HAVE YOU THANKED THE GANG TODAY? (via Kevin Whited):

Super-bad Bush nominees get a needless day in court (CRAGG HINES, 9/27/06, Houston Chronicle)

At least Arlen Specter is a man of his word. He kept his deal with the devil.

To forestall conservatives from challenging his accession as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the current term began, the Pennsylvania Republican essentially promised to give all of President Bush's judicial nominees a hearing, regardless of how bad some were certain to be.

In fastidious maintenance of that pledge, Specter scraped the bottom of the barrel Tuesday and paraded before the committee the only two Bush nominees to be rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association this year. [...]

[L]o and behold, amid this legislative whirlwind Specter found time to convene a meeting of the full committee to consider judicial nominees that the nation's major group of lawyers has concluded do not belong on the federal bench. [...]

After two separate ABA inquiries into [Michael B. ] Wallace's nomination earlier this year, the bar committee came up with the same conclusion: Wallace, while of the "highest professional competence," lacks a judicial temperament and a commitment to equal justice.

You could no more explain to the far Right why the McCain deal on nominees was a victory for conservatives than you could convince them that they're not going to be able to get rid of the Department of Education anytime soon.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 27, 2006 12:00 AM