Four Radicals Renominated to Federal Judgeships
On Wednesday, President Obama renominated four radicals to federal judgeships, even though their nominations previously died in the Senate. A week earlier, he made six controversial recess appointments. Those sharply partisan and ideological acts contradict his recent rhetoric about the need for “bipartisanship.”
Obama once again nominated John J. “Jack” O’Connell, who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to liberal politicians. O’Connell used $2.5 million in state-settlement money to pay off a creditor, in an unethical diversion of state funds. Using political influence, he got himself hired to bring a costly and futile lead paint lawsuit that “achieved nothing, other than waste thousands of hours of attorney time.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed O’Connell’s nomination — the first time it ever opposed a federal judicial nomination.
Obama renominated Edward Chen, a fervent advocate of racial preferences who unsuccessfully challenged a provision of the California Constitution banning racial discrimination and preferences. Chen also “objected to the singing of ‘America the Beautiful’ at a funeral because of his ‘feelings of ambivalence and cynicism when confronted by appeals to patriotism.’”
Radical law professor Goodwin Liu was also renominated. As lawyer Ted Frank noted in the Washington Examiner, Liu once claimed that racial quotas are not merely permitted, but constitutionally “required.” If confirmed, Liu would sit on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a sharply-divided federal appeals court with jurisdiction over a whopping one-fifth of the American people. Liu wrongly argued in the past that the Constitution requires some forms of welfare, although he denied supporting such a constitutional right to welfare in his more recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when he experienced a politically-convenient confirmation conversion after his nomination became controversial. Although Liu briefly worked for a law firm, Liu has no experience actually trying cases, despite the fact that judges are supposed to have “substantial courtroom and trial experience” (a fact that did not keep the staunchly liberal ABA, which shares Liu’s ideology, from supporting his nomination despite his lack of this basic qualification). Liu has claimed that “‘free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government” are right-wing concepts and ideological “code words.” Liu is also a big user of politically-correct psychobabble, writing that a judge is supposed to be a “culturally situated interpreter of social meaning” rather than an impartial umpire who interprets the law in accord with its plain meaning or its framers’ intent.
Obama also renominated Louis Butler, who was so extreme that he was removed from the Wisconsin Supreme Court by voters in 2008 (the first time the state’s voters had removed a Justice since 1967). Butler’s empathy for criminals was summed up by his nickname, Loophole Louis.