It was cavalier of the Administration to give Luttig the back of their hands. We have too few reliable judges now on the Court of Appeals. This ABA rejection highlights how foolish it was of the Administration to allow Michael Luttig to resign from the 4th Circuit...and to antagonize him further after he left.
This should be solid evidence to all conservatives in and out of the Federalist Society that neither Gonzales nor Bush himself are true constitutional conservatives. They use us for mere convenience. And when inconvenient...out goes the conservative principle and the constitution...not to mention any judge who happens to be a stalwart.
Think how hard it would be today to get a Luttig on the bench!
The White House couldn't have stopped him, could they?
...and to antagonize him further after he left.
How did the Administration do that?
Horse bunk. Ronald Reagan, may he rest in peace, did not give us 2 conservative SCOTUS appointments. He gave us Scalia--but Scalia's vote for years was cancelled by O'Connor and/or Kennedy.
I love Reagan (unfortunately I never voted for him--I was a 'rat in those days!), but to say Bush isn't a conservative on judicial appointments is balderdash.
There have to be enough qualified judges that are conservative that we shouldn't have to try to push through unanimous "unqualified" rated judges.
I don't mind so much the majority decision ABA rulings.
ABA(TRIAL LAWYERS) = ELITE LIBERALS
Whoa, Paul ... as your article notes, the President just nominated Michael Wallace ... someone too conservative for the ABA to handle.
Not to mention Pryor, Brown, Alito, etc.
This should be meaningless to the libs, the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have already demonstrated that the ratings mean nothing to them.
There an insider's post (to Jonah) about Luttig you need to read.
Basically, he went off the deep end.
Are you completely insane?
He resigned of his own free will. The admin had nothing to do with it.
The ABA's Rating didn't matter a damn for any of the other nominees.
Why should this?
Why, because they ended up sending Padilla through the normal criminal process? Luttig's skin was WAY too thin in this instance, I'm afraid.
The ABA is an organ of the Democratic Party.