There's good news and stupid news today on the judges front -- and both include Democrats.

First, the good news, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California bucked the insane left and voted to send the nomination of Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to the full Senate.

Feinstein said she decided to break with her party over Southwick because she had met him and determined he is a "qualified, circumspect person."

"I don't believe he's a racist. I don't believe I'm a racist. I believe he made a mistake," Feinstein said.

I'm not sure what the "mistake" was, but based on the controversy some far-left Democrats were trying to drum up it was obviously insignificant.

I don't do this often, but I want to applaud Feinstein for making a responsible, clear-headed decision.

On the flip side, we have this bit of stupidity from Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont who seems distraught that Chief Justice John Roberts appears to be a conservative.

"I think in his actions and the actions in which he has joined, he has made the court an arm of the Republican Party," Leahy said.

Leahy said he voted for Roberts because he knew Roberts was going to be confirmed anyway and did not want a party-line vote that would encourage Roberts to believe that he was "an appointment of the Republican Party."

But that is what has happened anyway, Leahy said.

"I love to hear Republicans give lip service to the ideals of the Founding Fathers and then ignore them when it serves their purposes," he said. "They (the Republicans) say they don't want an activist Supreme Court, but this is the most activist Supreme Court we have ever seen, running roughshod over the Constitution, like Plessy v. Ferguson did."

For the record, Plessy v. Ferguson upheld a segregation law -- how is deferring to the legislative branch "activist"? Of course, if "activist" is just shorthand for "rulings I don't like," then I guess any court that doesn't have 9 Ruth Bader Ginsburgs or John Paul Stevens' on it is by definition "activist" to Leahy.

Leahy apparently also suffers from advanced Alzheimer's if he thinks that the current court is more activist then the Warren Court.