John Warner

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, last week the Senate addressed an identical piece of legislation offered by our distinguished colleagues from Michigan, Senators Stabenow and Levin. Senator Reid was very active in the consideration of that bill at that time. With the consent on that side and the consent of others on this side, I was successful in getting on an amendment that I had been working on for some 3 years, with Senator Leahy and others, to name the new annex to the District of Columbia Federal courthouse system in honor of William Bryant. I have known this outstanding African American much of my life, having served as a young U.S. attorney. He was one of our great teachers at that time, having been a senior U.S. attorney. He was the first African American assistant U.S. attorney, the first African American to become chief judge of the district court. He is 94 years old now and in senior status, and I thought it appropriate that the Senate pass that recognition. That bill by the Senator from Michigan, as amended by the Senator from Virginia, was passed by this Chamber last week. I have been assured by the Speaker of the House of Representatives that bill will be on tomorrow's consent calendar. So both bills will be acted upon in due course. This particular bill was introduced by Congresswoman Kilpatrick, in whose district the courthouse will be named. Therefore, it is appropriate that there be a companion piece of legislation. I thank all those who participated in this and made it possible. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, the annual Armed Forces authorization bill will soon be the subject of further debate in the Senate at a time to be decided upon by the distinguished majority leader in consultation with the distinguished Democratic leader. I wish to thank each of them for their long, consistent, and arduous effort to bring this bill up for what I anticipate will be a successful resolution to the bill, with final passage in this Senate in coming weeks. Senator Levin and I have been on this committee for some 27 years together. We are ready. Given that the unanimous consent was accepted by the Senate, both committee staffs are actually at this time working on amendments and other matters in preparation for the future consideration of this bill by the Senate. I urge Senators who might wish to have amendments discussed, first, to listen to the terms of the unanimous consent agreement and study those. Flexibility is given to the managers to reach a joint agreement for Members that have amendments not covered explicitly in the numerical amounts in the unanimous consent. The committee staffs are working. I urge Senators to bring to Senator Levin and myself such matters as they may be interested in, and we will do our very best to accommodate Senators. This Nation is at war. Each day we find in our hearts compassion for those we have lost, those on the battlefields today--not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but all throughout the world--and their families at home. I thank our leaders for passing that unanimous consent, and I encourage Senators to submit their amendments and bring them to our attention. The committee met this week. We reported out the intelligence authorization bill. That, hopefully, will be a joint referral to the Committee on Government Operations. There is provision in that bill which was clearly within the jurisdiction of that committee. I am very fortunate to have on the Committee on Armed Services both the chairman, Chairman Collins, and the ranking member, Senator Lieberman, as well as, of course, Senator Roberts. During the course of our deliberations yesterday, we quickly recognized it would be appropriate to be referred to that committee the intelligence bill with regard to that provision. That is progress we have made this week. I am also pleased the committee pointed out a number of nominees for important civilian posts and, indeed, military posts in our Department of Defense. I understand some have been worked on today, and I will check to see whether other nominations can be cleared. I am proud to say the Committee on Armed Services was very active this week. We have a charter now. We are back in business. I am very pleased that the prospects are we will pass our legislation.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I turn to another matter.

