President Bush's pick for a federal appeals judgeship in Atlanta is drawing strong opposition from Jewish groups, including three organizations that usually refuse to take sides in judicial fights.

Officials at the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith International and American Jewish Congress said that they felt obligated to abandon their typical silence on judicial nominees, given what they described as the extremist views of Alabama Attorney General William Pryor. Those two groups have joined the National Council of Jewish Women, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and many liberal nonsectarian organizations in opposing Pryor's nomination.

In a party-line vote Wednesday, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination. The nomination will now move to the Senate floor, where Democrats are expected to stage a filibuster if they can't muster enough votes to defeat it.

A high-profile, outspoken elected official, the Alabama attorney general openly criticized the Supreme Court for upholding "the so-called wall of separation between church and state," and criticized the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion, as "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history."

Such statements demonstrate that Pryor lacks "the temperament and evenhandedness required of a federal appellate judge," said Joel Kaplan, president of B'nai B'rith International. Earlier this month the group sent a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking them to vote down Pryor.

Fucking typical. Edward Said spews his hate every day at Columbia University, Arab students stage anti-semitic riots at state universities, Leftist NGOs call for Israel's annihilation on a daily basis, and these idiots cant be bothered to get up off their fat asses and do something. But one anti-abortion judge gets nominated (and dares to speak the unmentionable truth that Roe v. Wade is a decision totally insupportable by constitutional law) and look at the cacophony of asinine balderdash we are subjected too. Pathetic.