Saad Story

The Detroit Free Press goes inside the tangled story of the Saad nomination and, potentially, filibuster.

No matter where he ends up, Saad, 56, of Oakland County, has been on one long, strange trip.

Although not one of Bush's most contentious judicial nominations -- that role has been reserved for Priscilla Owen of Texas and Janice Rogers Brown of California -- Saad is easily the most longstanding. He was first picked for the federal bench by Former President George Bush in 1992, then by George W. Bush in 2001, 2003 and again this year.

Most of that time since 2001 has been spent waiting to see whether his nomination would be approved or scuttled in negotiations, on issues mostly unrelated to Saad, among the White House, Senate Republicans and Michigan's two Democratic U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.

Also waiting nearly as long have been three other Michigan nominees to the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati: U.S. District Judge David McKeague of Lansing, state Appeals Court Judge Richard Griffin of Traverse City and Wayne County Circuit Judge Susan Neilson.

But Saad is the only one of the previously filibustered nominees to have almost scuttled his own hopes by mistakenly sending a scathing e-mail of Stabenow's alleged gamesmanship on his nomination. To her.

Two weeks ago, he was again briefly vaulted to the forefront of news reports on the fight over Bush's nominees when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the Senate's top Democrat, spoke on the floor about "a problem" in Saad's FBI background file that made him an obvious filibuster target.

An interesting, and frustrating, read.

(Via former Saad clerk and my longstanding electronic acquaintance Geoff Brown)

Posted by Mitch at May 30, 2005 05:22 AM | TrackBack