Mr. WARNER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill to extend the temporary duty suspension for imports of Nylon MXD6, hexanedioic acid, polymer with 1,3-benzenedimethanamine. This product, which is not manufactured in the United States at this time, serves as the favored option for food packaging and other multifunction packaging due to its tough, transparent properties. It is customary for the Congress every few years to consider relatively minor technical changes to certain trade proposals as one omnibus bill. The most recent of these bills was the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Changes Act of 2004. For a proposal to be included in the legislation, the House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee, and International Trade Commission all have to conclude that the proposal is noncontroversial. As one of the determining factors for a duty suspension request to be considered noncontroversial, no domestic production of the commodity may exist, or it may not be at a sufficient level to satisfy domestic demand. As I mentioned before, Nylon MXD6 is not produced in the United States, and as a result, a temporary duty suspension was awarded to imports of Nylon MXD6 under the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2004. However, this suspension is due to expire on December 31, 2006. While this sunset may sound far from now, no domestic production is expected to exist by then nor is it expected to exist for a few years afterwards, causing uncertainty for future production. The current duty suspension for this import has been a key element in lowering the costs of domestic production of commodities containing Nylon MXD6. The bill I introduce today would extend the current suspension through December 31, 2008, which will provide manufacturers the certainty they need to plan for their future. In closing, I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join with me in support of this legislation.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill to extend the temporary duty suspension for imports of Nylon MXD6, hexanedioic acid, polymer with 1,3-benzenedimethanamine. This product, which is not manufactured in the United States at this time, serves as the favored option for food packaging and other multifunction packaging due to its tough, transparent properties. It is customary for the Congress every few years to consider relatively minor technical changes to certain trade proposals as one omnibus bill. The most recent of these bills was the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Changes Act of 2004. For a proposal to be included in the legislation, the House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee, and International Trade Commission all have to conclude that the proposal is noncontroversial. As one of the determining factors for a duty suspension request to be considered noncontroversial, no domestic production of the commodity may exist, or it may not be at a sufficient level to satisfy domestic demand. As I mentioned before, Nylon MXD6 is not produced in the United States, and as a result, a temporary duty suspension was awarded to imports of Nylon MXD6 under the Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2004. However, this suspension is due to expire on December 31, 2006. While this sunset may sound far from now, no domestic production is expected to exist by then nor is it expected to exist for a few years afterwards, causing uncertainty for future production. The current duty suspension for this import has been a key element in lowering the costs of domestic production of commodities containing Nylon MXD6. The bill I introduce today would extend the current suspension through December 31, 2008, which will provide manufacturers the certainty they need to plan for their future. In closing, I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join with me in support of this legislation.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I thank the distinguished majority leader. Our committee acted on this nomination yesterday. There has been a vacancy in the Secretary's Office of the Air Force for some period of time. I thank the members from both sides of the aisle of the Armed Services Committee who have cooperated with me as chairman to get this nomination through today. Mike Wynne is an extraordinary individual, eminently well qualified to lead the Department of the Air Force with great pride and integrity. He is a West Point graduate, served on active duty in the military. He has had extraordinary experience and degrees from the Institute of Technology, a master's, and on it goes. He has been in the Department of Defense in a variety of positions, and he was recently Under Secretary for Acquisition Technology and Logistics. I cannot think of a better qualified individual than Mike Wynne to take on this important task. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I am somewhat troubled. Not more than 10 minutes ago, I say to my colleague, you sat right here and I sat right there. We struck an understanding that tomorrow we would rejoin on the floor to explain the situation. I said, by that time, as it was my understanding that the House would likely have acted upon the measure which was passed by the Senate last night, sponsored by the distinguished Senator from Michigan, who accepted my amendment. I am not sure why we are here at this time discussing this matter. My understanding was very clearly we would take it up tomorrow morning. Just by chance I caught the screen when I walked back to my office. Would you kindly advise the Senator from Virginia what took place in the 10-minute interval since we left here?

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, but we solved, basically, the procedure. What troubles me is that the Senate took considerable time last night to resolve this issue--in favor of the Senator from Michigan and in favor of the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. WARNER. There is a perfectly adequate bill sitting on the desk at the House of Representatives. It can be passed in 5 minutes if not less.

Mr. WARNER. If my distinguished colleague will kindly grant me a few more minutes?

Mr. WARNER. I repeat, there is a bill that has been acted upon unanimously by the Senate. It is at the House desk. This morning was the first time I ever heard that the Congresswoman, in whose district this courthouse is, desires to have her bill--not your bill. Is that my understanding?

Mr. WARNER. Why can't the Congressional Record of the debate, the traditional report language that accompanies the bill, explain, give her full credit or whatever she desires? But to continually come back and forth and raise the specter that people are trying to interfere with this important legislation in this Chamber, it seems to me, is not fair.

