...Miguel Estrada, Bush's nominee for a seat on the crucially important D. C. Circuit Court (a seat open only because Republicans blocked a Clinton nominee - indeed, two Clinton nominations to the D. C. Circuit were blocked because the Republicans said the circuit had too many judges already; Bush sent nominations for both those seats). Estrada'a confirmation got stuck in a months-long filibusterby Democats because neither he nor the White House would supply any information about his judicial views. Republicans, Kinsley wrote, were "hoarse with rage that Democratic senators want to know what someone thinks before making him or her a judge." Naturally, they also accused the Democrats of being anti-Hispanic. (With forty-two circuit vacancies to fill, Estrada was, as of May 2003 [this source was written in 2003 - Craig234], Bush's only Hispanic nominess - and the major Hispanic organizations opposed him...
Miguel A. Estrada, D. C> circuit, the second most important in the country after the Supreme Court. With jurisdiction over many federal agencies, the D. C. Circuit rules on environmental, civil rights, workplace, and consumer protection statues affecting the whole country - and on what federal agencies can and cannot regulate; thus it had long been targetted by conservatives seeking to limit federal power to regulate corporations. The confirmation of Estrada, along with Bush nominee John Roberts (confirmed May 2003), would give the already conservative D. C. Circuit six Republican and four Democratic appointees, with two seats still vacant, awaiting Bush nominations...
Estrada... was dubbed the "stealth candidate" becuase of the difficulty of getting any information out of him or the White House about his judicial views... Estrada claimed he never read Supreme Court decisions and could not recall discussing any high-court rulings while working in the Solicitor General's office from 1992 to 1997. The White House refused to hand over recommendations Estrada wrote during that time, calling them "highly privilieged." What was known about Estrada, however, made him... qualified from the right' point of view: he was one of the architects of the Bush 2000 legal strategy in the Florida recount battle, and his former superior in the Solicitor General's office, Paul Bender, said he was a "right-wing ideologue" who "couldn't be trusted to state thelaw in a fair, neutral way."
- Banana Republicans book