caucus will be making it clear to the president and his nominee that the “N-word” is racial.