Mr. WARNER. This is a matter that is being followed with great interest because of the magnificent Rosa Parks, and the outpouring of empathy and sympathy, and so forth. I don't wish to have the institution of the Senate appear that it has not acted promptly. It did so last night. There is a perfectly legitimate bill at the House desk which could be passed in a matter of 5 minutes and be sent to the President for signature to honor both Mrs. Parks and Judge Bryant. In report language the Senator from Michigan and the good Congresswoman can solve it in any way they may wish as to allocate the credit. I think to keep coming back to the Senate implying that we can't use the bill this body passed yesterday evening is, in a way, diminishing the previous action of this institution. It is my understanding that tomorrow the House of Representatives will take up and pass the Senator from Michigan's bill, as passed by the Senate, to name a federal building in Michigan for Rosa Parks and name the new courthouse annex here in Washington for Judge William Bryant. I must tell you, I have been very patient about this matter. But I hope that we understand the agreement between the two bodies to proceed in this manner. It has been cleared by both the House and the Senate and, as such, is the appropriate course of action. For the past three years I have been working with my colleagues, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and Senator Leahy to name the new annex to the Prettyman Courthouse here in Washington, DC for Judge William Bryant. As I have stated numerous times before, there are rules in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that prohibit moving through that Committee naming bills for individuals that are still living. Prior to the current Chairman of the Committee, the rule was waived in certain instances and I certainly feel that the case of Judge Bryant warrants such discretion. The Senate spoke yesterday that both Rosa Parks and William Bryant are deserving of this great honor. I wish to share with the Senate again the story of this distinguished jurist, Judge William Bryant. A product of Washington, DC public schools, William B. Bryant graduated from Howard University in 1936, a classmate of Thurgood Marshall and Appellate Judge Spotswood Robinson. He graduated from Howard Law School first in his class and then, with no real opportunities for African-American attorneys in the District of Columbia, served as chief research assistant to Ralph Bunche, who later won the Nobel Prize. From 1943 to 1947, he was in the Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II. He was a criminal defense attorney, Assistant U.S. Attorney, the first African American ever to be an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Nation's Capital. I was privileged to be in the U.S. Attorney's Office during some of his tenure there and worked with him. He was a teacher to me and many others. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1965. In 1977, he was appointed the first African American to be chief judge of the U.S. District Court. Now at the age of 94, Judge Bryant is serving as a Senior Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. This man, like Rosa Parks, suffered from discriminatory practices and persevered, therefore breaking new ground for African-Americans to come. When he first began trying cases as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1951, the Bar Association of D.C. did not allow African-American members. William Bryant, while trying cases in District Court was unable to access the law library at the Courthouse like his white colleagues. Despite the obstacles, William Bryant succeeded. Over the years this man has been a fixture at that courthouse, first trying cases, and for the past 40 years, hearing them as a judge. The D.C. Bar and his colleagues have unanimously endorsed the legislation I offer today as a tribute to this man's truly extraordinary life, legendary career, and service to this nation's judicial system. I wish at this point to print into the Record a September 2004 article from the Washington Post about Judge Bryant and our efforts to name this new annex in his honor: A Lifetime of Faith in the Law; At 93, Senior Judge William Bryant Still Wins Plaudits for Dedication to Justice, Carol Leonnig, Washington Post Staff Writer--September 16, 2004 A few days after the new U.S. District Courthouse opened on Constitution Avenue in the fall of 1952, Bill Bryant walked in to start work as a recently hired federal prosecutor. More than a half-century has passed, and Bryant's life remains centered on that stately granite building in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. It's in those halls that he became a groundbreaking criminal defense attorney, a federal judge, and then the court's chief judge--the first African American in that position. Today, at the age of 93, U.S. District Court Senior Judge William Bryant still drives himself to work at the courthouse four days a week and pushes his walker to his courtroom. At a recent birthday party for Bryant hosted by Vernon Jordan, fellow Senior U.S. District Court Judge Louis Oberdorfer remarked that there were ``only two people in the world who really understood the Constitution'' and how it touched the lives of real people. ``That's Hugo Black and Bill Bryant,'' said Oberdorfer. He had clerked for Justice Hugo L. Black, who retired as an associate justice in 1971 after serving on the Supreme Court for 34 years. To honor Bryant's life's work, his fellow judges this past spring unanimously recommended that a nearly completed courthouse annex be named for him. The $110 million, 351,000- square-foot addition will add nine state-of-the-art courtrooms and judges' offices to the courthouse and is designed to meet the court's expansion needs for the next 30 years. It is slated to open next spring. In urging that the building be named for Bryant, his supporters cite his devotion to the Constitution and his belief that the law will produce a just result. During a rare interview in his sixth-floor office in the federal courthouse, Bryant reached out for a pocket version of the Constitution covered in torn green plastic lying on the top of his desk. Holding it aloft in his right hand, he told stories of his struggling former clients and made legal phrases--``due process'' and ``equal