The following commentary was originally published by Creators Syndicate on July 18.  It reappeared – quite appropriately, we believe – on Mr. Martin’s recently launched BlackAmericaToday.com.

As Republican senators bitterly complain about the treatment President Bush’s judicial nominees are receiving from Senate Democrats – the president called it a “travesty” – Dallas attorney Cheryl Wattley can only shake her head at what clearly is a case of selective memory from the GOP.

In 1995, Wattley was nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton. If approved, she would have been the first African American to ever serve as a federal judge of the North District of Texas. Her resume was impeccable: She was a criminal prosecutor with the United States Attorney's office in the Northern District of Texas, and the District of Connecticut. She later became a visiting professor at Southern Methodist University School of Law, and then a sole practitioner, focusing on federal litigation and civil rights law.

Even before being formally nominated, she spent six months preparing for the grueling process, resigning from a number of organizational boards and divesting from several businesses. She even refused to accept several cases, not knowing if she would be able to finish them. “They strongly encouraged you to start positioning yourself if you were indeed an appointee,” Wattley told me.

She was told the process would take about six months before confirmation. So she waited. And waited. And waited.

On June 12, 1997, Wattley removed her name from consideration in an effort to rebuild a law practice that was virtually dormant for two years.

No one said exactly why Wattley never even got a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. But clearly she was seen as controversial because of her civil rights litigation.

“Forget the fact that I’ve been a criminal prosecutor and put people in jail,” she said. “That did not count.”

Her story is a troubling one of what happens when the judicial process is politicized. Ever since the contentious Senate hearings of Judge Robert Bork in 1987, what used to be a calm affair has turned into an epic battle between the opposing political parties.

George W. Bush's move into the White House, hasn't changed that. He has made every effort to appoint judges who are strict constructionists. If you want to know who is a model judge for the Bush administration, look no further than Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the two most conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

There is nothing compassionate about the conservatism of those two.

Democrats, still angered by the treatment Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, showed towards Clinton’s appointees, have chosen to escalate the fight by filibustering Bush’s judicial nominees to keep the Republican-controlled Senate from approving them. So far, their coalition has held together to keep Miguel Estrada off the federal bench. Now Democratic minority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., says they will also filibuster Judge Priscilla Owen, who was approved on party lines in the Senate Judiciary Committee after being voted down on party lines when the Democrats briefly controlled the Senate in 2002.

Democrats should continue to press the issue because judicial appointments are lifelong. And after an army of conservative judges were appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, there is no doubt a need for balance and equity on the federal bench.

If a liberal judge is bad for the bench, then an ardent conservative is just as wrong. The tit-for-tat game is one that parents often tell their children not to play, but in politics, that’s the rule of the day. Republicans are absolutely correct when they assert that the president deserves to have his judicial appointments voted up or down by the Senate, but that same rule should apply when a Democrat sits in the White House. Every time Hatch or any other Republican senator opens his or her mouth to complain, someone should press play on a VCR to show how much of a hypocrite he is.

Wattley says the present process must be reformed because knocking a judge for a ruling you disagree with is unfair.

“That conflicts with the three separate parts of government,” she said. “If you end up with judicial nominees who are so beholden or transformed by a political process, then you’re really depriving them of the independence that we applaud so much.”

Roland S. Martin is editor of BlackAmericaToday.com and is syndicated by Creators Syndicate. He can be reached at [email protected].