The Nutty Ninth Circuit has posted various documents on their Web site [Adobe Acrobat Reader required] related to the October 7 recall. Two of the documents, which thankfully are not couched in legalese, are informative. The first is from former Secretary of State Bill Jones, who was quoted in the three-judge panel's as having "banned" […]
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (surprise!) called a halt to the recall election slated for Oct. 7. The most-reversed court in the land has determined that the same voting devices that gave us Gray Davis last year are too flawed to be used to recall the aforementioned Davis. Scott Ott over at Scrappleface.com leads […]
Just finished listening to all four hours of legal arguments before the Supreme Court on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. It's enough to put one to sleep. In fact, I listened to the first two hours last night before drifting off to sleep, then the remaining two hours this morning. The arguments are difficult […]
There are two good articles today on the Democrats' borking of appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada. The first, by Robert Alt makes the case that Democrats filibustered Miguel Estrada because he is a Hispanic who left the reservation. That is, you're not allowed to be a member of a minority group and a conservative. Democrats […]
Filibustered, Harvard-educated, Honduran-born appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada has withdrawn his name from consideration by the Senate. Somebody ought to stick their foot up New York Sen. Chuck Schumer's ***. But Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Judiciary Committee member, said Estrada's decision to withdraw his nomination could have been avoided if the administration had […]
An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal on the Ten Commandments debate includes this note on the federal judicial nomination process and the ideology/religion litmus test being imposed by the Senate Democrats. Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, one of the few state officials providing some adult supervision on the matter, is unpersuaded. "The rule of […]
Josh Marshall, sometimes referred to as Paul Krugman's political brain, has an article in The Hill magazine defending Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee against the charges of an anti-Catholic crusade. Marshall counterattacks on two points: First, is opposing a judicial nominee for having doctrinaire views on abortion the same as demanding that he or […]
National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru takes issue with colleague Byron York's (and by extension my own) view that it is inaccurate to tar Senate judiciary committee Democrats as "anti-Catholic." However, Ponnuru acknowledges the vaildity of many of the points made by York and myself: So Republican rhetoric about the Democrats' having adopted a "religious test for […]
National Review's Byron York has more on the William Pryor nomination that I discussed earlier. York comes to many of the same conclusions I did, namely that Democratic senators are not anti-Catholic per se, but their use of the abortion litmus test has a de facto effect of barring orthodox Catholics, evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews […]
There's been a lot of hubbub on Capitol Hill in recent weeks over the nomination of Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Pryor, a devout Catholic, has outraged the Senate Judiciary Committee's minority democrats with his professed belief that Roe v. Wade was a horrible court […]