Goodwin Liu, a UC Berkeley law professor, is set to go before the Senate today to be confirmed as a federal appeal court judge. Though he’s never served on the bench before, the American Bar Association has called him tops. And yet, just as he’s about to take questions from elected officials? Which was already delayed once by Republican stalling tactics? Republicans are launching into another attack mode, saying he failed to list events he’s attended in the past on his disclosure documents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California, isn’t too pleased about the 11th hour assault, calling out his GOP attack dogs, including Alabama’s Sen. Jeff Sessions (who, in a semi-related note, said he’s keep an open mind about a gay Supreme Court nominee), for their special brand of hypocrisy; John Roberts, the GOP pick for Supreme Court chief justice, waited until a week before his 2005 confirmation to submit 50,000 pages of his own records. This doesn’t have anything to do with Liu supporting gay marriage and abortion rights, does it?
RS
I just wrote my Senator, Dianne Feinstein, thanking her for her defense of Professor Liu, and also wrote Senator Boxer encouraging her to defend the nomination as well. The GOP is being incredibly obstructionist on all judicial nominations, even the ones that passed committee hearings unanimously.
Wade MacMorrighan
Why are social Conservatives so damned terrified about treating people equal, and about progressive and liberal social attitudes? I would love them to spend a week embracing European and British culture to see how the rest of the world operates! ‘Cause, it treats its citizens far more fairly than our Puritanical nation. *sigh*
TonyD
Social Conservatives fear they will no longer have backs to stand on and have to look into the eyes of the people they kept down and pay for their mistakes, worse yet, they may be forgiven and just have to live with their own pitiful guilt. (Just my guess)
Nicholas
He’s for equality. That should never be made to be a bad thing. I hope he gets treated fairly and not the way these conservatives are. We need fair-minded people who believe in equality like this Mr. Liu.
tjr101
I hope the Democrats stand firm and insure this fine jurist gets an up or down vote. The appeals court is woefully lacking in liberal judges. George Bush never faced this type of obstructionism and the one thing he did well for his base was to appoint a lot of extreme conservatives to the federal bench. We need more liberal judges on the federal appeals court.
adman
Since it seems the president wants to be a Repub, now is his chance to stack the courts like Bu$hie did. Fierce advocacy time?