Democrats trying to block Judge Leslie Southwick from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lost a potential ally today as the Washington Post says they haven’t made their case:
For that reason, and because of his relatively pinched approach to judging, Judge Southwick wouldn’t have been our first choice for this vacancy. Nor do we like the results in the custody and racial slur cases. But we cannot find fault with Judge Southwick’s narrow but ultimately legitimate interpretation of the law in those cases, and we do not find in his record the anti-gay, anti-worker caricature his opponents have drawn. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the lone Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of his confirmation, got it right when she concluded that if senators were to examine Judge Southwick’s entire career, including his stint as a judge advocate in Iraq, they would find a “qualified, circumspect person.”
Read the whole editorial at the above link. The opposition to Southwick has always been contrived, a diversion as Democrats hope to keep as many Bush appointees off the bench as possible over the next year or so in the expectation the next President will be a Democrat.
Congratulations to the Washington Post for not giving them any cover.
