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GOP plus 1 blocks most radical judicial nominee in history

May 20, 2011 06:45

All Obama’s judicial nominees are left wing radicals that believe in creating public policy from the bench to achieve left wing goals that cannot be achieved through the lawful legislative process but Goodwin Liu is probably the most radical.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

Those who say there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats need to look at the left wing radical judicial nomination of Goodwin Liu. Obama nominated Liu in early 2010 for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. Liu’s approval in the senate judiciary committee has been down strict party line votes.

After the vote to block Liu’s nomination Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Hugh Hewitt:

“Only one Republican voted in favor of giving this nominee a vote. So I think the reason for it is quite clear. He had the view that it’s perfectly permissible, and even desirable for judges to kind of make it up as they go, in other words, to act as legislators. It probably didn’t help him any that he testified against both Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, and used some rather strident language in describing both of them. But I think the core reason he was denied a vote, and therefore defeated, was because he seemed to be uninterested in what the Constitution, or even the case law, might require a judge to do, and really, pretty openly, said he believed in judges ought to do whatever they think is the right thing to do.”

Earlier McConnell had called Mr. Liu “a left-wing ideologue who views the role of a judge not as that of an impartial arbiter, but as someone who views the bench as a position of power.”

In a hearing on Liu’s nomination Liu reiterated to Senator Sessions his belief that the constitution gives rights to “expanded access to health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training and a robust earned income tax credit.” Remember that the government has no money. It must first take private property from its citizens to “provide” such benefits to other citizens.

In that same hearing Liu admitted to Sen. Kyle that he served on and chaired the board of the leftist American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) which according to Discover the Networks.org:

“Through its “International Law and the Constitution” working group, ACS disparages American law as antiquated and inequitable, and calls on judges to make American jurisprudence subservient to United Nations treaties and European Court of Human Rights decisions. Co-chairing this group are Jamil Dakwar, a former Human Rights Watch staffer who currently directs the ACLU’s Human Rights Program; Catherine Powell, a Board member of Human Rights Watch; and Cindy Soohoo, Director of the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Domestic Legal Program.”

Sen. Kyle quoted a speech to ACS where Liu said the Obama administration would allow the advancement of a “progressive vision” of the constitution and law:

“ACS has the opportunity to actually get our ideas and the progressive vision of the constitution and of law and policy into practice.”

Its no surprise that big donors to ACS read like a list of left wing sugar daddies including George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

In March of this year Concerned Women for America issued a memo about Liu’s nomination titled “Goodwin Liu is Unfit for a Lifetime Appointment to Federal Judiciary“. The memo was signed by Edwin Meese III, former Attorney General; Penny Nance, CEO, Concerned Women for America; Mathew D. Staver, Founder & Chairman, Liberty Counsel; Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring; Gary Marx, Executive Director, Judicial Crisis Network; William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government; David N. Bossie, President, Citizens United; Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council; Kristan Hawkins, Executive Director, Students for Life of America; James Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association; Duane Parde, President, National Taxpayers Union; Alfred Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator and sixteen other prominent conservatives. The memo listed reasons for rejecting Liu:

ISSUE-IN-BRIEF: Mr. Liu has repeatedly shown a lack of respect for the Constitution as the Supreme law of the land:

Mr. Liu holds a radical view of constitutional rights. For example, in his 2008 Stanford Law Review article he supports a judicial role in establishing constitutional welfare rights-i.e., “affirmative rights,” to education, shelter, subsistence, health care and the like, or to the money these things cost. This is the view of rights President Obama raised that caused a stir, and which Judge Sotomayor rejected when asked if she took such a view during her confirmation hearing.

In a 2006 article entitled “Education, Equality, and National Citizenship“, Liu suggests that the Constitution “assigns equal constitutional status to negative rights against government oppression and positive rights to government assistance on the ground that both are essential to liberty.

Mr. Liu has stated: “…it becomes pretty clear why ‘originalism’ or ’strict construction’ don’t make a lot of sense. The Framers deliberately chose broad words so they would be adaptable over time.

Mr. Liu recklessly attacked the nominations of Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In the case of Roberts, he wrote, in an op-ed, that “[h]is legal career is studded with activities unfriendly to civil rights, abortion rights, and the environment.” These unfounded charges were dismissed by judicial experts on both sides of the aisle and Roberts was confirmed with bi-partisan support.

Mr. Liu actually testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the confirmation of Alito. Liu testified that then-Judge Alito was “at the margin, not the mainstream,” and that the America envisioned by his record on the bench “is not the America we know. Nor is it the America we aspire to be.” Alito was also confirmed with bi-partisan support.

In a 2008 Stanford Law Review article, Mr. Liu wrote that judges should engage in “socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal … to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society” and to “determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine.” According to a Washington Times editorial: “Mr. Liu’s goal was to create a judicially enforceable, constitutional right to welfare.

It has been noted that Mr. Liu doesn’t meet the standards for federal judges outlined by the American Bar Association. These standards include “at least 12 years’ experience in the practice of law” and “substantial courtroom and trial experience.” Mr. Liu, who is only 39 years old, hasn’t even been out of law school for 12 years and has no experience as a trial lawyer.

42 of California’s 58 county district attorneys opposed Liu’s nomination in a March 2010 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying they believe Liu is hostile to the death penalty.

Mr. Liu implies racial quotas should continue indefinitely and in remarks before the American Constitution Society in August of 2003 advocates reviving “the idea of remedying societal discrimination as a justification for affirmative action.

Mr. Liu offered an amicus brief to the California Supreme Court in which he and others argued that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage (approved twice by the voters of California) was unconstitutional.

Only One Democrat, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, had the guts to vote with Republicans to sustain the filibuster. Alaskans should be ashamed to have reelected Lisa Murkowski who was either clueless or is a radical progressive at heart. Nothing so clearly shows the divide between Democrats who want government socialism despite the will of the people and the GOP.

Hopefully Obama will give up on Liu but don’t count on it. Harry Reid wants the same warped rewriting of the constitution as Liu and he has muscled the unwitting Democrats to follow the progressive party line. Even if Liu’s nomination is withdrawn there are many more radical revisionists waiting at ACS and Obama wants to change the law and reinterpret the Constitution through the judiciary.

Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder said Obama’s nominees would come from the radical ACS membersship:

“In June 2008, ACS Board of Advisors member Eric Holder, whom president-elect Barack Obama would name as his top choice for Attorney General five months later, spoke at an ACS convention. Predicting an Obama victory in the November election, Holder told his audience that the U.S. would soon be “run by progressives.” “With this new administration that will be taking its place in January of 2009,” he elaborated, “… we are going to be looking for people who share our values.” A “substantial number of those people” were likely to be ACS members, added Holder.” [Discover the Networks.org]