Wyoming Vote Tracker

I haven’t blogged about this judicial nominee at all until this post. Such is the life of a blogger with two jobs that take much of the day (unless said blogger is sick, then there’s plenty of time between napping and eating soup). From what I’ve heard of Richard Honaker, he would be a great Federal judge for Wyoming.

The following comes from an e-mail I just received and I wanted to pass it along to you.

Right to Life of Wyoming Upset Jewish Groups Attack Richard Honaker

Washington, DC — Two leading Reform Jewish groups are asking members of the Senate not to confirm Richard Honaker — President Bush’s pick for a federal judgeship in Wyoming.

Honaker, an attorney and former state legislator, received an appointment from President Bush to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Honaker’s nomination in February and has yet to take a vote.

Top pro-abortion groups have slammed his nomination because Honaker’s efforts to prohibit abortions in Wyoming.

On Thursday the Union for Reform Judaism and Central Conference of American Rabbis sent a joint letter to members of the Senate asking them to reject Honaker because he’s opposed to abortion.

Right to Life of Wyoming president Steven Ertelt said the news is disappointing.

“Richard Honaker has done nothing to warrant opposition from the Jewish community,” Ertelt said. “Sadly, these Jewish groups put abortion politics ahead of representing the legitimate concerns of Wyoming Jews.”

“According to these groups, anyone who is pro-life is an ‘anti-choice ideologue’ and unfit to become a federal judge,” Ertelt said.

Ertelt added that the groups seem to go against pro-life statements from other Jewish leaders and sacred teaching.

In December, Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger issued an opinion saying abortions for socioeconomic reasons or the mother not wanting the baby are wrong.

Metzger said, “The vast majority of abortions are unnecessary and strictly forbidden according to halacha because they are carried out even when the pregnancies do not endanger the mother’s health.”

He and other leaders said abortions are delaying the coming of the Messiah.

Meanwhile, in February, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada said Jewish voters should not vote for candidates who support abortion, calling them “antithetical” to Jewish values.

“It is very important for our community to demonstrate its appreciation for our wonderful country by exercising our civic obligation to vote,” Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a spokesman for the group, said. “However, it is even more important that we do not support any candidate whose position is in any way antithetical to our Torah based morality.”

A Chasidic Rabbinic group, the Central Rabbinical Congress of U.S. and Canada, issued a similar manifesto in March 1982.

Ertelt concluded, “Richard Honaker is imminently qualified to serve the people of Wyoming as a federal judge and his position that people deserve an inalienable Right to Life is consistent with the Constitution, not contrary to it.”

ACTION: Contact Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and thank them for supporting Honker’s nomination.

And thanks to Google, you can peruse the archives of Mr. Honaker’s nomination process:

• Surprise! The Media doesn’t like Richard Honaker either! Translation: he must fairly decent.
• The early part of the nomination process. Note to libs: when a conservative says they won’t legislate from the bench, they mean it. It’s called Separation of Powers and it’s in the Constitution. If you had practiced it on this issue in 1973, this wouldn’t be such a hurdle for you to get over. So, is it really the pro-life thing, or is it that he used to be a Democrat, but you abandoned him?

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