Charging that former Interior Department Solicitor Bill Myers is an anti-environmental extremist whose allegiance to past clients of his private legal practice taint his judgment, Senate Democrats are expected to defeat a motion to force a confirmation vote. Myers was nominated by President Bush in May last year to fill a vacant seat for Idaho on the appellate court that has jurisdiction over much of the West.

Democrats have focused on Myers' fiery writings as one of the hired guns for the livestock and extractive industries during the 1990s' War on the West, when the Clinton administration sought to overhaul federal grazing and mining regulations. He also was the Bush administration's legal counsel in an April 2003 settlement negotiated with the state of Utah where the Bureau of Land Management renounced any authority to manage proposed wilderness areas as de facto wilderness.

William Myers epitomizes the anti-environmental tilt of so many Bush nominees, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He should not be confirmed and my hope is that he will not be confirmed.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the Mickey Mouse filibuster is aimed more at Myers' former clients than the nominee himself.

As if ranchers, farmers and miners and those who make economic uses of western lands are less entitled to representation than the elite, liberal environmental groups that attempt to dictate western land policy from eastern cities while they derisively refer to most of our nation as a flyover country, Hatch said Monday as floor debate began.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Democrats read aloud several inflammatory statements, including Myers' comparison of federal land management in the West to King George's tyrannical rule over the American colonies and labeling the Desert Protection Act - which protected 7.7 million acres of California wilderness - legislative hubris. He also wrote that environmentalists are mountain biking to the courthouse as never before, bent on stopping human activity wherever it may promote health, safety and welfare.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said such statements are hardly reflective of the moderation and temperament we look for in judicial nominees.

Myers has said many of his comments were made on behalf of the livestock or mining industry clients he represented and do not reflect the way he would approach such issues as a federal judge.

There are times when I have written things which looking back on them in time were probably a poor choice of words but at the time seemed like the advocacy that I was being asked to advance, Myers said.