protection''--seem like life-saving staples. Though he needs his law clerk's arm to get up the steps to the bench, he is a fairly busy senior jurist. He handled more criminal trials than any other senior judge last year and still surprises new lawyers with his sharp retorts. ``I feel like I'm part of the woodwork,'' Bryant said. ``I have to think hard to think of a time when I wasn't in this courthouse.'' He started down his career path inspired by a Howard University law professor who believed that lawyers could make a difference in that time of racial segregation and discrimination. Bryant said he remains convinced today that lawyers can stop injustice whenever it arises. ``Without lawyers, this is just a piece of paper,'' Judge Bryant said, gesturing with the well-worn Constitution. ``If it weren't for lawyers, I'd still be three-fifths of a man. If it weren't for lawyers, we'd still have signs directing people this way and that, based on the color of their skin. If it weren't for lawyers, you still wouldn't be able to vote. The most important professions are lawyer and teacher, in my opinion,'' he said. Some lawyers complain that Bryant is so rooted in his criminal defense training that he shows some distrust of the prosecution. And his practice of presiding over trials, but asking other judges to sentence the people convicted, has spurred some curiosity. He won't elaborate on the reason, but his friends say he found the new federal sentencing guidelines inflexible and harsh. A 1993 study found Bryant was reversed 17 percent of the time by appellate judges--the average reversal rate for the trial court. Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan presented the proposal to name the annex after Bryant to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) earlier this year, and they are now trying to get Congress to approve the naming this fall. One member, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), has tried to block it, with his staff pointing to a D.C. policy that buildings not be named after living people. Norton said numerous courts around the country have been named in honor of living judges, and she said she looks forward to meeting with Inhofe in person to convince him of the wisdom of naming this building, designed by renowned architect Michael Graves, after a barrier-breaking judge. ``This is no ordinary naming,'' she said. ``This is a truly great African American judge whose accomplishments are singular. First African American assistant U.S. attorney. First African American chief judge.'' E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., the son of the jurist for whom the federal courthouse in Washington is named, also applauds the proposed annex naming. He said his father ``admired Judge Bryant tremendously'' and would have endorsed it, too. ``Whenever it's discussed, people brighten right up and think it's a great idea,'' said Prettyman, himself a former president of the D.C. Bar Association. ``I'm sorry it's hit this snag. . . . If you were going to have an exception, my personal opinion is you could not have a better exception than for Judge Bryant.'' William Benson Bryant is hailed as a true product of Washington. Though he was born in a rural town in Alabama, he moved to the city soon after turning 1. His grandfather, fleeing a white lynch mob, relocated the extended family here, including Bryant's father, a railroad porter, and his mother, a housewife. They all made their first home on Benning Road, which was then a dirt path hugging the eastern shore of the Anacostia River. Bryant attended D.C. public schools when the city's black children were taught in separate and grossly substandard facilities. Still he flourished, studying politics at the city's premier black high school, Dunbar, then going on to Howard University. While working at night as an elevator operator, he studied law and met his future wife, Astaire. They were married for 60 years, until her death in 1997. He and his law classmates--the future civil rights movement's intellectual warriors--worked at their dreams in the basement office of their law professor, Charles Houston. Houston promised the group, which included the future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and appellate judge Spottswood Robinson, that lawyers armed with quick minds and the Constitution could end segregated schools and unjust convictions of innocent black men. ``I kind of got fascinated by that,'' he said. ``We all did.'' But when Bryant graduated first in his class from Howard's law school, there were no jobs for a black lawyer. He became a chief research assistant to Ralph Bunche, an African American diplomat who later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, on a landmark study of American race relations; he then fought in World War II and was discharged from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1947. His first step was to take the bar exam, then hang out a shingle as a criminal defense lawyer in 1948. His skills soon drew the attention of prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office, who liked him even though they kept losing cases to him, and they recommended that their boss hire him. During a job interview, Bryant made a request of George Fay, then the U.S. attorney: ``Mr. Fay, if I cut the mustard in municipal court, can I go over to the big court like the other guys?'' No black prosecutor had ever practiced in the federal court--or ``big court,'' as it was called--but Fay agreed. Bryant signed on in 1951 and was handling grand jury indictments in the new federal courthouse the next year. Bryant vividly recalls a case from that time involving an apartment building caretaker who was on trial on charges of raping the babysitter of one tenant's family. ``I went for him as hard as I could,'' Bryant said, squaring his shoulders. ``I didn't like him, and I didn't like what he did to that girl.'' So the young prosecutor sought the death penalty, an option then for first-degree murder and rape. He left the courtroom after closing arguments ``feeling pretty good about my case'' and awaited the jury's verdict in his third-floor court office. But when a marshal later called out, ``Bryant, jury's back,'' the judge said, ``I broke out in a sweat.'' He peeked anxiously into the court, saw the jury foreman mouth only the word ``guilty.'' Bryant learned seconds