[Mr. Brightside]

I'm, shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

[TommyDale]

I often wonder just how "tough" Rudy Giuliani really was on crime in New York. How many plea bargains did he accept to get a "conviction" in comparison to other federal prosecutors? There must be some statistics out there somewhere.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Wonder how far to the left Hildabeast's judges will be? Any hard core conservative out there that can beat Hildabeast?

[adaven]

Though at least 50 of his 75 appointees were registered Democrats (only six were registered Republican)

Yeah, I guess the do "tend" to lean to the left.

[kittymyrib]

Unfortunately for Rudy, conservatives are not as dumb as he and the msm think they are. We follow the excellent advice of Jesus, "By their fruits you shall know them." (Matt. 7:16) There is a lot of rotten fruit in this politician's past.

[andy58-in-nh]

I wish that some of you given to bashing Mr. Guiliani would put his mayoral service in context. He was mayor of New York, not of Dallas. There are no elected Republicans in NYC, and the population of Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens is almost exclusively composed of Democrats. Had he tried to nominate even a majority of Republicans for judgeships in New York, he would have been shot down repeatedly, leaving an already strained judicial system in crisis. He chose to govern rather than tilt at windmills - that's what leaders do. I have significant differences of opinion with the man - but he is not a "liberal" in any modern sense of the word, and I think he deserves a fair hearing.

[Barrett 50BMG]

"(50 Dems, 6 Republicans)"

We are talking about NY here. Look at what he has to choose from. LOL

[Dante3]

It is crazy to say Rudy had no one to choose from - what stupid spin. Of course he did, and he chose Democrats because they better reflected his own views.

[VRWCmember]

Giuliani already faced a high threshold of skepticism from many of these activists because of his comparatively liberal record on such hot-button issues as abortion rights, tolerance of gays and gun control.

Here is another writher that apparently fails to understand that the definition of "tolerance" is not "advocacy"

[VRWCmember]

Irizarry, appointed by Giuliani to the Bronx Criminal Court in 1996, had disclosed that she considers herself "pro-choice" during her 2002 campaign for New York state attorney general. Her appointment to the federal bench was almost derailed when the American Bar Association ruled her "not qualified" on the grounds that as a state judge, she had been "gratuitously rude and abrasive" and "flew off the handle in a rage."

But to Schumer, who led the fight against Bush's appellate judges, Irizarry was a Republican he could live with.

Back in the pre-clintonian days, the democrats always insisted that the ABA ratings were the gold standard. But when Bush appoints a conservative or constructionist judge rated "highly qualified" it doesn't matter. However, if he happens to nominate an awful clown like Irizarry (I don't understand why he nominated her in the first place) that the ABA has rated "NOT QUALIFIED", Schumer pushes her nomination through in spite of it. The democrats are a foul, wretched bunch of LIARS and hypocrites.

[LtdGovt]

Rudy appointed judges who were tough-on-crime, whether they were Democrats or Republicans. And don't forget thet judges have to be confirmed by some Democrat-dominated body in NYC.

[Vaquero]

Rudy and his justices will emulate the UN.

[Antoninus]

Well, well, well. Quite the conservative we have here...

[Anti-Bubba182]

What is the pool of available Judges like in New York? Rudy can't pick an Alabama Judge.

[JamesP81]

The group is filled with social conservatives, for whom the effort to recast the ideological orientation of the federal judiciary has been a generation-long project.

All the so called socially liberal conservatives in here and everywhere need to pay close attention to the words in bold. If anyone thinks for a millisecond the social conservatives are going to vote for a pro-choice republican just to beat out the pro-choice democrat, you've all got another thing coming. Social cons will not vote for any candidate, R or D, that will roll back the work that has literally taken a generation. It isn't going to happen. RG cannot win the presidential election with social cons not voting for him. He's a good guy and I like his fiscal policies, but he's unelectable.

[Ol' Sparky]

CALLING DR. HANNITY, CALLING DR. HANNITY...Is Sean going to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and realize Rudy is a liberal and that there is no chance that he would nominate strict Constitutionalists to the court?

It's past time delusion conservatives got their heads of their behinds and realize Rudy is a RINO and would be a complete disaster if elected to office.

[pogo101]

According to the State of New York, the mayor of New York ONLY may appoint judges who are first served up to him (as in, on a platter) by a merit commission of some sort:

Since 1978, merit selection has been used to select judges of New York City’s criminal and family courts and to fill mid-term vacancies on the city’s civil court. Established by executive order, the mayor’s advisory committee on the judiciary evaluates applicants and nominates highly qualified candidates. The mayor may not appoint a judge who has not been nominated by the committee.

http://www.ajs.org/js/NY_methods.htm

Now the $64,000 question is, how are folks chosen to serve on this wondrous "advisory committee" chosen? Are they all chosen by the current mayor, as the term "advisory" would suggest? If so, then Rudy deserves more blame than he otherwise would.

If not -- that is, if the committee is like, say, the FCC and thus includes folks chosen by prior mayors (or who are elected ... in a hugely Democratic city), then it mitigates the critique that Rudy appointed libs to the bench.

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer (about how folks get onto the advisory committee that has such huge power in picking NYC judges). Anyone know?

[Labyrinthos]

Oh please! This is so stupid. First, the Mayor of NYC only appoints the judges to the NYC Family Court and Criminal Court, not the Civil Court, where the judges are elected. Second, as to those judges that the mayor does appoint, a judcial screening panel provides the mayor with a list of nominees from which to chose. Most of the members of the judical screening panel are selected by the political leaders in the various election districts in NYC. Since the vast majority of these districts are overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats, the overwhelming majority of the screening panel are also Democrats, who to no surprise, provide a list of judical nomonees to the mayor who are also overwhelmingly Democrats.

The vast, vast majority of judges that the mayor appoints to the criminal and family courts have little if any oppurtunity to make decisions that have any impact upon anyone other than the parties before the judge. They rarely decide Constitutional questions of any import, and with limited exceptions, they do not have the authority to issue injucntions or declaratory judgments. In the NYC Criminal Court, for example, the judges spend 95% or more of their time on the bench doing arraignments, and accepting guilty please in an effort to keep the wheels of justice moving. Being a Democrat or Republican at this level of justice is pretty much meaningless.

Also, on several occassions, Guilliani refused to reappoint NYC judges due to incompetence despite the recoomendations of the Judicial Screening Panel and pressure from the NYC Bar Association, the mostly Democratic political machines that try to controll NYC, and the New York Times Ediorial Board.

[stevio]

Good find!

[zendari]

I don't want "conservative" judges. I want judges who read the constitution and apply what is there, not what they think is there.

Activists are bad on both sides...see Gonzalez vs Reich.