Saturday the New York Times ran Cass Sunstein’s OpEd warning against “judicial activism” (See recent posts below). Today it’s the Los Angeles Times, which runs an OpEd by Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk who are certain that “President Bush will try to fill the federal courts with judges from the far right.” (Link via the vigilant Howard Bashman)
This is getting tiresome. Not the liberal opposition to conservative judicial nominees, which is normal, predictable, and perfectly legitimate. What is tiresome is the incessant fear-mongering of “far right” and “extremist.”
If outspoken liberals were unacceptable judicial nominees during the Clinton administration, then extreme conservatives are equally unsuitable now.
Liberals are merely “outspoken,” but conservatives are “extreme.”
Do these people regard all conservatives as extreme? Are there differences among conservatives, extreme conservatives, right wing, far right wing? One can’t tell from reading these label-ladling liberals. And even if there are, it doesn’t seem to matter to those filibustering in the OpEd pages.
All Chemerinsky and Fisk say is that at all costs Democrats must “ensure that a new justice is not a conservative from the same school as Scalia and Thomas.”
Exactly what “school” is that? Are there any conservatives who did not attend it? After a while one gets the idea that the only conservative many liberals would approve is one who supports abortion, racial preferences, judicial passivism when confronted with liberal legislation and judicial activism (described now as defending the Constitution) when passing on conservative legislation.
No wonder they can’t find any conservatives they like.
