So, just what is so bad about Charles Pickering? What has he done to really get John 'F-ing' Kerry's panties in a bind? Well, Neal Boortz provides the scoop:

In a statement last week John Kerry called Pickering "a forceful advocate for a cross burner." Is that the case, or is Kerry playing a big race card here?

Here's your reader's digest version of the story. Three men get snockered and decide to burn a cross in the yard of a racially mixed couple in Mississippi. Here's your cast of characters:

* Mickey Herbert Thomas. 25-year-old with less than a room-temperature IQ
* An unnamed 17-year old with a history of racial hatred. He was the ringleader for the cross burning incident and had previously been arrested for firing a gun into the home of the same mixed-race couiple.
* Daniel Swan, a 20-year-old with no previous problems with the law and no history of racial hatred.

The actual cross-burning was the work of Thomas and the 17-year-old juvenile. Swan sat in the truck and did not participate.

Thomas and the 17-year-old accepted a plea bargain and pled guilty. They were sentenced to probation. Swan claimed that he was drunk and was not didn't really know what was happening. He wanted a trial. He was found guilty at the trial. Federal sentencing guidelines said that Swan should get seven and one-half years in federal prison.

So ... here is Pickering's crime. The ringleader gets probation. The other person who helped to erect the cross, douse it with gasoline and set it on fire ... probation. The man who sat in the truck, seven and one-half years. Pickering merely talked to the Justice Department about bypassing the sentencing guidelines to get the truck driver a lesser sentence. This is what Charles Schumer calls "glaring racial insensitivity". This is what John Kerry describes as being a "forceful advocate for cross burners."

By the way, do you know that immediately after Mississippi schools were desegregated Charles Pickering took his kids out of a majority white school and made a point of sending them to a majority black newly integrated school? How's that for a display of Pickering's " glaring racial insensitivity."

It's election time. Beware of the demagogues.

Neal also notes that Clinton tried the same recess appointment trick when he was President. Only his appointment lacked the 50 votes needed for confirmation. (Pickering got 54 votes.) Clinton also ignored the law by not calling for a vote when the next Congressional session took office. Were the dems crying about that?