later that the jurors had spared the man's life. ``I was so relieved,'' he said. ``When you're young, you don't know anything. . . . Now I think, murder is murder, no matter who is doing it.'' He left the prosecutor's office in 1954 and returned to criminal defense with fellow classmate William Gardner in an F Street law office later bulldozed for the MCI Center. They were partners in Houston, Bryant and Gardner, a legendarily powerful African American firm. Ten judges would eventually come from its ranks. In those days, Bryant chuckled, he didn't feel so powerful. Judges who remembered his prosecution work kept appointing him to represent defendants who had no money. That was before the 1963 Supreme Court's Gideon decision requiring that indigent defendants be represented by a lawyer--at public expense, if necessary. The judge would say, ``Mr. So and So, you say you don't have any money to hire an attorney?'' Bryant recalled. ``Well, then, the court appoints Mr. Bryant to represent you.'' Some paid $25 or $50. Some paid nothing. ``There were weeks we paid the help and split the little bit left over for our groceries,'' he said. Bill Schultz, Bryant's former law clerk, said Bryant took the cases ``out of this sense of obligation to the court and legal system. He was very aware of discrimination, and he always fought for the criminal defendants.'' At the time, blacks were barred from the D.C. Bar Association and its law library. Bryant went in anyway, and the black librarian let him. One of his pro bono clients was Andrew Roosevelt Mallory, a 19-year-old who confessed to a rape after an eight-hour interrogation in a police station. Mallory was convicted and sent to death row. Defending Mallory's rights, a case Bryant took all the way to the Supreme Court in 1957, made him both nervous and famous. He said he fretted constantly about his client facing the electric chair during the two years the case dragged on. ``You talk about worried,'' he said. ``It's something I can't forget.'' But the Supreme Court agreed with Bryant that a man accused of a crime is entitled to be taken promptly before a magistrate to hear the charges against him. The court overturned Mallory's conviction and handed down a landmark decision on defendants' rights. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, a longtime fan of Bryant's, said Bryant's legal talents are on display every day in his courtroom, but lawyers are still taken aback by his factual resolve and clear logic when hearing an audiotape recording of his Supreme Court argument in the Mallory case. ``He's clearly a terrific lawyer, but he's mostly a terrific human being,'' Friedman said. ``He sees the best in people, and he really cares about what happens to people.'' Bryant remembers that when President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated him to be a judge, he felt elated, confident he had earned his opportunity. But Bryant said a different feeling came over him the day he donned the robes. ``I was sworn in in the morning that day, and Oliver Gasch was sworn in that afternoon,'' Bryant recalled. ``I told Oliver, `You know, I've been a lawyer for many years, but putting on this robe, I don't feel so sure. This is a serious responsibility.' '' Gasch smiled: ``Bill, I don't think it's going to be that hard for you. You know right from wrong.'' Bryant oversaw some famous cases, and he freely shared his thoughts when he thought something was wrong. After presiding over the 1981 trial of Richard Kelly, a Republican congressman caught on videotape taking money from federal agents in a sting operation, Bryant complained that the FBI had set an ``outrageous'' trap for the Florida representative by stuffing cash in his pocket after he'd refused the bribe several times. He set aside Kelly's conviction. ``The investigation . . . has an odor to it that is absolutely repulsive,'' Bryant said then. ``It stinks.'' In handling the longest-running case in the court's history, a 25-year-old case about inhumane and filthy conditions in the D.C. jail, the judge chastised city leaders in 1995. He said he had been listening to their broken promises to fix the problems ``since the Big Dipper was a thimble.'' In weighing the case of a group of black farmers with similar discrimination complaints against the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2000, Bryant warned a government lawyer that his argument against a class-action discrimination suit wasn't working: ``Either you're dense or I'm dense,'' he said. Schultz said the judge simply trusted the combination of facts and the law. ``He always said, `Don't fight the facts,' '' Schultz said. ``He thought most of the time the law would end up in the right place.'' Bryant acknowledges it's hard sometimes to see lawyers struggle to make their arguments when they have the law and the facts on their side. ``A judge has a stationary gun, and he's looking through the sights,'' he said. ``Unless the lawyer brings the case into the bull's-eye, the judge can't pull the trigger. Good lawyers bring the case into the sights.'' Bryant said he was preceded by many great lawyers, which is why the new plan to put his name on a piece of the courthouse gives him conflicting feelings. ``I was flattered, but I thought they shouldn't have done it,'' Bryant said. ``There are so many people who were really giants. I stand on their shoulders.'' I hope that henceforth there is senatorial courtesy--when we decide to proceed in a specific manner as we discussed, we would do it in the morning, I relied on that, and was about to go handle another matter when I noticed that the Senator was on the floor. I am somewhat concerned about that. I wish to thank the Senator from Michigan for her courtesy in combining these two tributes and look forward to the action of the House tomorrow. It is truly a wonderful opportunity for the Congress to honor two American pioneers. Rosa Parks and Judge William Bryant both deserve to be recognized for their lives and contributions our nation's heritage. I have no objection to this bill moving forward as amended and look forward with great pride to both buildings being named shortly for these two pillars of the civil rights movement that brought so much to our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, for the Committee on Armed Services I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.

