Better Judicial Demagaguery Badly Needed

Interesting report on NPR this morning about Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu's embattled nomination to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Liu's first confirmation hearing is scheduled for today and like any capable nominee with SCOTUS potential he can expect vociferous opposition from the GOP. Still, I would expect Republican's to come up with a better line of attack than this...

"Goodwin Liu is not your typical liberal," says Curt Levey, director of the conservative Committee for Justice. "He's very far out on the left wing, even in academia. So I think you could think of Liu as the Democratic Clarence Thomas."

Let's parse this a bit. First, can we infer that Mr. Levey believes that Clarence Thomas is on the very far out right wing? Sure seems that is what he is saying. But more on point, Thomas is a curious example to pick when you're trying to submarine a nominee seeing as how Clarence Thomas' nomination came to the floor of the Senate for a full vote and he was confirmed. With 11 Democrats voting in favor of his confirmation no less.

In Liu's case Republicans are threatening to try and prevent a floor vote on his nomination at all, much less vote for his confirmation. If he's really the liberal Clarence Thomas then lets give him an up or down vote and confirm him.