As I sat in my dorm two weeks ago watching the president’s State of the Union address, I was struck by an over powering sense of hypocrisy. The president was laying out his plans for the new year and suddenly he boldly pronounced, “Meeting these goals requires bipartisan effort.”

Bipartisan effort! If there is one thing that Bush does not, and has never stood for, it is bipartisanship. Even as I tried to regain focus on the president’s speech, I couldn’t help but think of Bush’s newest partisan slap at Democrats: Charles Pickering.

If you are wondering who Charles Pickering is, you’re probably not alone. He will hopefully never become a house-hold name, but his appointment by Bush to the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is a bombshell.

You may recall the battle that has been raging within the Senate for the last three years over four potential federal judicial appointments.

As a quick refresher, federal judges are nominated by the president, but must be confirmed by the Senate. This has proved problematic for Bush whenever he has nominated a particularly virulent right-wing judge.

Even though the Republicans hold a majority in the Senate, the Democrats can refuse to hold confirmation hearings provided they can muster a filibuster.

Bush was able to slide around this barrier via a loophole known as a “recess appointment.”

Essentially, he appointed Pickering to the judgeship while the Senate was on break.

Democrats had been refusing with good reason to hold confirmation hearings for Pickering for the past two years. Democrats have accused him of being a segregationist, and point toward his anti-abortion and anti-voting rights record while in public office as reasons he is unfit to be an impartial judge.

In 1959, Pickering published ways in which Mississippi could uphold its anti-miscegenation laws (laws banning interracial marriage).

In 1994, Pickering used his position as a state appeals judge to lessen the conviction of a man charged with burning a cross on an interracial couple’s lawn. Does this appear to be a candidate fit to sit in the second highest court of the land?

Republicans have complained that Democrats are in fact being overly partisan by blocking these nominations. Those who claim this are misrepresenting the facts.

Fact: Democrats have confirmed 168 of Bush’s judges thus far. Fact: Only four judges: Priscilla Owen, William Pryor, Miguel Estrada, and Charles Pickering, have thus far been blocked.

Fact: The Republican-controlled Congress of the 1990s blocked 167 of Clinton’s judicial nominations, more than three times the number of any other presidency.

Obviously Democrats are being far more bipartisan toward Bush’s nominations than Republicans ever were to Clinton’s nominations.

The recent “recess appointment” of Charles Pickering is truly a blow to any hope for bipartisanship. Instead of nominating a more qualified and moderate judge for the position, the Bush Administration has underhandedly acted in a unilateral and partisan manner.

This refusal to work with Democrats has been the cornerstone policy of the Bush Administration up to this point, and with Pickering’s appointment, Bush has made clear that bipartisanship is merely a pretty word to be thrown around, but rarely practiced.