Mr. WARNER

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I never thought I would see the day that I would stand to object to such a meritorious proposal as my distinguished colleague has offered. Mrs. Parks has been dead but 3 or 4 days. For 3 years, I have been trying to get the new courthouse annex here in Washington, DC named for Judge William B. Bryant. Judge Bryant is an African American. He is 94 years old. Let me tell you about this distinguished individual. Born in Alabama----

Mr. WARNER. I reserved the right to object, and I ask the respect of the manager to allow me to state my case. I thank the distinguished Senator. He graduated from Howard University in 1936, classmate of Thurgood Marshall and Appellate Judge Spotswood Robinson. He graduated from Howard Law School first in his class and then, with no real opportunities for African-American attorneys in the District of Columbia, served as chief research assistant to Ralph Bunche, who later won the Nobel Prize. From 1943 to 1947, he was in the Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II. He was a criminal defense attorney, Assistant U.S. Attorney, the first African American ever to be an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Nation's Capital. I was privileged to be in the U.S. Attorney's Office during some of his tenure there and worked with him. He was a teacher to me and many others. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court in 1965. In 1977, he was appointed the first African American to be chief judge of the U.S. District Court. Now at the age of 94, Judge Bryant is serving as a Senior Judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. This man, like Rosa Parks, suffered from discriminatory practices and persevered, therefore breaking new ground for African-Americans to come. When he first began trying cases as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1951 the Bar Association of D.C. did not allow African-American members. William Bryant, while trying cases in District Court was unable to access the law library at the Courthouse like his white colleagues. Despite the obstacles, William Bryant succeeded. Over the years this man has been a fixture at that courthouse, first trying cases, and for the past 40 years, hearing them as a judge. The D.C. Bar and his colleagues have unanimously endorsed the legislation I offer today as a tribute to this man's truly extraordinary life, legendary career, and service to this nation's judicial system. However, there are rules in the Environment and Public Works Committee which do not permit courthouses to be named for living or sitting judges. But it is interesting, before the current Chairman of the Committee took over, the rule was waived in certain cases. I am aware of more than 20 instances when this discretion was used to name Courthouses for living and sitting judges. As a matter of fact, I know of some instances where Members of this Chamber have gotten around the rule by attaching naming resolutions to bills in other committees of the Senate. We can all agree that Rosa Parks is deserving of the recognition to have a building named after her. Today I ask this body the simple question, why is she more deserving today than she was last week?

Mr. WARNER. I thank my distinguished colleague. I send to the desk an amendment and ask if it would be included in the unanimous consent request.

Mr. WARNER. If I could ask my distinguished colleague, were you not faced with the same dilemma several years ago and managed to get a courthouse named for a sitting judge in your State by action of the Appropriations Committee?

Mr. WARNER. I have talked to the Administraive Office of the Courts, and I will get that answer to the Senator.

Mr. WARNER. If I understand, has the Senator amended her request to accept my amendment?

Mr. WARNER. I have to object if the Warner amendment is not included in the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. WARNER. Fine. I thank the Senator.