BUT TOO RADICAL FOR SENATE DEMOCRATS?:

Confirm Janice Brown now (Terence Jeffrey, April 27, 2005, Townhall)

When California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown faced a retention vote in 1998, 76 percent of Californians voted to keep her on their state's highest court. In San Francisco, perhaps America's most liberal city, she won 79.4 percent.

Brown won more votes statewide than any of the other three justices up for retention that year -- even though she had cast a (dissenting) vote in favor of upholding the state's parental-consent law.

But when President Bush nominated Brown to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003, her demonstrated support in places like San Francisco did not matter to Senate Democrats.

At the beginning of her confirmation hearing, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois lectured Brown about her worldview. "Let me talk to you for a minute about the world according to you as you see it," said Durbin. "It is a world, in my opinion, that is outside the mainstream of America."

What Durbin really meant is that Brown is the Senate Democrats' worst nightmare

This is why it's absurd to argue that breaking the filibuster might harm Senate Republicans. They should welcome the chance that opponenents could attack them for getting the likes of Judge Brown confirmed.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 27, 2005 6:49 AM