Show I OREGON AGAINST CALIFORNIA I The protest of the Oregon bench and i bar against the appointment of Attor neyGeneral McKenna as exAssociate 1 Justice Fields successor is attracting I j a good deal of attention The New York Commercial Advertiser a stanch I Republican paper commenting on the protest savs The objection to Judge McKenna does not rest upon his religion or his character char-acter or his relation to corporations or anything to his moral discredit or social disadvantage He is a very worthy person but a very ordinary lawyer and the supreme court is a place for great lawyers This is well understood on the Pacific cbast and the bar of the whole country understands if better since March 4 Californians are clannish clan-nish and sense of local loyalty keeps them silent The bench and bar of Oregon Ore-gon which are of sound quality more in touch with the rest of the country and less hampered by provincial sentiment have spoken out under strong sense of duty and responsibility This ought to be heeded A cabinet appointment is for four years only a supreme court appointment is for life The president chose Judge MeKenna for one place and now chooses him for the other because be-cause he likes the man Doubtless the man ifs likeable but the lawyer is not > admirable Men responsible for filling high public place should not indulge their personal likings to excess William E Curtis the Washington correspondent of the Chicago Record says that if the protest had been presented pre-sented to the president in a quiet dignified dig-nified way with evidence to sustain it he would have been compelled to have given it careful attention but being blazoned out in the papers even before it was mailed to him gives it all the I symptoms of a malicious attempt to I defame Judge McKenna and the president presi-dent is consequently very indignant at I an attack made in such a manner man-ner upon a member of his official family And what is most shocking in the opinion of < > members of the bench and the bai in Washingtqn he says is that Judge Gilbert of the United States circuit court and Judge Bel I linger of the district court should be guilty of such undignified and unju dicial conduct as to utter a protest I against the leading law officer of the I and government in a public manner furnish the newspapers a copy of their communication to the president before it was even mailed to him The attack at-tack has injured the persons who signed it more than the man at whom it was directed It is very evident that there will be considerable scrapping over the protest pro-test and the appointment if Judge Mc Kennas name is sent to the senate Some of the protestants may go to Washington to present the very evidence evi-dence that now seems lacking The protest astonished most people Whether Wheth-er there is any ground for it we do not know that there is some jealousy in the case is not improbable |