Victoria the Usurper
The civil-rights commission’s illegal member takes her seat.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
December 7, 2001 3:30 p.m.

ary Frances Berry and her subordinates at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights denied Peter Kirsanow his seat on the panel this morning, even though President Bush appointed him to the post on Wednesday and a judge swore him in last night. "We won't stand down," insisted Berry, the commission's chairwoman.

Kirsanow is supposed to replace Victoria Wilson, a liberal whose term expired on November 29. But Wilson, who was chosen to fill out the term of the late Leon Higginbotham, insists that she's entitled to a full six-year term rather than the remainder of Higginbotham's. This would keep her on the commission until 2006, even though her formal paperwork says that she should have left the building last week.

It's a bizarre reading of the law, but one that Berry chose to accept as she and the commission's left-wing majority (including Wilson) blocked a series of motions offered by the GOP-appointed members on everything from seating Kirsanow to simply allowing Kirsanow to make a statement for the record.

"What we saw today had nothing to do with this commission's mission of promoting civil rights. It was an unvarnished defiance of the rule of law — the very rule of law that this commission is charged with protecting," said Republican commissioners Jennifer Braceras, Russell Redenbaugh, and Abigail Thernstrom in a joint statement. They went on to note that both the White House counsel's office and career lawyers at the Department of Justice believe Kirsanow is the rightful commissioner.

The dispute ultimately will be settled in the courts — but Wilson's position does not appear tenable except through willful ignorance. Early in the meeting, for instance, Berry displayed on a projector the statute governing commissioners' terms. The section of the law in question is precisely two sentences long. Berry, however, showed only the first sentence and represented it as complete. Yet it is the second sentence — the one she chose to hide from view — which makes plain that Peter Kirsanow is the newest member of the civil-rights commission.

"We are confident that in due course the law will be vindicated and Mr. Kirsanow will take his rightful seat beside us," concluded the statement by Braceras, Redenbaugh, and Thernstrom.

Mary Frances Berry's leadership of the commission was a disgrace long before today. Now, she is trying to lead a lawless rump commission. She is unfit for public office.

Girl Power
Cathy Keating, Oklahoma's First Lady, is finding it harder to win a congressional seat than many people had expected. She's running for the seat that Steve Largent is giving up so that he can run to succeed her husband as governor. She's got far more cash than her two Republican rivals — the Oklahoman reported earlier this week that she had raised $820,000, almost twice what they've got combined. But the conventional wisdom is that she won't win a majority in the primary next Tuesday, forcing a run-off in January. The seat is safely Republican, so whoever wins the primary is likely to go to Congress.

Keating's just launched a last-minute ad campaign that suggests that voters should choose her because of her excellent set of X chromosomes. "It's been 80 years since Oklahoma sent a woman to Congress. After 80 years, isn't it time we elected someone who understands our needs?"

State rep. John Sullivan, generally considered her nearest opponent, can't match her on this front: He has only one X chromosome. He does, however, have something she doesn't: a legislative record of cutting taxes and protecting the unborn. He promises to replicate that record in Washington. He deserves to win — and if Republican women reject Keating's appeal to identity politics, he just may.