News-Record.com

Thanks to frequent commenter Fred Gregory, I've learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee has quietly returned to the White House the nomination of William J. Haynes to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. William J. Haynes is better known in some circles as "Jim" Haynes, my freshman hall counselor at Davidson back in the day.

According to this article in the Columbia newspaper The State, Haynes' nomination never got out of committee because U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wouldn't support it because of Haynes' role in authorizing "aggressive questioning" (i.e., torture) of detainees. With a 9-7 majority on the committee and Democrats threatening a filibuster, Republicans needed unanimity to move the nomination to the Senate floor, and although Graham publicly denies it, it would appear Graham had privately made it clear to his colleagues that that unanimity would be coming shortly after ice skating commenced in Hell.

NRO's Jon Adler says he finds Graham's opposition "less upsetting than Graham's apparent role in preventing Haynes from receiving an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor." Graham previously had called for up-or-down floor votes on all judicial nominees.

I'm guessing that it's just coincidence that Graham, along with the Senate's other GOP "renegades," Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, is frequently mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential contender. Graham, a former military lawyer himself, knew a great deal about the law regarding treatment of detainees, and as the State article linked above says, he didn't approve of Haynes' handling of it:

In a dramatic showdown last month, Graham grilled Haynes at his confirmation hearing, cutting him off in mid-sentence at several points. Graham highlighted contradictions between Haynes’ testimony and that of military lawyers who said Haynes ignored their strong opposition to the interrogation techniques.

And Graham ridiculed Haynes’ contention that he didn’t set interrogation policies, but merely passed on the findings of Justice Department lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the White House office of legal counsel.

I may be reading too much between the lines, but it sounds to me as if Graham also thought Haynes lied during his confirmation hearing. That's a huge no-no for any nominee.

Reasonable people can disagree on a nominee's qualifications for the federal bench. And as I said when I first blogged about this case, anything is possible, particularly in wartime. but the picture of Haynes painted in that Independent Judiciary report and this article is utterly at odds with the Jim Haynes I knew a quarter-century ago.

Whether he broke the law or not, the whole thing is sad ... and the whole thing likely never would have become a controversy if the administration hadn't decided to seize on torture as a solution before actually finding a problem that it would solve.