Political Appointments

The Senate voted 33 to 1 Thursday to approve a bill that would give it power to remove any public appointee who falsifies qualifications during confirmation hearings. The bill was introduced by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) after The Times revealed in December that California State University Chairwoman Marianthi Lansdale of Huntington Beach falsely claimed during her nomination process to have earned an associate of arts degree in 1959 from Long Beach City College.

Senate Republicans blocked a vote on the nomination of UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the federal appeals court in San Francisco, making Liu the first judicial nominee named by President Obama to be successfully filibustered. The move appears to doom Liu's chances of becoming the first Asian American on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves California, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon, all states with significant or growing Asian populations. Democrats failed to come close to the 60 votes needed to override the filibuster.

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now.

Many of the unpleasant little tasks that a White House confronts ? nudging an aide out the door, perhaps, or helping a senator find someone a job ? tend to wind up on Pete Rouse's desk. Rouse, 64, a low-key troubleshooter and consummate backroom player whose work is seldom publicized, is being elevated to a post in which he may lose some of his cherished anonymity: White House chief of staff. Rouse will succeed Rahm Emanuel, who is leaving to run for mayor of Chicago. It's an interim appointment, although White House aides say Rouse could end up getting the post on a permanent basis.

Mayor Richard Riordan has done the right thing in striving for ethnic and gender diversity in his appointments. He has also done the political thing, rewarding residents of the San Fernando Valley, which overwhelmingly voted for him, with a larger share of commission appointments than they have recently enjoyed. Unhappily, ethnicity, gender and geographic representation seem the primary measures we use these days to judge the wisdom of political choices.

Georgia's Democratic former Gov. Zell Miller was appointed Monday to the late Republican Paul Coverdell's Senate seat and said he will run for the remaining four years of the term in November. Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, officially announced the appointment Monday evening, saying Miller, 68, is the best-qualified person from either party. "The one who didn't want it was the one who had to take it," he said. "It used to take seniority to get things done in the United States Senate.

As if anticipating the inevitable rumors and whisperings that would accompany her appointment as the first woman prime minister of France, Edith Cresson complained in an interview published last week that "not one woman is elected without the explanation being heard that she really got the post because she slept with so-and-so or so-and-so. Unfortunately, we are still there."

Thirteen years ago, Terry Tamminen was a Malibu pool cleaner and part-time actor with a gift for charming influential people and a resume that chronicled more rambling than a Jack Kerouac novel. Tamminen had sold condos in Florida, managed a sheep ranch in the Midwest, helped start a bottle recycling program in Nigeria, dabbled in Shakespearean acting and measured chlorine levels for such celebrities as Madonna and Johnny Carson.

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the scenes for gay rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation. Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay rights activists as part of his law firm's pro bono work.

Gov. Gray Davis appointed two local veteran prosecutors Friday to six-year terms as judges on the Los Angeles County Superior Court, his office reported. Richard Stone, a deputy district attorney since 1986, and Yvette Palazuelos, an assistant attorney in the U.S. attorney's office since 1990, will assume the posts, said Hilary McLean, a spokeswoman for Davis. For the last two years, Stone, 43, has prosecuted gang-related crimes as a member of the district attorney's Hardcore Gang Unit.

Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's choice to head the California judiciary and the California Supreme Court, is a moderate Republican better known within judicial circles for her skills as an administrator than for legal scholarship or any particular ideological leanings. Cantil-Sakauye, 50, has won wide praise for her two years on the Judicial Council, the policy-making body of the courts, where she impressed Chief Justice Ronald M. George and other judges as organized, a quick study and collegial.

The White House during President Clinton's second term was a combustible, ambitious place. While to the public it appeared that the chief executive was spending most of his time embroiled in scandal, a small group of staffers worked behind the scenes to pursue an aggressive policy agenda. Elena Kagan was one of them. She had come to the Clinton domestic policy shop in 1997 after serving as an administration lawyer. By the time she left two years later, she had put her stamp on the office, a unit that took on tobacco and gun industries, advocated campaign finance reform, backed affirmative action and worked to preserve abortion rights.

A pair of key Senate Republicans urged President Obama on Sunday to pick someone from the judicial mainstream to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and downplayed -- but did not rule out -- a filibuster to block a nominee they opposed. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said a filibuster would be in the offing only if Obama picked "a nominee that evidences a philosophy of 'judges know best,' that they can amend the Constitution by saying it has evolved . . . then we're going to have a big fight about that because the American people don't want that."

Nearly a generation ago, they were three young lawyers working their way up in the Clinton administration. Now, one of them could very well be the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Merrick Garland was a Justice Department official overseeing the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh from afar. Diane Wood worked in the building too, specializing in antitrust law. And down the street at the White House, Elena Kagan was taking on Big Tobacco. Their paths later diverged.

An early chance for the Obama administration to reshape the nation's judiciary -- and counter gains made in the federal courts by conservatives -- appears close to slipping away, due to a combination of White House inattention and Republican opposition. During President Obama's first year, judicial nominations trickled out of the White House at a far slower pace than in President George W. Bush's first year. Bush announced 11 nominees for federal appeals courts in the fourth month of his tenure.

President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, The Times has learned. Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate -- including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to...

The Senate brushed aside complaints that President Bush is packing the ranks of the nation's envoys with unqualified political cronies and defeated a bid to restrict political appointments to 15% of the diplomatic corps. The vote rejecting an amendment by Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) was 79 to 20. Gore said he would try again today and offered an amendment to hold to 30% the number of ambassadors and senior State Department officials nominated for their political contributions. But Sen.

If Councilman William G. Steiner wins his bid for the 67th Assembly District seat sometime this fall, City Council members will be asked to fill a council vacancy for the second time in less than a year. But some residents would rather select a new representative themselves, and want the city to call a special election.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday backed off his threat of a court fight over his choice to fill the vacant lieutenant governor job, asking the state Assembly to vote again on whether to confirm state Sen. Abel Maldonado for the post. The governor said he would withdraw and resubmit Maldonado's nomination "to avoid wasting time and energy on litigation that should be spent passing a jobs package that will get Californians back to work." The maneuver resets the 90-day clock for lawmakers to approve or reject Maldonado, a moderate Republican from Santa Maria who was approved by the state Senate.

The state Assembly refused Thursday to confirm Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's choice to fill the empty lieutenant governor seat, but the administration is vowing to install moderate state Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) nonetheless, saying the vote is moot. The 80-member house voted 37 to 35 in favor of Maldonado's appointment -- failing to achieve a 41-vote majority for or against him. The Schwarzenegger administration said the tally means that Maldonado gets the job because the state Constitution says the nominee takes office if he is "neither confirmed nor refused confirmation."