[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Page 12089]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF JOHN K. BUSH II

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I cannot support John K. Bush II's 
nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
  Mr. Bush does not possess the temperament or discernment required of 
a Federal judge. He is not only a deeply flawed nominee; he is 
unqualified for a lifetime judicial appointment.
  William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, 10th Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court, and a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of 
Appeals, once said, ``Don't write so that you can be understood, write 
so that you can't be misunderstood.'' Mr. Bush's more than 400 blog 
posts, written under a pseudonym, cannot be misunderstood despite his 
attempts to distance himself from his writings. In his blog posts, Mr. 
Bush equated a woman's right to an abortion to chattel slavery, 
advanced spurious claims based on conspiracy theories propagated by 
White supremacists, advocated violence and use of force against 
Democratic opponents, argued that journalist's First Amendment rights 
should be weakened, and advocated for unlimited amounts of money in 
politics.
  When asked to clarify his past written statements during his 
confirmation hearing, Mr. Bush said that his, ``personal views are 
irrelevant to the position for which [he has] been nominated.'' I do 
not believe that hundreds of crude, insensitive, and hateful posts, 
widely shared on the internet, are irrelevant in analyzing a 
candidate's suitability for a Federal judgeship. Mr. Bush's writings 
and statements make me question if he could apply the law evenly and 
without bias.
  Every judge takes the oath of justice and swears to ``administer 
justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and 
to the rich,'' and to ``faithfully and impartially discharge and 
perform all the duties incumbent'' upon them. Based on Mr. Bush's own 
statements, I am not confident that he will uphold that oath.

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