Zell: Democrats "lynching" judges

[Renew Deal]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia came under fire Friday from civil rights activists who demanded an apology from the conservative Democrat after he equated his party's opposition to the nomination of a conservative African-American judge to a lynching.

Miller -- who has already rankled Democrats by endorsing President Bush for re-election -- refused to apologize.

"Either Senator Miller has conveniently forgotten a frightening period of American history, or he is willfully demeaning all those African-Americans who were hung from trees throughout the period of racial segregation in the South," said Wade Henderson, the director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Henderson and others were reacting to comments made by Miller on the Senate floor around 2 a.m Friday, when he blasted Democrats for blocking the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/14/miller.lynching/index.html