You Too Can Be a Judge

It pays decently, you make your mother proud and, best of all, you never have to polish up your resume again. Even if you lack the qualities you think a president would look for in a judicial nominee -- real intellect, unquestionable integrity and a career-long commitment to equal justice for all -- there are other ways to get the attention of Karl Rove and the Bush administration judge pickers. Here's how:

* Support Bob Jones University. Remember Bob Jones, the South Carolina university that once excluded African Americans and banned interracial dating? Candidate George W. Bush, bruised by his New Hampshire primary defeat, sought comfort at the school, where a spirited campaign rally let him flaunt his "Southern" credentials.

Carolyn Kuhl's aggressive persuasion convinced the Reagan administration to try to restore tax-exempt status for the university. Although her argument was too radical for the Supreme Court, which ruled against her 8 to 1, it has helped earn her a Bush nomination to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since then, however, Bob Jones lifted its interracial dating ban after Bush's visit, succumbing to the weight of bad PR for the school and the candidate, so it may not need as much help now.

* Fight against reproductive freedom. Administration officials cry "litmus test" whenever Democrats suggest they want judges who would uphold Roe vs. Wade. Yet Bush's nominees share a remarkable consistency in their opposition to choice. Alabama Atty. Gen. William H. Pryor, a Bush nominee to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, says the day the case was decided was "the day seven members of our highest court ... ripped out the life of millions of unborn children."

Arkansas district court nominee James Leon Holmes, while supporting a constitutional amendment banning abortion, rejected a rape and incest exception as unnecessary, saying "the concern for rape victims is a red herring because conceptions from rape occur with the same frequency as snow in Miami."

Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen was accused in a judicial opinion by Alberto Gonzales, her former colleague and now Bush's own White House counsel, of engaging in "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" for her tortured readings of the state's parental notification statute in abortion cases.