Tomorrow: Biggest Nomination Fight of 2011 (Federal Courts vacancy)

Red State ^ | May 18, 2011 | Curt Levey

[Clintonfatigued]

This excerpt summarizes the showdown that will occur tomorrow when Senate Democrats force a cloture vote on Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, President Obama’s most radical judicial nominee and the man whom Obama would dearly like to make the first Asian-American Supreme Court justice. Liu’s left-wing agenda and outrageously activist view of the law makes this showdown a classic test of the bipartisan “extraordinary circumstances” standard for when judicial nominees can be filibustered. The standard originated in the 2005 Gang of 14 agreement.

Liu is a 40 year old Berkeley law professor whose vocal and unabashed championing of judicial activism has made him a star on the legal left. Liu “envisions the judiciary … as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning” and believes judges should create constitutional rights to “distributive justice,” including welfare rights to “education or housing or medical care.”

Liu has expressed left-wing views on virtually every hot-button issue likely to come before him on the bench, including the view that Americans are obligated to pay reparations for slavery, an obligation he would likely read into the Constitution. Liu is too far to the left for even Rahm Emanuel, who advised the President against making this nomination.

[Inyokern]

Billy, I said Kirk would be better than (your guy) Gianoulias. That was all I said. I was right about that.

By the way, what happened to your prediction that Kirk would switch to Dem?