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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I have a statement I am going to make on the Voting Rights Act, which I think is apropos as we are considering Super Tuesday and the millions of Americans who will participate. But first I would like to address the comments that were just made by the Republican Senate leader.

Mr. President, you are a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and you were there the day Adeel Mangi's nomination came before our committee. It is a unique nomination. It has never happened before-- never in the history of the United States--because Mr. Mangi is a Muslim American, and he is being nominated to serve on the second highest court in the land.

When you read his biography--and I don't have it before me; I am going to come back when I do have all the information before me--you cannot help but believe that this is an extraordinary individual and an extraordinary lawyer who is seeking this spot.

The treatment he received in the Senate Judiciary Committee--you will remember it as well as I will--because he was a Muslim American was outrageous--outrageous. They believe that he must be a terrorist because he is Muslim, and it was suggested by a number of Senators questioning him that he has links with terrorism. In fact, one Republican Senator went so far as to ask him on the record: Do you celebrate 9/11 in your home? Do you celebrate 9/11 in your home?

He said: Of course not. It was a horrible thing. I condemn all forms of violence and terrorism, he said, and those people--many who died-- were from the same community I was in in the States of New York and New Jersey.

Then there was a suggestion that because he was a Muslim American, he must be anti-Semitic. I can't tell you how many different times that was asked of him, and he condemned anti-Semitism on a wholesale basis, with no qualifications and no equivocation.

The questioning in that area was so outrageous against this individual, this Muslim American, so outrageous that the Anti- Defamation League, a national organization, highly respected, that stands up for Jewish Americans and their rights and speaks out without hesitation when people are being critical and prejudicial to Jewish Americans, sent us on the Senate Judiciary Committee--unsolicited--a response to the questioning he faced. I read it into the record at the committee meeting.

Mr. President, I want to tell you, politics is a beanbag, and I know that if you are seeking a lifetime appointment to the bench, you better be prepared to answer a lot of questions. Some of them will be fair, and some won't be fair, but be ready--it is going to happen. But what happened to Mr. Mangi in that committee was beyond anything acceptable by Senate standards, and it continues to this day.

To argue that he somehow is a cop killer--my God. What more are they going to throw at this man? I am going to come before the Senate on another day--maybe even tomorrow, if I can do it--and tell the whole story about his nomination, but to listen to what was just said about this man is breathtaking.

He is an extraordinary individual. He is overqualified for the job, if there is such a thing. He has certainly served his country and wants to do more. The fact that he is a Muslim American should not subject him to this type of a beating in the committee or on the floor of the Senate, and I will return to address that issue specifically at a later date.

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