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Texas Justice Priscilla Owen, the subject of a long and heated confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate, took the oath of office today for the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Owen, 50, won Senate confirmation last month after a four-year fight over President Bush’s push to place conservatives on the nation’s highest courts. She became the first of Bush’s long-blocked nominees to win approval under an agreement reached by centrists in the Senate.

“This has been a long road,” Owen said after her swearing-in ceremony at the Texas Supreme Court chamber, where she has been a justice for more than 10 years.

Owen was first nominated by Bush to the federal appeals court in May 2001. She continued to serve on Texas’ highest civil court while awaiting confirmation.

AGE/
BIRTHDATE: 50; Oct. 4, 1954.

SCHOOLS: University of Texas 1972-73, B.A., Baylor University 1975; J.D., Baylor School of Law, 1977.

EXPERIENCE:
• Law clerk, Sheehy, Lovelace & Mayfield, 1976-77.
• Admitted to Texas Bar, 1978.
• Associate and partner, Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones, 1978-94.
• Elected to the Texas Supreme Court, 1994.

LINKS:
• The official bio: From the U.S. Department of Justice
• A view from the right: From the Free Congress Foundation
• A view from the left: From the Independent Judi

Congratulations to Judge Owen and thanks for the perseverance!

Roger Simon asks the question: How much are these guys being paid to spew this propaganda?

Those “cards at Amnesty International are it at it again with their Solzhenitsyn jokes.

William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty’s Washington-based branch, speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” defended the human rights group’s recent criticism of U.S. treatment of detainees at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“The U.S. is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons, into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families,” Schulz said.

“And in some cases, at least, we know they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed.”

Outrageous comments which have been strongly criticised and denied.

Okay, here’s what I’d like to know. How much are these guys being paid to spew this propaganda? I mean what’s the salary of the excutive director of Amnesty International’s Washington Branch and the other key Amnesty executives? Shouldn’t such things be transparent in a pro bono organization like that? I just Googled the question and unfortunately ended up on Monster.com. Maybe someone more web savvy can come up with better information, because people who continue to use the rhetoric applied to Soviet mass murder to characterize US government activities in the War on Terror most probably are making a fair amount of money from it (assuming they’re not members of Islamic Jihad or Al Qaeda). Furthermore, it would be interesting to study Amnesty fund-raising patterns as they relate to increases and decreases in this kind of inflammatory and idiotic verbiage

Good question, Roger.

So, follow the money.